Parent: Once upon a time…
Child: How long ago?
Parent: A long time ago, many hundreds of years, a man and his wife lived in the forest…
Child: What was his name, where was the forest? Deciduous or coniferous? CITE?!?
Parent: Look, you little weasel, just shut up and go to sleep!
Thanks, JThunder, I was starting to wonder if I had accidentally enabled the Cloak of Invisibility[sup]TM[/sup] on my post.
I stand by my assertion (and Polycarp’s much better and more succinct version of it). It may not be literally true, but it conveys a truth.
And Milum, if you don’t think the jawbone of an ass would make an effective weapon, let me ask you, would you wanna get bopped on the head by one wielded by someone like Barry Bonds?
Dear Dave-guy,
You, dave, are perhaps a god, but a minor god. But even a minor god won’t mind telling me what is the essence of the story about Samson killing 1,000 Philistines. Is it a literary set-up to give impact to Gods eventual retibution?
And bye-the-bye, that was a cheap shot comparing Samson to Barry Bonds. Sure Samson could swing a mean club, but he weren’t no Barry Bonds.
____________________________
I’m still intrigued as to why you think an equine jawbone is a frail thing - any chance of an answer on that?
Why yes, Mangetout, there is a hundred percent chance you’ll get a reply to your question…ahem!
Bones are relatively light. They fracture, they break. If you hit a man with a bone you might knock him out, but it takes an awful lot of knocking to kill a man with a bone, even the robust leg bone of an elk or a bison or a horse, much less the jawbone of a donkey. Once ago, in a book I read, a young anthropolgist wondered as you do, why didn’t primitive man utilize bones as fighting weapons more often. He set about beating up bags of sand, dead mules, and all manner of things with the most lethal looking bones that were likely to be available to early man. He ran through a lot of bones.
Bones, he eventually decided, were used by early man only in a pinch, and they certainly were not worth a toot when it came to bringing down big game.
Another point: If Samson somehow killed 1,000 men with a donkey’s jawbone, what with them kicking, screaming, and flopping around, the very best he could have done is about one killing per hour. Let’s see… one dead Philistine per hour in an eight hour working day…let’s see… that would come to… Wow, one hundred and twenty-five working days!
But no matter I guess time passes quickly if you’re having fun.
Whallago I found a url that better illustrates my point about the jawbone episode with more finesse than I…I’ll go and try to re-find it.
Did he use fresh bones? - it makes a big difference.
Again, I’m not asserting that the story should be taken literally (exactly 1000 Philistines? not 1004 or 996?) and I suspect that any single non-metal blunt trauma weapon would be in pretty poor condition after such intensive use, however equine jawbones have been used as effective weapons (do a google on ‘Jawbone warclub’).
Have you any documentation etc to support your view that the donkey’s jawbone story may be a pun or other literary device, rather than just a tall tale?
Ah ha! I found it Manget, this I think, is more dispassionately said…
** Jawbone in Judges** [Edited]
- Tom Longstaff
“Lehi” probably comes from the root lamed, “het”, “he” meaning “smoothness” Lehi means “jaw” or “cheek”. I’ve not seen anything suggesting another meaning for “lehi” and it is certainly used to mean “jaw” or “cheek” in other contexts in the Bible.
The incident (Sampson slaying the thousands)
is used to explain the origin of the name Ramat Lehi (The “heights of Lehi”) since in Hebrew all names have meaning and often some such story explains how the place got its name. The section abounds in puns, especially verse 16 where the word for “donkey” and “heap” is the same word. Most translations are unable to render the clear pun in Hebrew and the translation above misses it badly.
I would recommend, for starters, a look at Robert G. Boling’s commentary on Judges in the Anchor Bible Commentary Series
(available in virtually every library - from Doubleday, 1975). She could then move to other commentaries. The verse is not a difficult one although it is hard for a reader to see all of the puns without a knowledge of Hebrew. A better rendering would be something like:
With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps,
With the jawbone of an ass I have killed a thousand men.
recognizing that the word for “ass” and “heap” is the same word.
As for the story being “weird,” this is the same Sampson who kills
a lion with his bare hands and subsequently finds wonderful honey in the
carcass. This is the same Sampson that catches 300 foxes and ties their
tails together with burning torches in between to burn up all the
Philistine grain. Is the account of slaying a thousand men with the
jawbone of an ass any more incredible than this other legendary material?
The root het, mem, resh (from which we get the word for “donkey” or “he-ass” and the word “heap” (here “a heap, two heaps”) has many meanings. It can mean “to ferment” or “to foam up” and it can mean “to be red.” The obvious allusions to violence and bloodshed would not have been lost on the ancient readers.
The pun, after all, in classical Hebrew is seldom a form of humor (never the lowest form) and is much more frequently a vehicle of knowledge. It is like when I use the word “spring” you want to know whether I mean a season
of year, a source of cool water, a resilient coil of metal, or the action of Snoopy leaping like a fierce jungle animal out of his tree. The ancient Semite would have looked with wonder at the meaning of the word “spring” which could simultaneously express so much.
____Jawbone in Judges
<< Did he use fresh bones? - it makes a big difference. >>
Yes, the jawbone is described as “moist” or “new” depending on your translation. An old bone would be too brittle.
And the story is clearly an example of humor, aside from the word-play that abounds. It’s clearly meant to show the Philistines as complete wusses, and was obviously a story much enjoyed.
(A) I truly believe that Samson slew 1,000
Philistines with the jawbone of an ass.____ yes [li] no[/li]
(B) I truly believe that the ancient Hebrews
who wrote the Bible were so dumb that they
really thought that Samson slew 1,000
Philistines with the jawbone of an ass.____ yes [li] no[/li]
© I believe that the ancient Hebrews who
wote the Bible thought Samson a baffoon
and made jokes behind his back._________ [li] yes no[/li]
(D) I think like Fescue; the Bible is bullshit.__ [**] yes no.
Thank you. ________ _______________________
Well that’s quite a persuasive argument, Milum, now, about this comment…
…
Well, Mangetout, I can certainly testify that we good bible-toteing, foot-washing Baptists in the deep south did. But hey, we move on. And as a rule we of the Bible Belt don’t throw out the baby with the bath wash. Some folks do.
Indeed, although conversely some people, afraid that they might throw out the baby along with the bathwater, never quite pluck up the courage to throw out the bathwater.