It would be a curious inquiry to try to determine the source of the
fascination which the story of Manoah's son has exerted upon
mankind for centuries. It bears a likeness to the story of the son
of Zeus and Alcmene, and there are few books on mythology which do
not draw a parallel between the two heroes. Samson's story is
singularly brief. For twenty years he "judged Israel," but the
Biblical history which deals with him consists only of an account
of his birth, a recital of the incidents in which he displayed his
prodigious strength and valor, the tale of his amours, and, at the
end, the account of his tragical destruction, brought about by the
weak element in his character.

Commentators have been perplexed by the tale, irrespective of the
adornments which it has received at the hands of the Talmudists. Is
Samson a Hebrew form of the conception personified by the Greek
Herakles? Is he a mythical creature, born in the human imagination
of primitive nature worship--a variant of the Tyrian sun-god
Shemesh, whose name his so curiously resembles? [In Hebrew he is
called Shimshon, and the sun shemesh.] Was he something more than a
man of extraordinary physical strength and extraordinary moral
weakness, whose patriotic virtues and pathetic end have kept his
memory alive through the ages? Have a hundred generations of men to
whom the story of Herakles has appeared to be only a fanciful
romance, the product of that imagination heightened by religion
which led the Greeks to exalt their supreme heroes to the extent of
deification, persisted in hearing and telling the story of Samson
with a sympathetic interest which betrays at least a sub-conscious