Lion's Honey
The Myth of Samson
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A new literary take on the biblical story of Samson, by the prize-winning author of A Horse Walks into a Bar: “Original and very clever” (The Times, London).
From one of Israel’s most lauded contemporary writers, this book retells the myth of Samson—one of the most tempestuous, charismatic, and colorful characters in the Hebrew Bible.
Few other Bible stories feature as much drama and action, narrative fireworks and raw emotion: the battle with the lion; the three hundred burning foxes; the women he bedded and the one woman that he loved; his betrayal by all the women in his life, from his mother to Delilah; and, in the end, his murderous suicide, when he brought the house down on himself and three thousand Philistines.
This is a remarkable portrait of, in the words of the author, a “lonely and turbulent soul who never found, anywhere, a true home in the world, whose very body was a harsh place of exile.”
“A nice deconstruction of one of the juiciest stories in a work full of racy stuff: the Bible.” —The San Diego Union-Tribune
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Samson, the biblical strongman whose strength lay in his long hair, has long been viewed as a hero. Before his birth, an angel told his mother that her child would be consecrated to God and save his people. But his is a strange and tragic story. Only in defeat, after his duplicitous lover Delilah cuts off his tresses and hands him over to his enemies, can he fulfill the prophecy and bring down the Philistine temple, killing himself and his captors. Acclaimed Israeli novelist Grossman (The Body) revisits the story in Canongate's series the Myths. He views Samson as an impulsive, lonely, failed man. Grossman's consideration falls squarely into the Jewish tradition of biblical exegesis, imparting both psychological and literary meaning to the story. His mastery of the Hebrew allows for depths of consideration not available to anyone working with a translation. But his reading of Samson is oddly contradictory: on the one hand, he insists that Samson is a man controlled by outside forces; on the other, that deep psychological needs drive him to self-destructive behavior. In the end, Grossman refuses to entertain the most glaring possibility the myth opens up: that only in his failure can Samson succeed and fulfill his life's mission.
