When Raymond Met Delilah (original) (raw)
Related papers
Victim, Victor, or Villain? The Unfinalizability of Delilah
Journal of the Bible and its Reception, 2019
Delilah is one of the more enigmatic characters in the Bible. She is marked by a series of ambiguities in the text that pose a host of unanswered questions. Is she a Philistine, an Israelite, or something else? What exactly does her name mean and what is the nature of her relationship to Samson? And why does she help the Philistines capture Israel’s notorious strongman? Despite all this ambiguity, much of her reception history is rigidly consistent. The dominant trend is the portrayal of Delilah as the reviled seductress who bedevils Samson. This interpretation was also promulgated among ancient readers of the story, such as Josephus and Pseudo-Philo, who identify Delilah not only as a prostitute and a Philistine, but as the wife of Samson. These types of interpretive gap-filling serve as early exemplars of a long and nearly unwavering reception history in which Delilah is unequivocally the villain. If there is any other interpretive potential lying dormant in the text, then it is rarely actualized. Building upon the work of contemporary feminist and womanist scholars, I intend to subvert that trend by arguing that Delilah can and should be read in a variety ways due to the intentional ambiguity employed by the biblical author. Furthermore, by drawing upon the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, I will identify the “unfinalizability” of Delilah’s character and demonstrate how she simultaneously embodies the role of victim, victor, and villain.
Case, In the Intersectional Days of Delilah
MAARAV, 2022
Like many feminist biblical scholars of her generation, Jo Ann Hackett began the process of reclaiming women’s histories in the Hebrew Bible by broadening traditional fields of inquiry about ancient Israel to include women. In the twenty-first century, third and fourth wave feminist scholars must now build upon the groundwork laid by these pioneers to create nuanced interpretations concerning gender and sexuality. In this paper, I examine one particular character, Delilah in Judges 16, whom conventional scholarship frequently maligns and more recent feminist readings attempt to valorize. Rather than these superficial interpretations, Delilah’s various social identities, such as her gender, ethnicity, and economic standing, indicate the intersecting systems of power which careful feminist scholarship takes into consideration. Such an intersectional reading of Delilah, grounded in a historical critical approach, allows for a refined interpretation in which she is neither an opportunistic prostitute nor an independent businesswoman, but a complicated female character navigating the intricacies of ancient Israelite life.
Why, Why, Delilah? Textual, Pictorial, Musical and Filmic Portrayals of Delilah
"Why, Why, Why, Delilah?: Textual, Pictorial, Musical and Filmic Portrayals of Delilah" In: Literature and Inter-Arts: Crucial Issues in Global Aesthetics and Contemporary Literary Theory , edited by Inmacula MedinaBarco (La Rioja: University of La Rioja, 2013): 129-143, 2013
The story of Samson and Delilah has attracted throughout the ages the imagination of many readers as well as of a great number of authors and artists, who have offered their version of the story in different genres and media. It is a story of intense love and national heroism, telling about a super‐hero who was subdued by a woman, a mythical story about the encounter between Eros and Thanatos, light and darkness. Women play a central role in Samson’s story: in the cycle of stories that constitute the Samson saga in the Bible (Judges 13–16) he has three problematic meetings with women. In the first encounter and the events that follow (Judges 14–15), he is betrayed by his Timnath wife (she reveals the answer of his riddle to his foes), forced to take dangerous actions (to pay the wager) and puts himself at risk in various confrontations with the Philistines; and in
Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture
Legendary producer-director Cecil B. DeMille was a seminal cofounder of Hollywood, a progenitor of Paramount Pictures, and an unsung auteur who was not only an early pioneer of the religion-and-film genre but became the undisputed master of the American biblical epic. However, the many deftly engineered sacred subtexts, thematic preoccupations, and aesthetic skills of this movie trailblazer were frequently denied, derided or dismissed during his lifetime and decades thereafter. This situation is in need of re-examination, rectification and renewal. Consequently, following a close reading of Samson and Delilah (1949) and a selective review of the critical DeMille, film and religion literature, this article uses Delilah’s (Hedy Lamarr) “thorn bush” tag, given to her during the wedding feast confrontation scene with Samson (Victor Mature), to explicate ten thorn bush themes that reveal some of the hidden depths of C.B.’s biblical artistry. Utilising textually-based humanist film critic...
2018
Samson’s mother is nameless in the Hebrew Bible. Little is said about her as a person. Roughly two millennia ago, in three sources of Rewritten Bibles her character is fleshed out, she becomes much more of a real figure. This article addresses specific verses pertaining to her in Judges 13 showing how they were recast in three pieces of literature from the Late Second Temple period and beyond. The three works are Josephus’ Judean Antiquities; Biblical Antiquities (Pseudo-Philo – Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum [L.A.B.]); and the homiletic discourse, Pseudo-Philo’s “On Samson.”
2019
This paper discusses the character of Samson as an historical figure within Judges 13-16 narratives in the Old Testament Bible. The main aim of this paper is to find out through theoretical inference whether there were circumstances surrounding Samson’s sexual behaviour. Drawing from causal theory, the paper argues that there is a possible nexus between Samson’s failed marriage and his subsequent relationship with other women. It shows that Samson’s problem was not metaphysical but human induced and as such it is causal. It constructs, Samson as human figure in the narrative and analyses the text from the perspective of causal theory and concludes that Samson’s failed marriage could be responsible for his subsequent relationship with a Harlot in Gaza and Delilah. In the Narrative, apart from the harlot in Gaza, the ex-wife and Delilah betrayed his love. Within this line of theoretical thought, Samson was seen as a victim of emotional catharsis, human intrigue, insensitivity, naivety...
Women in Judaism a Multidisciplinary Journal, 2010
Epic showman Cecil B. DeMille cofounded Hollywood and became a master of the American biblical epic who constructed his Judeo-Christian characters with great care; yet, his artistic efforts were frequently ignored, devalued, or dismissed. Thus, he is in need of reputation restoration alongside highlighting the pedagogic value of a pop culture approach to religion studies. Consequently, the critical literature was selectively reviewed and Samson and Delilah (1949) closely examined utilizing humanist film criticism as the guiding analytical lens to explicate the construction of Samson's three lovers, namely: (1) Delilah (Hedy Lamarr), (2) Semadar (Angela Lansbury) and (3) Miriam (Olive Deering). It was concluded that DeMille was a far defter biblical filmmaker than hitherto appreciated. Further research into DeMille studies, biblical epics and the emerging interdisciplinary field of religion-and-film is highly warranted, warmly recommended and already long overdue.