Was Samson a moron, or does beguiling actually work?

[The Grand Nudger]

Sammy did ignore the warning not to involve with those kind of relationships with the tribes around him, he got clues from Delilah that he ignored, so he cooked his own goose.

That's what he gets for being a race traitor, amiright! Thanks Prof, I can always count on the faithful to shittify things in directions I never would have taken them.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

The Samson and Delilah story is a sequel to the First Commandment in Exodus 34:12-16. It shows the consequences of violating the First Commandment.

Exodus 34:12-16 (CEV) = "12 Don’t make treaties with any of those people. If you do, it will be like falling into a trap. 13 Instead, you must destroy their altars and tear down the sacred poles they use in the worship of the goddess Asherah. 14 I demand your complete loyalty—you must not worship any other god! 15 Don’t make treaties with the people there, or you will soon find yourselves worshiping their gods and taking part in their sacrificial meals. 16 Your men will even marry their women and be influenced to worship their gods."

Samson was a member of the tribe of Dan. He got involved with a hooker who worked for the Philistines and compromised his holy purpose. He was able to recover somewhat but at great expense.

[Drich]

when ever I hear this story I think of this song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wxy-SMSqPM

[KevinM1]

The crass side of me is amused that Samson may be the origin (or one of them) for "Bros before hos."

[Chad32]

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when ever I hear this story I think of this song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wxy-SMSqPM

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That was cool. I've heard the song this is parodying, but not this before.

[Jenny A]

Moral: Women are untrustworthy.

Oh we are, we are.

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Sampson is the story of most of us.
He got sucked in to the allure of a worldly babe.

The devil has something for everyone.
The three G's get a lot of guys: Girls / Gold and Glory.

Sammy did ignore the warning not to involve with those kind of relationships with the tribes around him, he got clues from Delilah that he ignored, so he cooked his own goose.
He only got beguiled by being where he ought not to be.
A lesson for us all.

Ah, not just women, but foreign worldly women are bad news.

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I'm reading the story of Samson and Delilah while watching DarkMatter2525 on YouTube, because as I'm a Skeptic, I try to ask questions and see evidence for myself whenever possible, in Darkmatters case I like to make sure he's not strawmanning the living hell out of the bible. Which so far, no, he isn't. The bible really is that fake.

In my old catholic bible, they tell Delilah to "beguile" Samson to get the secret to his weakness(Judges 16:5), and after I read that, I looked up "beguile" which means charm or enchant (someone), sometimes in a deceptive way. Can beguiling really cause someone to do what Samson did in Judges 16:17? Or was Samson just a moron who deserved what he got for being stupid? Thanks a bunch.

It's a folk story, like much of the OT. They can be fun, or weird, or culturally reveling. What they aren't generally is a good recipe for moral choices. That Sampson got tricked while being head over heals in love, isn't surprising. But carrying his strength in his hair, now that's odd.

The Bible isn't the only place to find weird stories. The Spartan boy who let a fox eat his belly rather than admit to stealing it from an enemy camp is a case in point. It's a weird silly story. What possible punishment could be worse than being eaten to death by a fox?

Find me a culture, I'll find you a dozen weird "lesson" stories. George and the Cherry Tree gets odder the more you think about it.

The truly odd thing about the tales in the Bible isn't that they are implausible and many of the lessons at odds with modern thinking. What's really odd is the Christian/Jewish assumption that they must be profound and worth revering in a way that we don't revere the fox or cherry tree stories. They have all the marks of myth and folk tales and should be treated as such.

[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.

[Jenny A]

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?

[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.

[robvalue]

Samson does seem to be one of the stupidest characters in all of fiction. I think his wife lies to him three times in an obvious ploy to trick him, and he notices the trap each time. But he goes ahead and tells her his secret on the fourth time. What a dumbass.