[Milton-L] Samson as suicide bomber

[James Rovira]

Jonny --

A Nazarene in the sense that Christ was a Nazarene is someone who
comes from the region of Nazareth.  A Nazirite is one who has taken a
vow requiring him to not drink wine, not touch anything dead, and not
cut his hair.  These vows are usually taken for limited periods of
time: Paul is recorded as taking such a vow in the book of Acts.

Samson was unusual in that he was supposed to be a Nazirite his entire
life. He broke his vows, of course -- allowing his hair to be cut was
the last vow to be broken, so he lost his strength.  When he hair grew
back, he prayed and regained his strength, using it to kill off the
Philistine nobility.

As much as we agonize over this event today, it was a morally
unambiguous act for the author of Judges, for the author of the book
of Hebrews, and probably for Milton given his support of Parliament
during the English Civil War.  Most readers of this episode throughout
history have thought something along the lines of, "those bastards
needed to die" -- roughly equivalent to the way most of those watching
The Dark Knight felt about The Joker at the end.

We're egalitarian and tolerant, however, so can't think that way.

Anyway, Christ was a Nazarene but not a Nazirite.

Rather than post this to the list you could have saved yourself some
trouble just by doing a Wikipedia search.  Type "Nazarene" into
Wikipedia and read the first line on the page.

Jim R

On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 11:37 PM, jonnyangel <junkopardner at comcast.net> wrote:
> What *is* the "distinct" difference? Are there any theologians on the list?
> No booze? Growing your hair? I'm putting you to the test here...
>
> There are more similarities than differences.
>
> JA

>
> On 5/13/09 10:18 PM, "Salwa Khoddam" <skhoddam at cox.net> wrote:

>>
>>
>> There is a distinct difference between a "Nazarite" and a "Nazarene". Samson
>> was the former.