Mark of Contradictions: The Creation of Judah’s History and the Case of Samson – Mahri Leonard-Fleckman
236 Royce Hall 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los AngelesIn biblical texts, we find preserved the “mark of contradictions, fragmentations, and adjunctions,” as intellectual historian Michel de Certeau once wrote (The Writing of History 1988: 313). This talk will explore the mark of contradictions in what may seem a peripheral set of texts within the broader biblical narrative, the Samson stories of Judges 13-16. Buried in the book of Judges, these quirky stories have consistently baffled scholars: where do they come from, why were they preserved, and what role do they serve? In the talk, I will trace shifting portrayals of Samson through different biblical witnesses and rewritings through...