[Milton-L] Samson as suicide bomber

[jonnyangel]

They were rhetorical questions. And why would I need Wikipedia when I have
perfectly good Encyclopedia's lying next to my bed? Samuel is the author
most often attributed with writing Judges. A lot of blame shifting, cherry
picking etc. ensues. The Israelites enemies, the Canaanites (Philistines,
Sidonians, and Hivites) all set up shop in the kingless land of the
Israelites (there's a reason Samson was the 12th judge). When the "mayoral"
system fails <boom> "monarchy". (Saul's, I believe). Like I said, I have
theories about why Milton placed SA "last". And as I said above, there's a
reason Samson was the 12th judge (a far cry from Othniel). Samson was a
prick, but he was not that unusual in his fall from grace, either.

And I'm well aware that Christ was a Nazarene and *not* a "Nazirite", but it
feels as though we're splitting rather long hairs here.
There are *many* similarities too lengthy to get into here (off to school),
but it has been argued that Jesus *was* a Nazirite, in part because Nazarene
is absent in the Hebrew Scriptures.

 

On 5/14/09 7:21 AM, "James Rovira" <jamesrovira at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
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