Was Samson a moron, or does beguiling actually work?

[watchamadoodle]

I recently finished this book that had some info on Samson:
http://books.google.com/books/about/From...UZO_vj-8IC

The authors believe that in the original myth, Samson was the offspring of a human mother and a heavenly being (similar to the nephilim in Genesis). Some of the Jewish literature describes Samson as an enormous giant who was able to carry the gates of a city on is shoulders, etc.

What evidence do the authors use to reconstruct the original myth?

In general, they look at subtleties of the Hebrew, rabinnical literature, etc. Their theory is that the Bible was compiled and edited around the 6th century BC from earlier polytheistic traditions (as generally accepted). The goal of the Bible's editors was to create a manifesto of monotheism. They couldn't erase the earlier polytheistic traditions (like Samson the demigod giant), so they rewrote them to be compatible with a monotheistic Judaism. In some cases the editors left clues in the text of the Bible, and in other cases clues to the original forms showed-up years later in Hellenistic Jewish literature, rabinnical literature, Chrisitan literature, and even Islamic literature.

In the Biblical version of Samson, an angel visits Samson's mother to announce the birth. The authors believe in the original version, a "son of god" impregnated Samson's mother to create one of the "nephilim" referred to in Genesis. I wasn't able to evaluate the credibility of their reasoning due to my limited knowledge, but the authors seem to be reputable scholars in Israel.