> knowing full well that [Delilah] will betray [Samson]
It is not clear from the text that Samson is aware of the presence of Philistines the first three times. We are told they are lying in ambush in an inner chamber. We are not told that they make themselves known, attempt to subdue Samson, or interact with him in any way. Instead, we are told that Delilah announces their imminent presence, with no follow-through. (And why, after all, would they dare come in until Delilah has established that he is weak and harmless, given his reputation for strength and bloodthirst?)
I don't believe Samson understands Delilah is betraying him. Not until the end when he's told her the real secret. Until that point, he may only receive her behavior as, at worst, a taunt and, at best, an attempt to pursue a kind of relational intimacy in which he makes himself vulnerable to her. And indeed, that's exactly where the story goes. He eventually makes himself vulnerable to her, both emotionally and physically.
A shallow reading that concludes the characters must be dumb and naive to explain the ridiculousness of the plot is rarely the most appropriate reading. Frequently, the characters and nuances run much deeper, and a more careful and thoughtful reading is required. Ancient literature is stylistically terse compared to modern literature. Space on the manuscript is precious and not given over to things that the reader is meant to infer by reflection. And whenever a phrase or pattern is repeated, that means it is very, very significant. In this case, Samson's interaction with Delilah is not a one-off inexplicable behavior. It is one episode in a series of episodes, both preceding and following, where consistent patterns of behavior develop and escalate (e.g., his vengefulness, his vulnerability to women).
Having just finished the book of Judges last week, this is fresh on my mind. Finishing the story of Samson, my first reaction, like the author of the post, is that Samson is just stupid. Delilah is likely a Philistine, the nemesis of Samson and the Israelites. Her intention to betray and destroy Samson is hardly hidden in her questioning him. How can Samson be so dumb?
But I thought about it deeper and how some men can be blinded by sex. In my own life, I've seen men stay with the wrong woman, tolerating all kinds of toxicity from their partner, even with all their friends telling them it's the wrong woman for him.
Samson is blinded by sex. He's recorded multiple times going outside of his community, even to enemy territory, to seek out attractive women and prostitutes. Even though Delilah is seemingly open about her intentions to destroy him, he's blinded by sex.
In that light, Samson isn't so dumb; he's just human.
> Samson is blinded by sex. He's recorded multiple times seeking going outside of his community to find women and prostitutes. Even though Delilah is seemingly open about her intentions to destroy him, he's blinded by sex.
Which, as I understand, is pretty much the lesson that most of theologists derive form the story of Samson: don't let your lust blind you and make you stray from your duties to the God.
> A shallow reading that concludes the characters must be dumb and naive to explain the ridiculousness of the plot is rarely the most appropriate reading.
That's a neat summation of Biblical hermeneutics if I've ever seen one and more generally of religious hermeneutics.
What is being defended as a "close and thoughtful read" implicitly is from a more cynical view, a projection of nuance, complexity, and deep structure,
which is predicated and motivated by the axiom that the text must, definitionally, be subtle and its lessons profound. Because it is, you know, divine.
If you don't accept that axiom, the countervailing read is no, the characterizations are clumsy, the plots ridiculous, etc.; and it is precisely the gymnastic efforts one must go to, to find in them inspiration and divinity, that convince those who do of the ineffably mystery of the divine.
Sometimes a crude story succeeds on some merits and fails on others; when it is enshrined and glorified it creates a frankly dangerous social pressure to praise the emperor's clothes.
Speaking of “witty, and learned, and wise, and humane”, this post is all of the above. The kind of writing that, before you’re even done reading, makes you eager to look up everything else the author has written.
His book Higher-Order Perl was really good and introduced me to some interesting programming concepts, but it also helped me realize why no one uses Perl anymore
> After several repetitions of this, Samson decides that being shaved, blinded and crushed will be less exasperating than listening to any more of Delilah's nagging.
A very off-tangent note, but I recently learned that Samson's last words, "ἀποθανέτω ἡ ψυχή μου μετὰ τῶν ἀλλοφύλων"/"moriatur anima mea cum Philisthiim", pretty much have never been translated into English literally; it's always "Let me die with the Philistines" for some reason.
I always look it up in the original Hebrew if I really want to understand, and the difference is sometimes really HUGE (or simply wrong in modern translations).
It's also worth noting that some books of the Hebrew Bible are poetry (Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Song of Songs), which doesn't show at all after translation. Hebrew poetry is unique!
As they say, reading the Bible in translation is like "kissing your spouse through a veil".
"let my soul die with the Philistines" is the literal translation of the Latin.
I'm not an expert on Greek but I'd translate that as "let my soul die with the foreigners." ἀλλοφύλων more literally means something like "different people / people belonging to another group"
I can't speak for the OP, but in my research, the translation works out to be:
"Let me die with the foreigners"
I usually see "foreigners" replaced with "Philistines" (as noted above). It's Samson's line just before he braces against the pillars and brings the building down on himself and the thousands of Philistines inside, so I understand why it is usually translated that way.
Also, ψυχή here renders Hebrew nephesh, which is closer to "life" or "self", but when I think about the attributed statement it just reads better with the personal attachment (vs. "Let my self|life|soul die with..."). Which is the fun of translation, as each translator seeks to reveal a meaningful rendition which will resonate with their audience.
Something like "let my life perish with the Philistines". As the sibling comment notices, the original Hebrew word doesn't really mean "spirit" in the "immortal soul" meaning.
Pleased to see Roget's thesaurus here. It's a fantastic resource without a great digital equivalent. I've found LLMs helpful in a pinch (and it's certainly better than a standard thesaurus), but Roget's is still the book I turn to for tricky word-picking problems.
I've never owned a copy of Roget's, and now I'm curious/tempted to get one, but my go-to digital word picking assistant has always been OneLook Thesaurus: https://www.onelook.com/thesaurus/
Hey, I'm the developer of OneLook. I'm so glad to see it here!
The concept clusters on the site are directly inspired by Roget's work. Like the author, I see a thesaurus less as a synonym dictionary and more as what the word literally means, a storehouse of treasure. I'm in the midst of a long-overdue data refresh across OneLook right now, so I'd be curious to hear your feedback once it's done.
I was looking for it after reading the post, but there seem to be so many different versions and edtions. Harper, Penguin. College. The New. The Concise. The International. Some say they’re organized alphabetically. How do I know which one is the kind that the article talks about, if I buy used online and cant look into it?
The one in TFA is Harper and Row, and the later 8th Edition, published by Harper Collins, is also organized the correct way. I think you'll be safe if you can get a Harper version.
That's the one I have. I've had an older version in the past but misplaced it years ago. This one does the trick, but like the article author says: it is a weighty book. (I like that.)
I never knew Roget's was organized like that and I have had several different editions over the years. I'm one of those people who always used it as a compendium of synonyms.
Slightly off topic: The title hits home. When I was young, books were a luxury item. Less rich people just used the library. But the library had a strict 7 books rental policy. Not enough for the avid reader that also needed a small programming reference library. So I had 3 steady, occasionally 4th, library card pool from family members to keep my bookshelf operational.
I also remember libraries having a very small limit back in the day, so I was surprised to find out that in the Bay Area libraries typically allow up to 100 books per card!
> This of course is the cornerstone of Western culture and no well-educated person can be without a knowledge of what is in [the Bible].
Knowing what's in the Bible isn't sufficient. You need to understand the full genealogy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
You need to understand Canaanite cults, the broad influence of both Zoroastrianism (via the Achaemenid Empire) and Hellenism, and how these cultures converged to form proto-Judaistic clerical class (or at least something like it), which eventually crystallized into the synagogue tradition and "modern" Jewish practice during the Hasmonean Dynasty.
Since you seem to hold a strong conviction, could you please make more explicit what concretely one would not know / missinterprete regarding the Western culture, not knowing anything about those concepts you listed, but knowing the bible itself back and forth? And to what excent one would need to dive deep into those concepts?
Or in other words: What fundamental concepts in Western culture will we understand if we take you on your word and spend time into understanding those concepts?
"I have trouble connecting with the thinkers of the Middle Ages. Their thinking seems to me to be frightened, so overcautious, so cramped and circumscribed, I can't read it without sadness"
Completely misses the point of mediaeval philosophy.
As an avowed atheist, I find the works of the Blessed Duns Scotus and St Thomas Aquinas intellectually fascinating.
I’ve been told the Legacy Standard Bible is one where the translators tried to not use the same English word when the original Greek or Hebrew words are different.
Am a believer, and appreciate the KJV for its language. However, it can be tricky, because words change over 400 years. So while there are many wonderfully translated passages that use very expressive language, you also have passages that are full of words that seem similar but actually are easy to confuse.
For example:
- "Prevent" in 1611 meant "go before, precede". Now it means "stop from happening".
- "Suffer" in 1611 meant "allow to happen". Now it means "experience pain".
- "Quick" in 1611 could mean "alive" (hence "the quick and the dead"). Now it exclusively means "fast".
And there are words that are completely archaic now - "anon", "bissam", etc. Or words that are just very rare - e.g., peradventure.
It's a wonderful read in many places if you want to revel in language, but modern translations are often better for understanding meaning. Not because they're "dumbed down" (as some claim) but rather because they reflect modern meanings and usage.
I once tried to stick to Green’s Literal Translation but it got dry fast. I actually enjoyed reading the preface and made me appreciate the work Jay Green Sr put in.
It's very good, although it focuses mainly on the framing device and not on the stories themselves. I can imagine if you're a fan of the original book, it might feel quite shallow in comparison, but as someone who never read the book, I really enjoyed it as a black comedy about bad people in bad times.
The Netflix series is an "inspired by", not an adaptation. It does not have much in common with the original book other than the setting and the names of some of the characters.
I enjoyed it, and I absolutely loved Tanya Reynolds, who is hilarious. But Bocaccio's Decameron it is not.
> The Horns of Moses are an iconographic convention common in Latin Christianity whereby Moses was presented as having two horns on his head, later replaced by rays of light.[1] The idea comes from a translation, or mistranslation, of a Hebrew term in Jerome's Latin Vulgate Bible, and many later vernacular translations dependent on that. Moses is said to be "horned", or radiant, or glorified, after he sees God who presents him with the tablets of the law in the Book of Exodus.
I keep a computer graphics book that I'm reading over and over again, just one chapter that is concerned with physically-based rendering. By now the theory is getting so ingrained I could write a path tracer in my sleep! But then again, I don't want to.
> knowing full well that [Delilah] will betray [Samson]
It is not clear from the text that Samson is aware of the presence of Philistines the first three times. We are told they are lying in ambush in an inner chamber. We are not told that they make themselves known, attempt to subdue Samson, or interact with him in any way. Instead, we are told that Delilah announces their imminent presence, with no follow-through. (And why, after all, would they dare come in until Delilah has established that he is weak and harmless, given his reputation for strength and bloodthirst?)
I don't believe Samson understands Delilah is betraying him. Not until the end when he's told her the real secret. Until that point, he may only receive her behavior as, at worst, a taunt and, at best, an attempt to pursue a kind of relational intimacy in which he makes himself vulnerable to her. And indeed, that's exactly where the story goes. He eventually makes himself vulnerable to her, both emotionally and physically.
A shallow reading that concludes the characters must be dumb and naive to explain the ridiculousness of the plot is rarely the most appropriate reading. Frequently, the characters and nuances run much deeper, and a more careful and thoughtful reading is required. Ancient literature is stylistically terse compared to modern literature. Space on the manuscript is precious and not given over to things that the reader is meant to infer by reflection. And whenever a phrase or pattern is repeated, that means it is very, very significant. In this case, Samson's interaction with Delilah is not a one-off inexplicable behavior. It is one episode in a series of episodes, both preceding and following, where consistent patterns of behavior develop and escalate (e.g., his vengefulness, his vulnerability to women).
Having just finished the book of Judges last week, this is fresh on my mind. Finishing the story of Samson, my first reaction, like the author of the post, is that Samson is just stupid. Delilah is likely a Philistine, the nemesis of Samson and the Israelites. Her intention to betray and destroy Samson is hardly hidden in her questioning him. How can Samson be so dumb?
But I thought about it deeper and how some men can be blinded by sex. In my own life, I've seen men stay with the wrong woman, tolerating all kinds of toxicity from their partner, even with all their friends telling them it's the wrong woman for him.
Samson is blinded by sex. He's recorded multiple times going outside of his community, even to enemy territory, to seek out attractive women and prostitutes. Even though Delilah is seemingly open about her intentions to destroy him, he's blinded by sex.
In that light, Samson isn't so dumb; he's just human.
> Samson is blinded by sex. He's recorded multiple times seeking going outside of his community to find women and prostitutes. Even though Delilah is seemingly open about her intentions to destroy him, he's blinded by sex.
Which, as I understand, is pretty much the lesson that most of theologists derive form the story of Samson: don't let your lust blind you and make you stray from your duties to the God.
> A shallow reading that concludes the characters must be dumb and naive to explain the ridiculousness of the plot is rarely the most appropriate reading.
That's a neat summation of Biblical hermeneutics if I've ever seen one and more generally of religious hermeneutics.
What is being defended as a "close and thoughtful read" implicitly is from a more cynical view, a projection of nuance, complexity, and deep structure,
which is predicated and motivated by the axiom that the text must, definitionally, be subtle and its lessons profound. Because it is, you know, divine.
If you don't accept that axiom, the countervailing read is no, the characterizations are clumsy, the plots ridiculous, etc.; and it is precisely the gymnastic efforts one must go to, to find in them inspiration and divinity, that convince those who do of the ineffably mystery of the divine.
Sometimes a crude story succeeds on some merits and fails on others; when it is enshrined and glorified it creates a frankly dangerous social pressure to praise the emperor's clothes.
Speaking of “witty, and learned, and wise, and humane”, this post is all of the above. The kind of writing that, before you’re even done reading, makes you eager to look up everything else the author has written.
His book Higher-Order Perl was really good and introduced me to some interesting programming concepts, but it also helped me realize why no one uses Perl anymore
> After several repetitions of this, Samson decides that being shaved, blinded and crushed will be less exasperating than listening to any more of Delilah's nagging.
A very off-tangent note, but I recently learned that Samson's last words, "ἀποθανέτω ἡ ψυχή μου μετὰ τῶν ἀλλοφύλων"/"moriatur anima mea cum Philisthiim", pretty much have never been translated into English literally; it's always "Let me die with the Philistines" for some reason.
I always look it up in the original Hebrew if I really want to understand, and the difference is sometimes really HUGE (or simply wrong in modern translations).
It's also worth noting that some books of the Hebrew Bible are poetry (Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Song of Songs), which doesn't show at all after translation. Hebrew poetry is unique!
As they say, reading the Bible in translation is like "kissing your spouse through a veil".
> I always look it up in the original Hebrew if I really want to understand
Why do you assume a entire team of biblical scholars, working for years to translate the Old Testement for the NIV didn't know what they were doing?
But you do?
Through a glass darkly, if you will. :)
"Let my soul die with the Philistines" being the literal translation?
The Hebrew is תָּמ֣וֹת נַפְשִׁי֮ עִם־פְּלִשְׁתִּים֒, which literally translates to "You shall die, my soul, with the Philistines."
I'm curious, what would you be your translation?
"let my soul die with the Philistines" is the literal translation of the Latin. I'm not an expert on Greek but I'd translate that as "let my soul die with the foreigners." ἀλλοφύλων more literally means something like "different people / people belonging to another group"
I can't speak for the OP, but in my research, the translation works out to be:
"Let me die with the foreigners"
I usually see "foreigners" replaced with "Philistines" (as noted above). It's Samson's line just before he braces against the pillars and brings the building down on himself and the thousands of Philistines inside, so I understand why it is usually translated that way.
Also, ψυχή here renders Hebrew nephesh, which is closer to "life" or "self", but when I think about the attributed statement it just reads better with the personal attachment (vs. "Let my self|life|soul die with..."). Which is the fun of translation, as each translator seeks to reveal a meaningful rendition which will resonate with their audience.
Something like "let my life perish with the Philistines". As the sibling comment notices, the original Hebrew word doesn't really mean "spirit" in the "immortal soul" meaning.
Yeah the comment is a bit of a cliffhanger. Wish they had given us their preferred translation.
That's funny, I (not the poster) didn't stop to think that other readers might not understand the Latin and Greek here!
Both of those forms are third-person and say "may my soul" ( ψυχή/anima) "die with the Philistines".
The original Hebrew has
תָּמוֹת נַפְשִׁי עִם-פְּלִשְׁתִּים
which is also third person "may my soul" (נַפְשִׁי) "die with (the) Philistines".
Pleased to see Roget's thesaurus here. It's a fantastic resource without a great digital equivalent. I've found LLMs helpful in a pinch (and it's certainly better than a standard thesaurus), but Roget's is still the book I turn to for tricky word-picking problems.
Roget's Thesaurus is part of Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22
I've never owned a copy of Roget's, and now I'm curious/tempted to get one, but my go-to digital word picking assistant has always been OneLook Thesaurus: https://www.onelook.com/thesaurus/
Hey, I'm the developer of OneLook. I'm so glad to see it here! The concept clusters on the site are directly inspired by Roget's work. Like the author, I see a thesaurus less as a synonym dictionary and more as what the word literally means, a storehouse of treasure. I'm in the midst of a long-overdue data refresh across OneLook right now, so I'd be curious to hear your feedback once it's done.
I was looking for it after reading the post, but there seem to be so many different versions and edtions. Harper, Penguin. College. The New. The Concise. The International. Some say they’re organized alphabetically. How do I know which one is the kind that the article talks about, if I buy used online and cant look into it?
Are you in the USA? It's because Roget as a title isn't trademarked there so it's accepted as a name for any thesaurus.
If you want the latest edition of the "real" Roget's, it's the one published by Longman.
The one in TFA is Harper and Row, and the later 8th Edition, published by Harper Collins, is also organized the correct way. I think you'll be safe if you can get a Harper version.
That's the one I have. I've had an older version in the past but misplaced it years ago. This one does the trick, but like the article author says: it is a weighty book. (I like that.)
I never knew Roget's was organized like that and I have had several different editions over the years. I'm one of those people who always used it as a compendium of synonyms.
Slightly off topic: The title hits home. When I was young, books were a luxury item. Less rich people just used the library. But the library had a strict 7 books rental policy. Not enough for the avid reader that also needed a small programming reference library. So I had 3 steady, occasionally 4th, library card pool from family members to keep my bookshelf operational.
I also remember libraries having a very small limit back in the day, so I was surprised to find out that in the Bay Area libraries typically allow up to 100 books per card!
Mind blown. How can that work? I assume book rentals follow the usual Poisson distribution?
> This of course is the cornerstone of Western culture and no well-educated person can be without a knowledge of what is in [the Bible].
Knowing what's in the Bible isn't sufficient. You need to understand the full genealogy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
You need to understand Canaanite cults, the broad influence of both Zoroastrianism (via the Achaemenid Empire) and Hellenism, and how these cultures converged to form proto-Judaistic clerical class (or at least something like it), which eventually crystallized into the synagogue tradition and "modern" Jewish practice during the Hasmonean Dynasty.
That is quite a bold claim you make there!
Since you seem to hold a strong conviction, could you please make more explicit what concretely one would not know / missinterprete regarding the Western culture, not knowing anything about those concepts you listed, but knowing the bible itself back and forth? And to what excent one would need to dive deep into those concepts?
Or in other words: What fundamental concepts in Western culture will we understand if we take you on your word and spend time into understanding those concepts?
Bullet points / pointers would be enough already!
"I have trouble connecting with the thinkers of the Middle Ages. Their thinking seems to me to be frightened, so overcautious, so cramped and circumscribed, I can't read it without sadness"
Completely misses the point of mediaeval philosophy.
As an avowed atheist, I find the works of the Blessed Duns Scotus and St Thomas Aquinas intellectually fascinating.
I’ve been told the Legacy Standard Bible is one where the translators tried to not use the same English word when the original Greek or Hebrew words are different.
FYI: https://m.youtube.com/c/legacystandardbible
was expecting umberto eco after the first few - I'm sure you've either read him or desperately should!
NIV is what I grew up with and I kind of tired of it because of that... I have a soft spot for the KJV/NKJV.
Same, not a believer, I appreciate KJV for its artistic value and it being referenced in so much literature and cinema.
Am a believer, and appreciate the KJV for its language. However, it can be tricky, because words change over 400 years. So while there are many wonderfully translated passages that use very expressive language, you also have passages that are full of words that seem similar but actually are easy to confuse.
For example:
- "Prevent" in 1611 meant "go before, precede". Now it means "stop from happening". - "Suffer" in 1611 meant "allow to happen". Now it means "experience pain". - "Quick" in 1611 could mean "alive" (hence "the quick and the dead"). Now it exclusively means "fast".
And there are words that are completely archaic now - "anon", "bissam", etc. Or words that are just very rare - e.g., peradventure.
It's a wonderful read in many places if you want to revel in language, but modern translations are often better for understanding meaning. Not because they're "dumbed down" (as some claim) but rather because they reflect modern meanings and usage.
I respect your beliefs.
I once tried to stick to Green’s Literal Translation but it got dry fast. I actually enjoyed reading the preface and made me appreciate the work Jay Green Sr put in.
We read some passages from Decameron back in high school. Lovely book really, I should take the time to really read it cover to cover.
There's apparently a pretty amusing adaptation on Netflix as well.
It's very good, although it focuses mainly on the framing device and not on the stories themselves. I can imagine if you're a fan of the original book, it might feel quite shallow in comparison, but as someone who never read the book, I really enjoyed it as a black comedy about bad people in bad times.
The Netflix series is an "inspired by", not an adaptation. It does not have much in common with the original book other than the setting and the names of some of the characters.
I enjoyed it, and I absolutely loved Tanya Reynolds, who is hilarious. But Bocaccio's Decameron it is not.
I loved the Netflix adaptation. I ignorantly missed the part about it being a book and am so excited to dive into it.
and the seven books I keep close: diary of a wimpy kid 1-7
I just need The Wind in the Willows :)
When is the best time of year to read it?
When you're trying to fall asleep but there is too much noise in your head, I suppose :)
Actually, Redwall and other slightly-mature anthropomorphic stories are also surprisingly good for that.
But if I had to pick a time of year, then I'd say winter, under the blankets or by a fire.
What an inspiring post! So much surprise and depth in each selection.
> For example, Moses is easy to recognize at lower right, because of the glowing horns
I'm sorry, what? Why is Moses depicted with glowing horns?
Yeah, I thought he was easily recognizable because he's holding stone tablets.
But apparently it is a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horns_of_Moses
> The Horns of Moses are an iconographic convention common in Latin Christianity whereby Moses was presented as having two horns on his head, later replaced by rays of light.[1] The idea comes from a translation, or mistranslation, of a Hebrew term in Jerome's Latin Vulgate Bible, and many later vernacular translations dependent on that. Moses is said to be "horned", or radiant, or glorified, after he sees God who presents him with the tablets of the law in the Book of Exodus.
A sequel that diverges from and dwarfs its predecessor -- Deleuze & Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus (translated into English) https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816614028/a-thousand-plateaus...
And I bet you won't guess what any of them are.
Number #8 will surprise you!
I keep a computer graphics book that I'm reading over and over again, just one chapter that is concerned with physically-based rendering. By now the theory is getting so ingrained I could write a path tracer in my sleep! But then again, I don't want to.
The current front-runner is “The Crazy Ape” by Albert Szent-Györgyi, who won the Nobel Prize for discovering ascorbic acid.
It's about how war is perpetrated by the old against the young. I've carried it next to my heart since I was fourteen.
Also, it's quite short and will definitely fit in the space.
A bit more about it: https://mathstodon.xyz/@mjd/116411220100252049
Ah the classic
Get the data off those drives now, rather than later. The longer you hope to get the data, the more hopeless it will be.