Lion's Honey: The Myth of Samson - Biblical Wild Honey for Natural Energy & Wellness | Perfect for Tea, Baking & Healthy Snacks

David Grossman is one of Israeli's pre-eminent novelists, perhaps best known for his book, You thought you knew the Biblical story of Samson and Delilah. You didn't - not until you read this book.Grossman is one of Israel's best novelists and he brings all of his creative insight into retelling the familiar story in a new way. The character of Samson, as a kind of muscle-bound Golem who is doomed from the moment of his conception, thrust into a role that he neither seeks nor understands, is at the center of this reinterpretation.Grossman even sheds new light on the hero's name -- linking it to the Hebrew root "shimush" which means use or useful. God uses Samson for his own purposes. Samson is used by God without ever fully grasping how and why.There are many mysteries embedded in this story. Why does Samson seek disastrous relationships with Philistine women -- the daughters of his enemies? Why does he give away his secret to Delilah? Why, if he is destined to lead the Israelites against the Philistines, does he never actually do so? Why does he follow each bout of frustrated sexual activity with an orgy of murder?Grossman, with his deep psychological understanding of Samson's dilemma, provides answers and elucidation.This is a slim volume and can be read in a couple of hours. At the end of that time, however, the reader will never view this complex tale in the same way again.Grossman's "Lion's Honey: The Myth of Samson" is at once a personal relection and a story of a hero in ancient times told with important, relevant, and contemporary examples and illustrations. There're truths in mythology, fables, "folk tales" and ledges. Every culture has them, and Grossman's Samson is no exception.At once there're lessons for and about life: its weaknesses, its failings, its retrobutions, its tragedies, and its redemptive aspects. Grossman succeeds in spinning a compelling story. Granted there are some flaws, some assumptions that seem too nuanced; others not too logical (the enemy in the same room with Samson, watching the antics with la femme fatale, Deliah). Nonetheless, "Lion's Honey" is a short volume that is engaging reading, it stimulates thinking about human dilemmas equal to our permanent fixture as human beings: How can we control the "demons" around and in us in order to live a quality life.News from the Middle East, if true, recently reported that Grossman's son was killed a few days ago. That, too, is a "demon" when we out live our children. I was thinking a few weeks ago how Grossman would tell the story of Job. Unforunately, now he can.I never liked Samson. I've said before that if the two of us meet someday in heaven, there will probably be a personality clash to end all clashes. I'm hoping that my new heavenly body won't be quite so easy to beat up.Then I read David Grossman's little book. David carries us deep into the mind--nay, the very heart--of this ancient hero, to uncover what makes him tick. Sampson has been transformed from a turbulent, macho man into a needy, troubled misfit. A muscle-bound one, no less, which makes for an explosive combination.I like him even less this way. I would shake Delilah's hand for uncovering his secret. No, not his long hair, but the inner child that longs to be normal, which she then carefully and deliberately manipulates.Yeah, I'm fine with the tragic ending, Samson deserved it. Nevertheless, David's clever retelling succeeds in adding life to the myth. Kudos! David draws upon various Hebrew traditions to spice up Samson's twisted personality, then leaves the poor man without even a decent shrink. How else could the story end?Sorry, David, I never did feel any sympathy for your guy. But I absolutely loved reading your story.I didn't finish this book, I got to around three quarters of the way through. After reading the Penelopiad I was looking forward to reading more of the Canongate Myths. However I really didn't enjoy this book very much. Although I like the myth of Samson... I felt that all this book did was provide questions to ask yourself when considering the myth. I believe it is good to ask questions of myths, but the level of literary criticism provided in this book I felt at some points was irrelevant and ridiculous, and at others interesting and thought provoking.Although some people may find the questioning nature of the book a good thing, I found it to be increasingly difficult to read. I feel quite torn in my feelings towards this book, but I feel more negatively towards it than positively!Hmm, so far the reworkings have been short stories, and have been interesting fictional attempts to retell familiar tales in a different way. This is just an essay about the myth. Not what I expected and a bit of a chore to read. Interesting commentary in places, but made me feel sorry for the lecturers everywher, because they have to read poorly constructed essays like this all the time.Unlike the other volumes I have read in the Canongate series of Myths Retold, this book about the myth of Samson is not a novel, a retelling of an ancient myth into a modern setting, but rather a minute and scholarly examination of the biblical text, picking up every tiny nuance and finding significances in the way it is told that would escape the average reader (though Talmudic scholars have pored over them in the past). For example, the simple sentence that Samson's father Manoah `rose and followed his wife' should show us that how weak he was, for, as a Talmudic commentator had it, ` a man does not walk behind a woman on the road - not even his wife'.The story narrated in the Bible is full of action, but is silent about the thoughts of the different characters in it. These silences Grossman fills out with ever more subtle psychological speculations, in the course of which Samson appears not so much as the `thug' or `the most stupid character in the Bible' for which one your reviewers takes him, and more as an inarticulate and tortured being, conscious of being driven from his conception onwards by a God-given destiny which makes him unhappily different from other men, something that also sets an uneasy distance between him and even his parents, so that he has never ever, from birth onwards, been truly loved. Deep down, he longs to be like `every other man', and perhaps it is that that makes him reveal his secret to Delilah.Though Samson has at times been `read pejoratively in the Jewish tradition', he is also `inscribed in the Jewish consciousness as a national hero and a symbol'. Grossman, an Israeli, is a critical analyst of many aspects of Israeli attitudes and policies, and at one point he comments on the many echoes of the story in the position of Israel in particular: perhaps its strength is also a liability. He sees both Samson and Israel as troubled by `a deep existential insecurity'. I was expecting this line of thought to culminate in Grossman expressing the fear that out of its very strength Israel might one day bring the whole structure of the Middle East crashing down, in an apocalypse that would spell not only the destruction of her enemies but of herself also. He does not say so - but I wonder whether I dare speculatively interpret his silence in this not so far-fetched way?I exoected a story with a new perspective at the story of Samson but it is just a very prolonged, boring, pointless academic review that doesnt have any new aspects in itEn anglais. Une magnifique analyse et une lecture personnelle du mythe biblique de Samson.