Friday, January 9, 2009

Revisiting the Tale of Samson

Revisiting the Tale of Samson by Gary Leupp on counterpunch.org

Me, I'm just an old hippie who doesn't want to cut his hair, and I always liked the song. :)

If I had my way, If I had my way,
If I had my way, I would tear this old building down.


From Mr. Leupp's article ...

The author of this fictional work, writing perhaps 2600-2800 years ago, states that Yahweh himself was looking for a fight. The secular humanist might interpret the passage to mean that the worshippers of Yahweh were spoiling for a fight with the Philistines, whose land they coveted.

(2) “Then the spirit of Yahweh seized on him. He went down to Ashkelon, killed thirty men there, took what they wore and gave the festal robes to those who had answered the riddle…” (Judges 14:19)

Ashkelon, the former Palestinian town taken over by Zionist settlers since 1948, has been in the news lately. We have heard a lot about the indiscriminate Palestinian bombardment of the town which is occasionally hit by homemade rockets from Gaza. Here in the Samson story we have the Israelite hero indiscriminately killing thirty men there. But he does so filled with the spirit of God!

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