Samson as God’s Adulterous Wife

preface

Any new book needs to say something new, or with a different twist or address a new generation of readers or do a combination of these things. I do not claim to have said everything original in this book. It is increasingly becoming difficult to say something that has not been said before or to see something that has not been seen before. Although some of my ideas can be found elsewhere, I hope I have made a contribution to the body of knowledge in this field, however small or insignificant it may be. While some of the conclusions are the same, the reasons and method of reasoning may be different. As C. S. Lewis claimed in The Great Divorce, I believe that even if I have less originality there is still proprietary. An unbiased reader may even stumble upon a few ideas that may not be found elsewhere.

While the amount of literature on a given subject is vast, the time and space to survey it is limited. So the reliability of a claim to an exhaustive search becomes increasingly suspicious. However, I have tried to interact with all important works on the related subjects.

My aim is to provide readable scholarship without compromising its value. I hope I have achieved that to some degree. Scholarship should not be measured by the clutter that surrounds it.

Finally, I have written with a strong and unshakeable conviction that the Bible truly is the word of God and worthy of careful study.

acknowledgements

I am indebted to two Tims who helped immensely in this project and it so happens that both have British origins! One is Dr Tim Bulkeley of Australian College of Ministry who read most of the manuscript (especially at the dissertation stage and after the very extensive revision) and provided valuable comments. The other is, Sir Tim Berners Lee who invented the world wide web! Without the internet I would not have had access to the amount of resources that I had.

I had the privilege of briefly discussing the idea of this book with Dr Lawson Younger Jr. I also had the privilege to have Dr Huseel Bullock read portions of the manuscript and give wonderful comments. I also had the chance to discuss the idea briefly with Prof Jean-Daniel Macchi at the University of Geneva, Dr Peter Lau at the Malaysia Theological Seminary (STM) and Dr Gershon Hepner via emails. Dr Ela Lazarewicz-Wyrzykowska of Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, Cambridge gave very useful comments on portions of the manuscript. I also like to thank Dr Ivor Poobalan of CTS, Sri Lanka. I am also grateful to Dr Charles Wannamaker of University of Cape Town for reading the manuscript and giving useful comments. Needless to say, I am responsible for all that has been said or not said in the book.

abbreviations