Bedan: A Riddle in Context (Critical Notes‪)‬

The presence of a certain Bedan among the divinely appointed deliverers listed by Samuel in 1 Sam 12:11 is an age-old crux interpretum. Already ancient translations, paraphrases, and interpretations of the Hebrew Bible wrestled with the problem. The LXX reads Barak instead; the Peshitta substitutes Deborah and Barak; Josephus drops the name altogether; and talmudic sages categorically state that "Bedan is Samson." (1) In modern times, most exegetes have identified Bedan with Barak, (2) but some have preferred Jephthah (3) or the minor judge Abdon of Judg 12:13-15 (4) and have even mentioned Gideon and Deborah as plausible candidates. (5) Diverse as they are, all these interpretations share a weakness: with minor and relatively insignificant exceptions, they strictly zero in on the list of deliverers in 1 Sam 12:11 and its metamorphoses in ancient witnesses. A crucial upshot of such a narrow approach is the assumption that the list cannot be right as it stands: the name Bedan on it is an alias, a scribal error, a gloss, or the result of phonetic transformations and should consequently be emended or at least understood as referring to someone else. A serious consideration of the verse's immediate and larger context falsifies this assumption, rendering emendations and substitutions largely redundant.