101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

266 101 Myths of the Bible
night and day, a facet of Egyptian solar theology. The shearing of Samson’s locks signifies
night’s temporary victory over day. And when his hair regained its length, the
sun defeated and destroyed the forces of night.
Samson’s circular path in the grinding mill corresponds to the circular routes of the
daily and annual suns. In one episode of the Samson story, he is shown with thirty
companions, a number suggesting the solar month. The blinding of Samson has been
compared to a solar eclipse, but, more significantly, the blinding of Samson recalls an
episode from the conflicts between Horus and Set, in which Set, the enemy of the sun,
blinded Horus, the sun figure.
Herakles, too, reflected solar symbolism. In one of his famous feats, he killed a lion
and wore the skin like a cloak, with the animal’s head and long flowing mane forming
a helmet. The lion head’s cloak was the standard icon used to identify Herakles in
Greek art. In one of his twelve labors, he is depicted as sailing across the sky, from east
to west, in a golden cup, and shooting arrows—as obvious a solar symbol as we are
likely to see.
Like Samson, Herakles was punished with a series of difficult labors. Each died as
the result of betrayal by the woman he loved. As Herakles stood close to death, he had
himself placed on a funeral pyre. As the flames burned around him, a cloud came
down from heaven and carried him to Mount Olympus where he was transformed
into a demigod, paralleling the story of Samson’s birth, where the angel announcing
the child’s birth ascended to heaven in a sacrificial flame.
Samson, too, killed a lion with his bare hands, but unlike Herakles, he didn’t wear
the lion’s head as a helmet. Such an obvious solar icon would have been offensive to the
Hebrew monotheists. Instead, the scribes substituted Samson’s own leonine mane for
the lion’s head helmet and declared the growth to be at God’s directive.
Egyptian mythology provides another important connection between Herakles
and Samson. Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians also had a deity named Herakles
and he was the same as the Greek Herakles. Usually, when the Greeks talk about foreign
gods, they look for characteristics of the deity that are similar to one of their own
gods and use the Greek god name to describe the foreign deity. In this case, however,
Herodotus claimed specifically that the Egyptians named the deity Herakles.