Talk:Samson

message: Both of the photos in the death section appear to have Samson with long hair, despite the fact that his hair was cut which caused him to lose his strength. This may not be relevant to the purpose the photos are being used for, but I personally find it strange and erroneous. His long hair may have been a key characteristic of his, but here it doesn't make sense. It doesn't support the argument that he prayed for strength and received it (unless he prayed for strength and received hair, which I would find amusing). Could someone attempt to remedy this? 2601:1C0:6D02:3C10:40A1:D6AB:F929:EFD2 (talk) 05:58, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Photo selection for the "Death" section

message: Brazilian psychanalist Moisés Tractemberg proposed in his book Psicanálise da Circuncisão that Samson's hair may be a metaphor for a non-circumcised male; he is stronger - more virile - than other hebrews for being whole, and when he is cut as an adult, he loses his power. I think that's worth mentioning. Stormwatch 13:48, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible hidden meaning: which head is it? 

message: I agree. You should say "twice the height," or possibly "more than three times the weight," but that would be silly.
:Maybe I'm just being dense, but where in this article, or anywhere else, does it make any reference to the pillars of the temple being three meters apart? Primium mobile 03:00, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  4.3 

message: The section that's essentially an extended analysis of Samson as a sun god was uninformatively labeled "Samson's life." I gave the section a name that tells the reader what's coming. Jonathan Tweet 17:48, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The Biblical narrative of Samson being a solar deity is the only way it makes any sense, read C. F. Burney, The Book of Judges (1918) where a comprehensive explanation is provided. Driver made the same argument - Samson's hair being the sun's rays with Delilah being the moon - with the cutting of the hair representing the eclipse, when the sun loses its power, and when Samson was divested of his strength. Lung salad (talk) 19:31, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Samson as a sun god 

message: Pointing out where the editor inserted an introductory verse. Jonathan Tweet 06:51, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deuteronomist's prologue 

message: There doesn't seem to be an estimate of the dates of Samson's birth and death.
:That's because the Book of Judges is notoriously weak in chronology, and many think that Samson is more or less legendary anyway.  However, if the Philistines came in with the Sea peoples, that would seem to place it in a more or less 12th century BC or early 11th century BC context... AnonMoos 18:38, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Date

message: Samson lived when God was punishing the Israelites by putting them under the Philistines.
A better way of putting it would be that God 'allowed them to be conquered by the Philistines'.  A more neutral statement.  Panda
Neutral statement?
If we are stipulating the existence of a supreme Biblical God and all that entails, don't we have to take the Bible's word for his intent?  FF
Angel of the LORD ... GOD
should be simply "angel" (no capitalization, no "of the Lord"), and God/Lord, not GOD/LORD.
Someone with a poor sense of grammar currently repeatedly injects these POV affectations in capitalization and style, effectively spamming/bombing the Samson article with his minority POV. Fellow Wikipedia contributors, please do what it takes to prevent this meddling.
Although I respect that contributor's right to hold different religious values, it's obvious that his writing style imposes a minority POV writing style within a NPOV article. These affectations are far outside the mainstream of good English writing style. Wikipedia uses normal rules of grammar and style, such as are found in The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual and <I>The Chicago Manual of Style</I>.  
According to mainstream English grammarians, there is no precedent for entirely capitalizing GOD and LORD. Writers should only concern themselves with the initial letter: the G in God (and L in Lord) should be capitalized when referring to a monotheistic god, and not capitalized when referring to a polytheistic god. So, for example, "Jehovah is the Christian God" is correct, and "Apollo is a Greek god" is correct. At no time should the words "god" or "lord" be entirely capitalized, unless the rest of the sentence is also capitalized. "He is the LORD, my GOD" is never grammatically correct.
Capitalizing the "A" in "angel" and adding "of the LORD" are also examples of nonmainstream writing style. The word "angel" doesn't merit capitalization, unless it's at the beginning of a sentence or referring to an American baseball franchise. The addition of "of the LORD" is simply superfluous dead wood in the sentence. In the context of the article, there are no angels which are not "of the Lord". Even outside the immediate context, it's difficult to find any situation where we need reminding that a particular angel is "of the Lord"; it's simply a safe assumption that unless otherwise stated, an angel is playing for God's home team, just as Mets are from New York and All Blacks are from New Zealand. 
It's only worth mentioning whether an angel is NOT "of the Lord", since that's exceptional. For example, even Satan (a 'fallen angel') was, according to the Bible, made by God and is therefore "of the Lord"; if one argues that in the Bible some angels are not "of the Lord" then in those rare cases, the context should make clear that those angels are not God's handiwork, not playing for His Home Team, or come from New Jersey (just kidding!) ;^). In all other situations, to write "Angel of the LORD" is to club readers over the head with obvious information simply in order to give a boost to fringe zealotry POV, like saying "the Pope of the ONE TRUE CATHOLIC CHURCH" or "a Koran that contains the WORD of ALLAH" or "a JEWISH Rabbi who follows the dictates of GOD". 
In reviewing many online style guides using the search terms "god" and "capitalization", I could only find one style guide that recommended capitalizing all letters in Jesus's name (but not in the words GOD or LORD, as in their tag line "God's #1 Source of Christian News"): http://www.holyobserver.com/detail.php?isu=v02i08&art=caps 
An important bit of context is that this minority POV styleguide even suggests "Just to be sure, capitalize words on either side of the Word God; This shows how His holiness spreads to all that surrounds Him." This context shows that The Holy Observer's style guide orbits mainstream style somewhere out in the outermost fringe of minority POV... yet even The Holy Observer does not go so far as to fully capitalize "God" or "Lord".
I found several relevant style guides and debates within Wikipedia. There's some small debate about whether to capitalize God, Lord, Him, Bible, and so on, but none even consider whether to fully capitalize God/Lord.
Here are some relevant Wikipedia webpages. 
They all support the mainstream writing convention "monotheistic = God/Lord; polytheistic = god/lord":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_62#Religions.2C_deities.2C_philosophies.2C_doctrines.2C_and_their_adherents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization#Nouns
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Atheism/Godvrs.god_poll
Here are some non-Wikipedia sources, all in support of the mainstream rule of capitalization:
http://www.ncsu.edu/ncsu/grammar/Capital3.html (quoting The Chicago Manual of Style)
http://truth4believers.livejournal.com/5870.html
http://atheism.about.com/od/doesgodexist/a/capitalization.htm
http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=God#Capitalization_of_.22God.22
We can't defend "all-caps" from a translator's point of view. Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic do not have capitals and lowercase letters. The Koine Greek in which the original New Testament was written contained no lower-case letters in any words. It wasn't until the 9th or 10th century C.E. that Greek started to use both upper and lower case letters. ref: http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?t=64857 Therefore, unless we're presenting quotes in the original language without translation, we're left with the absurd proposition that all words should be purely in capitals or lowercase. That's indefensibly poor writing style, so we're obligated to follow mainstream English capitalization conventions even when quoting from the Bible. Sethnessatwikipedia (talk) 07:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove or reword the following.... 

message: User 168.91.1.189, whose talk page is full of vandalism warnings, modified (8 Feb 2007) the transcript of Judges 16:28 from:
"O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes." to 
"O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for one of my two eyes."
This didn't make sense to me and I even suspected vandalism (sorry!). Looking up the ref. however was interesting:
1608 (Robert Barker): my two eyes
1611: my two eyes
Revised: my two eyes
Vulgate: uno duorum luminum meorum i.e: one of my two eyes
although in all editions quoted above, including the Vulgate, verse 21 definitely refers to eyes in the plural being put out. This is interesting: I wonder why the different versions...
Nick Michael 21:02, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The Latin version isn't the original, Hebrew is. The Hebrew version indeed says "and I shall revenge one of my two eyes from the Philistines" TFighterPilot (talk) 21:14, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That's interesting, thanks. I wonder what the other eye was destined to revenge... Nick Michael (talk) 13:30, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  How many eyes? 

message: Since this is a story from the Bible, shouldn't there be a few more references to the actual verses, instead of just a few scattered chapters?  There are plenty of references to scholarly articles, but the primary text is very accessible...when this article says that Samson's parents couldn't cut his hair, there should be a footnote referencing the primary text that says that exact thing.
I'd do it myself, but I don't know how to use footnotes...maybe someday i'll do it, when i don't have three papers due in a week
hi  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.200.49.244 (talk) 21:43, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Bible references

message: "He is believed to be buried in Tel Tzora in Israel overlooking the Sorek valley. "
BY whom, and based on what? Garth M (talk) 04:51, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: "Believed to be"... by whom, based on what?

message: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Icelandic_Samson.jpg
:Delightful, yes. Why don't you put it on? Nick Michael (talk) 13:31, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should this picture be on the page? 

message: This 2006-NOV-24 edit seems to have been the first to introduce era notation into the article. It used BCE. The Era notation was deleted on 2007-DEC-05 by a currently and indefinitely blocked user without prior placement of a { {fact}} tag. This 2008-OCT-14 edit introduced AD notation. --JimWae (talk) 01:39, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Era notation 

message: Interesting new image from the Google Arts Project by German painter Lovis Corinth. Feel free to use or not. Dcoetzee 04:05, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  New image 

message: Should this article discuss the similarity between Samson's suicide while killing his enemies and modern-day suicide bombers?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.212.73.122 (talk) 23:23, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Samson and suicide bombers 

message: Why are we giving Comay, who is an architect by profession, so much emphasis? How is she the equal to Professor James King West? What makes her a reliable source for whether or not Samson was a real historical figure? are there no academic sources for her perspective? Dougweller (talk) 10:14, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Joan Comay 

message: Several decades ago I read several analyses of the Bible.  Issac Asimov's Guide to the Bible concurred with a more scholarly less well known book I read.  Both books concurred on a point I had heard elsewhere:
# The bible is stitched together from documents written at different times, by different factions -- this is why it doesn't seem particularly coherent, and why some sections contradict others;
# In particular, scholars concurred, the story of Samson predates the universal acceptance of monotheism by the Hebrews.  When it was written the temple Samson topples was the home to another god -- a rival to Jehovah/Yahweh.  
So, why doesn't this article say anything about the Samson story predating monotheism?  Geo Swan (talk) 01:02, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Geo Swan's question contains some assumptions that are far from universally held, and is asking for more discussion on a minority point of view.  I suggest that we not add speculation on this point in the article. Pete unseth (talk) 14:00, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does the story of Samson date back to prior to the Hebrews adopting monotheism? 

message: Substituted at 05:21, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

message: It's likely that a comparative religion scholarly source (or a philosophy or atheist source) critiques the killing of 30 random men for their soft undershirts and fancy clothing so Samson could repay a debt on riddle game that he unfairly setup with a riddle that couldn't be deduced like a normal game of riddles. In modern society this would be a mass murder of Ted Bundy status.  Some scholars must have covered this aspect of the Samson Saga.  Anyone know which source to look at? 97.85.173.38 (talk) 06:25, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Killing of the 30 for their clothing 

message: User:Katolophyromai given your intensive work on this just before you passed the GA review, and the very extensive editing subsequent to that, it would seem more appropriate for you to undo your acceptance of the GA nomination, and allow someone to review it when this intensive building phase is over. Thoughts? Jytdog (talk) 21:29, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: That might be a good idea. One problem with it is that it will probably be almost another year before someone else finally comes along to review it. My experience with GA reviews is that it usually takes forever for someone to express willingness to review the article. I nominated ancient Greek literature back in June and no one has touched it since then. Besides, I suspect that the ongoing changes are probably almost over. (On the other hand, when I took on the task of reviewing this article, I was not at all expecting to make as many changes as I did, and, even after making those changes, I was certainly not expecting any more major changes to occur immediately following the pass of the article.) --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:59, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: As you will. i don't intend to make drama over it. Jytdog (talk) 22:07, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  GA reconsideration 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Reading the "Scholarly Interpretation" section, there are a number of transitional adverbial phrases (e.g. "In contrast", "Conversely") that do not seem to fit the logical progression of the paragraph. Are these scholars' opinions really in contrast to one another? Are they part of a single, coherent scholarly dialogue? It seems to me that Cornay is addressing issues of historicity, West is noting the moral issues in the narrative, and Gilad is speaking about the ethical issue of intermarriage in the wider biblical corpus. These are, indeed scholarly opinions, but they do not seem to be addressing the same issue.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tylerjmowry (talk • contribs) 17:59, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relevance and Logical Flow in Scholarly Interpretations Section 

message: As I understand it, there is controversy amongst theologians and academics as to whether accounts of Samson bringing down the temple say that he grabbed the outside of the pillars and pulled them in, or whether he put his hands against the inside of the pillar and pushed outward. I do not believe that there is a definitive answer, but the phrasing in the introduction: "he prayed to God and miraculously recovered his strength, allowing him to grasp hold of the columns and tear them down" seems to imply the former. I was just wondering if there is interest/consensus in rephrasing that sentence so that Wikipedia can maintain its neutral point of view and not make any implication one way or the other. Cheers! Jake (talk) 11:37, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Seeing as the controversy was addressed later in the article, I went ahead and rephrased the introduction to avoid Wikipedia's taking a stance one way or the other. I understand it is a delicate subject and therefore neutrality is of heightened importance, so please improve upon my edit if possible. Jake (talk) 10:15, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Controversy in the Introduction

message: Recently, well sourced info has been added to the article likening Samson to a terrorist and the perpetrators of the September 11th attacks. While if these interpretations are truly shown to be noteworthy enough, I will respect their inclusion in the article, but a) do they truly belong and b) would it be better to place them in another section in the article? Any and all input welcome. Thanks! Jake (talk) 09:44, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Terrorism?

message: I think this is a really strong page. Yesterday I tweaked the summary of the bible story of Samson's birth as I had the original text in front of me.
I changed:
Manoah then prepared a sacrifice, but the Angel of the Lord would only allow it to be for God. He touched it with his staff, miraculously engulfing it in flames, and then ascended into the sky in the fire.
to
On the Angel's instructions, Manoah sacrificed a kid to God and he and his wife watched as the Angel ascended into the sky in the flames.
which is a more accurate rendering of the story https://biblehub.com/judges/13-20.htm. There's nothing in the text about the angel touching the sacrifice with his staff.
This was then undone:
37.142.171.6 (talk)
(Undid revision 961088516 by Davidbaker999 (talk))
Tags: Undo Non-autoconfirmed user rapidly reverting edits
Can anyone advise about how I should do this properly? I am not a regular editor on Wikipedia.
Thanks.
David
Davidbaker999 (talk) 13:12, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  My small change was autoreverted - can anyone help? 

message: Like with all historic figures, it's important to list the birth and death dates even if they're only approximate. Samson was born c. 1200 BC and died c. 1160. 73.85.201.118 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 18:28, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: You need to provide a source for these dates. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:31, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Samson born c. 1200 BC, died c. 1160 

message: Bedan is Beth-Dan, since Samuel is a Dannan or Dannoi, a Greek.  This strengthens his connection to Herakles, but additionally, suggests the rabbis are correct, since that is his surname, or branch, ie. he is of the House of Dan Historiaantiqua (talk) 14:30, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bedan 

message: ... only alluded to ("gates of a city") in comparison to Hercules. Arminden (talk) 10:24, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gates of Gaza episode missing 

message: The article needs to include something about how touching the lion carcass (and being in a vineyard) would also (possibly) have been in violation of his Nazirite vow - that has been discussed a fair bit in the secondary literature. StAnselm (talk) 16:48, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Touching a dead body 

message: 1 What is the % and evidence?
2 what did Sampson do when it came to relationships 2601:406:4000:1B6:E5A7:82DA:5D19:EB6 (talk) 03:18, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  1 “some” christians view him as similar to jesus. 2 narrative and context of interpretations 

message: I'm not a Haaretz subscriber. The press release photo shows a very sketchy incised image of a tiny stick figure almost disappearing into the seal's margin, next to a large animal with a tail. Does Nir Hasson really speak of a "long-haired man"? Quoting whom, the specialists, or making his own interpretation? Maybe there's a doubling of a line there that might represent long hair, but no other online source mentions it, not even the claim that the stick figure represents a man (why not woman, child, deity?), let alone a long-haired one.
The century varies, C12 or C11, some mixing up the period of the judges with the date of the artifact and/or of the layer it was found in, which isn't the same thing.
Eisenbrauns doesn't allow a preview into the final report. Maybe there is some online IAA publication on this? Arminden (talk) 13:10, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Seal: "long-haired"? Century?