Sampson a superhero

Faith & Science Conversation
41

Here is the thing that so many miss when reading Hebrews 11. I was wanting to keep this on Sampson but accept thst boat has shipped and this is be merged with the greater topic of what does Hebrews 11 actually says when focused on, and it’s not from skepticism. It’s from reading what is there the way it’s supposed to be read.

3 By faith we understand that the world has been created by the word of God so that what is seen has not been made out of things that are visible. 4 By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he was attested to be righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks. 5 By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; and he was not found because God took him up; for before he was taken up, he was attested to have been pleasing to God. 6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for the one who comes to God must believe that He exists, and that He proves to be One who rewards those who seek Him. 7 By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.

  • here it’s just mentioning a series of examples of faith. These examples of faith begin with the earliest band worked towards the latest. All of these were some of the major characters before Abraham. After Noah it follows the biblical pattern and suddenly skips lots of time and a dozen people to Abraham

It mentions Abel, Enoch and Noah. Regardless if these people were real or not does not matter and was never being debated. What’s being asked is where are these characters coming from. All of these characters come from genesis 1-11. When we go back to genesis 1-11 we can see the literary design is not historical or autobiographical narratives. It’s written as poetic myths. So right here what we see is that the Author of Hebrews is hyperlinking back to mythologies just like they do in several other places.

Then after these verses it continues to list several more people.

8 By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he left, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he lived as a stranger in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise; 10 for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11 By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered Him faithful who had promised. 12 Therefore even from one man, and one who was as good as dead at that, there were born descendants who were just as the stars of heaven in number, and as the innumerable grains of sand along the seashore.

13 All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen and welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

Now there is a key component to focus on right here. The last verse 13 says “ all these died in faith” yet if we read just anfew sentences before this it says “ 5 By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; and he was not found because God took him up; for before he was taken up, he was attested to have been pleasing to God.”

So it says all of these died by faith, yet it just said Enoch did not.

It’s because despite what you think verse 2 means, the author of Hebrews was aware that genesis 1-11 was written in a specific style and that style is creation mythology.

Following those verses it goes on to list another group.

Then verses 17-31 goes back to mentioning more examples
Of faith and mentioning again several of them such as Abraham.

Then we get to these verses which includes the one of Sampson.

32 And what more shall I say? For time will fail me if I tell of Gideon,Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, 33 who by faith conquered kingdoms, performed acts of righteousness, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight.

It’s just more hyperlinks like the beginning of the chapter with the earliest “ by faith”. Once more hyperlinking does not mean it was understood to be literally. Hyperlinking means nothing more than linking future verses with earlier ones , linking future stories to earlier ones. Just because it mentions it now in the future does not rewrite what was in the past. It does not change its literary style at all. The fact that it contradicts itself with never seeing death and having seen death is just more evidence for this.

That’s why when it was first mentioned by the other guy that chapter 11 demanded that all those events, stories and people had to be taken literally i already knew based off of reading Hebrews 11 and understanding what hyperlinking means does not change it.

So if Sampson was real or not, or if the stories of Sampson was real or not is not determined in the slightest in them being mentioned right here. What determines it is the story being hyperlinked to.

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As for Hebrews 11:2 this seems to be the actual consensus.

https://biblehub.com/text/hebrews/11-2.htm

The world means elder. Elder is used in many ways such as someone from a long time ago to someone who is older to someone who is in a certain position of authority.

https://biblehub.com/greek/presbuteroi_4245.htm

Even with it being associated with forefathers in 11:2 is fairly weak. Even if it is, it does not change how hyperlinking snd biblical narrative works.

https://biblehub.com/greek/4245.htm

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That’s partly on me tbh. I’ll split the topics when I get a mo.

44

It’s fine. I’m sure it was going to fall back to literary analysis and hyperlinks as soon as someone entered the discussion who did not get it. Plus I guess ultimately the info about Sampson is probably something I’ll find out with some book.

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I look forward to hearing what you find.

BTW, the Wikipedia article on Samson has links to some sources that you might find interesting.

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Peace of Christ,

While I’m not a literalist attempting to defend every bit of The Old Testament, I am convinced that many of the stories within are rooted in some kind of history, even if it’s just a kernel. For example, In 2012, archaeologists of Tel Aviv University discovered an ancient seal at Beth Shemesh featuring a long-haired man smiting a lion. The seal was dated to be from the 12th century BC, when the Book of Judges is commonly understood to have taken place.
Though we are far removed from this chaotic time and left without the man’s name, archaeology appears to suggest that there was, at the very least, a story of a Sampson figure circulating at the time and place he was alive. What do you make of this?

Pax,
Charles

47

My thoughts are that just because an ancient seal was found that shows a man next to a Lion, this says nothing for the historicity of Samson anymore than a statue of a Greek god implies the actual existence of Greek gods or their historicity. An ancient depiction of Heracles defeating a lion with his bare hands doesn’t imply he was real. Is there a historical kernel to the Heracles story? Maybe. It is unknowable if so.

The seal shows a man a next to a lion. Maybe there were fictitious stories floating about of a man who impossible bested a lion with his bare hands by choking it to death then ripping it open. Maybe these were all fables and the Samson story developed out of it. Or maybe there was a man of renowned strength named Samson who was mythologized. Or maybe the strong man of old besting a dangerous animal was a common motif 4,000 years ago and developed all sorts of tales. There simply is zero evidence for the historicity of this account. Judges was written ~600 years later than you say this seal was from and you have to leap to conclusions to use the seal to infer the historicity of Samson based on an account 600 years alter which may or may not have anything to do with it.

As noted, Heracles also strangled a lion and snakes. Though he had to stub the Lion with his club first and I believe he ripped open the lion with his own claws. I’m not sure bees were attracted to it and made honey there though. There is something showing this from ~540 BCE. Legendary men of half-gods defeating animals that they never could bare-handed is not limited to the Bible. We can, without any shred of evidence whatsoever, imagine they all stemmed from the true account of Samson doing it, but in many cases the Biblical authors are clearly borrowing from older myths and there just is no reliable evidence these stories are true and we have every reason to not believe them.

This seal along with some other stuff from antiquity would lead me to belief this is a motif of the Ancient Near East. I mentioned the slaying of the Bull by Enkidu who helped Gilgamesh.

We can believe there is a historical kernel to Samson but what he really did or what he was really like is not knowable to us. We only have the later legends if he was real at all.

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48

I also heard the bees and honey entering a place they didn’t really belong represented Israel and Canaan or something to that effect (with maybe a throw back to the idea of the land of milk and honey too?). My OT knowledge is so-so though.

49

“Do you see the scene with Delilah as being realistic? Samson tells her two things and he is attacked but prevails yet still goes and tells her the third? Did he not realize what was happening? Intrinsically it looks like a fable. It lacks verisimilitude.”

Do you happen to know any humans? Do they always act sensibly? That part seems all too true, not deficient in verisimilitude.

Chasing foreign women is a part of the problem, but the overarching issue is maintaining the faith rather than blending in with the world.

After Samson brought the house down, what of the audience? Dagon.

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Thanks for this, I hadn’t considered that!

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Hello, friend!

I have a question: have you done a word study on this one?

I ask because: most translations do NOT say ancestors, but either “people of old”, “ancients”, or “elders”. Furthermore, the Greek word used here, presbyteroi, is usually translated elsewhere as “elders”, including in the NRSV. So the translation “ancestors” is, by no means, absolutely what the passage must say. As Mi Krumm said elsewhere–elder is the general consensus of the meaning of the word, including in Hebrews 11:2. This makes sense, since the word is commonly translated as “elders” in other translations, and even in the NRSV it is translated in other passages as such, too.

Peace be with you! :slight_smile:

-Joshua W.

EDIT
P.S.

I thought I would go ahead and tally the interpretations/translations of Hebrews 11:2. These are all the translations listed on BibleHub (I believe):

Ancients: 9
NIV
Berean Study
Berean Literal
Aramaic in Plain English
Douay-Rheims
Good News Bible
God’s Word Translation
Haweis New Testament
Worsley New Testament

Elders: 16
King James
NKJV
ASV
ERV
Literal Standard Version
World English
Young’s Literal
Geneva Bible of 1587
Bishops’ Bible of 1568
Coverdale Bible of 1535
Tyndale Bible of 1526
Worrell New Testament
Darby’s Translation
Webster’s Bible Translation
Smith’s Literal
Lamsa Bible

Ancestors: 6
NRSV
Christian Standard
Holman Christian Standard
Contemporary English
ISV
Mace New Testament

People of Old: 9
NLT
ESV
NASB
NASB 1995
NASB 1977
Amplified
NET
New Heart English Bible
Weymouth (reads “saints of old”)

As we can see, Elders is the most common translation by a landslide, with “ancestors” coming in dead last in the number of translations that use it for this passage.

EDIT #2–I decided to include NRSV (originally omitted) since it should count toward the translations that use “ancestors”.

52

Yes people do stupid things all the time but history is based on probability and trying to understand what is most reasonable. Doing so usually requires putting people in a context that allows interpretation. Anachronism would be hard to identify if we didn’t do this. So if a story has to require us to imagine a person was very stupid, while it’s possible, on historical grounds it does make us stop to think.

Two key points:

  1. A story can intrinsically unlikely and lacking verisimilitude and still be historical.

  2. Likewise, much to the chagrin of conservative and uncritical apologists everywhere, verisimilitude should not be confused with historicity. After all, an author can try to make fiction seem credible.

All Biblicists need to let that last point soak in. Verisimilitude is not the same as history. Now that this is out of the way let us get to the real issues at hand. I’m not sure if you are trying a divide and conquer technique which is usually what you get when people try to defend clear mythology as history. I would only use the oddity of Samson’s behavior in conjunction with all the other problems. Not alone. People do so stupid things.The other problems being:

  • The clear supernatural super strength hero motif
  • Killing a lion with his bare hands
  • Ripping the Lion apart with his bare hands
  • Bees taking up host and making honey in an unlikely place, the lion carcass
  • He’s John Wick with the jawbone of a donkey and and kills a thousand men with it.
  • Kills 30 men
  • Magic’s hair that grants superhuman power
  • Personal revenge motif at the end
  • Clear motif for creation
  • Clear non-literal interpretation (Samson represents Israel and the Honey represents the land)
  • Absolutely zero credible historical sources corroborating any of it.
  • Absolutely zero known lines of credible historical transmission that could corroborate any of it.
  • Abundant evidence the Bible borrows considerably from ANE mythology.
  • The story occurs in a work many hundreds of years after its reported to have occurred.

So let us put my “the Samson and Delilah story makes Samson out to be a nincompoop” in its proper perspective. I reject any and all divide and conquer techniques. The cumulative case here against historicity. It is in the same boat as Heracles.

Vinnie

53

A basic problem is that verisimilitude is a subjective assessment. One can make a case for or against it, but whether someone accepts that case will reflect their judgement.

A “divide and conquer” approach is incorrect if it extrapolates from “these are not such good arguments” to “therefore all the rest are not good arguments”. But on the other hand, a list of arguments loses plausibility when it includes bad in with the good - there is definite validity to “divide and refine”.

Samson consistently shows a “me want, me get” attitude, with no particular evidence of considering possible consequences. Logically, that does not distinguish between plausible storytelling and a real person, but his stupidity with regard to Delilah is consistent both with his portrayal and with innumerable examples from other people. Yes, he should have figured out that her letting him smash the hair loom showed that she was aiming for the dis-tressed look, but there is no evidence that Samson would have bothered with figuring. Likewise, he’s very consistently seeking revenge; that doesn’t appear implausible at all.

The bees in the carcass are an example of an unusual but realistic event. Forensics actually uses the time it takes for insects to build nests as a clue to how long a body has been sitting around. In the hot, dry climate, the lion would be dried out and appealing to bees as a site for a hive before long. As you note, unlikely does not prove ahistorical; after all, unlikely is more likely to get written down and re-copied. I don’t see how the honey represents the land of Israel. It does point to his carelessness with regard to the Law (not leaving dead things alone). Again, that’s a rather consistent pattern, both likely in a real person and in a well-written story. Samson certainly shows parallel to Israel, but not so closely as to be a plausible allegory [which would not rule out a less strict symbolic usage]. Instead, it’s more of the fact that individual humans and groups of humans show similar strengths and failings.

Of course, a major point of the story is that Samson had supernatural strength, given by God, and his commitment to God was shown by not cutting his hair. The story affirms that those are unusual and supernatural elements, so the fact that they are unusual and supernatural does not in itself prove anything. If we have particular reason to think that these elements are plausible or not, then we can use that, but pointing out that there are supernatural and unusual elements doesn’t prove one way or the other how to assess them.

Killing a bunch of people who have some capacity to fight back tends to be easier in an era dominated by hand to hand combat. A big strong guy with a sturdy club could do a lot of damage in a panicky crowd. But again, this is portrayed as part of the supernatural endowment, not an ordinary event, and thus goes back to one’s assessment of the supernatural.

There is no reason to expect historical corrobation. Of course, that definitely does not constitute an argument in favor of a historical interpretation, but it does mean that it’s just a big question mark. We have one source on the relevant history. The Philistines, like practically everyone else in the ancient Near East, did not preserve accounts of getting defeated, and we have very little written record from them of anything. Despite Samson’s likely self-opinion, he was a local fighter with little immediate impact; there’s no reason that the Egyptians or Mesopotamians would have cared.

The accounts in Judges were likely written down no later than the early monarchy, within a few hundred years. Samson’s political ramifications were most relevant at that point - he caused a major obstacle to the absorbing of Israel into Philistia, an issue that was settled by David. Further editing is extremely likely after that. But in a literate culture, writing in some format would be quite likely early on, even during the chaos of the time of the judges.

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54

Those arguing that this story is historical are not “dividing and refining,” they are “dividing and conquering.” That reflects my judgment. It can’t be any clearer from my perspective that the Samson story is not historical as it stands. killed a thousand men? Were the infinity stones embedded in the donkey’s jawbone that he used? To me this is equivalent to arguing for the historicity of Cinderella or Jack and the Beanstalk. I can’t say there was never a renowned warrior these legends developed out of, but he of course is not the man immortalized by the story in Judges 13-16 which is largely ficticious.

Which is why I don’t see Samson as a very redeeming or inspirational character. I see him as an example of how not to behave through and through. I think God had better things to do that imbue a megalomaniac (me want me get) with magical powers. Thats a primitive conception of God in my book.

So when apologists point out the presence of the women at the tomb argues in favor of historicity of the narrative I am sure you are quick to jump in and point out that author of Mark is capable of blatant stupidity or oddness even when creating a story “with innumerable examples from other people” and point out this is useless as evidence one way or another. You have undercut the basis of most Christian apologetics in one fell swoop by trying to defend a legendary story.

Mark creating from whole cloth the tomb story with the women at it is unusual but realistic. People write odd stories all the time. Thus it serves no probative value either way. People can be odd and do odd things. It has no bearing on historicity just like in the case of Samson.

I get the impression Samson was committed to himself, not God. I find nothing redeemable about him in his story. The best part is honestly the end, when he dies.

He can’t kill a thousand people. This isn’t television.

The traditional view is rejected by the vast majority of critical scholars. Some of the material may stem from that time as it was told, retold, and so on. Of course, arguments for historicity are bankrupt given the lack of any really historical evidence employing the actual methods of historians. We don’t know of what anyone who might have been a contemporary of Samson actually thought or believed about him.

And we have no idea what that writing said or didn’t say since we don’t possess it. A meaningless and idle speculation.

Vinnie

55

He was definitely a religious lightweight, and a randy Rambo who cared more about his love affairs than anything else.

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