Chajjim Steinthal (1823–1899) is still very highly regarded. His chasis here is elaborate -- I'm only excerpting a small fragment (Steinthal is verbose), see Heymann Steinthal, "The Legend of Samson" in Ignác Goldziher, Mythology Among the Hebrews and Its Historical Development [1877], pp.392-446:
[...] {p.433} the contrast between the heathen and the modern age was not at all firmly fixed in the mind of the Israelites, precisely because the transition was gradual. Only exceptionally do we find any reminiscence of the old heathenism, which is put back into the most ancient times. As far as the people were able to trace their history backwards, that is, to their supposed ancestor Abraham, they put back the faith in Yahweh; or indeed still farther, to Adam. The only true God Yahweh was soon treated as the only one worshiped in the beginning, from whom mankind fell away, intentionally defying him. Abraham alone remained faithful, and therefore Yahweh elected Abraham's descendants to be his people. Thus the Israelite fancied the faith in Yahweh to be the primitive and inalienable possession of his people, which had been only temporarily weakened, but never really lost. Even to other nations the knowledge of Yahweh could never be wanting; for they worshiped false, non-existent, gods from folly and malice, and the Israelite took for granted that they must know all that he knew. [...] how much more would the monotheistic Israelite picture his past ages, in which he acknowledged no heathenism at all, in a Yahwistic light? His whole history was unconsciously transformed. The heathen myths, which must have something in them, else they could not be told at all, were converted into events of the earth, closely coalescing with historical facts, what the heathen gods were said to have done was ascribed to Yahweh himself or one of his human ministers. The old Semitic gods, if not utterly forgotten, were made by the Hebrew into men of the primeval age, powerful heroes, or Patriarchs. I can invoke the authority of Ewald and Bunsen, for the assertion that no Biblical name before Abraham has any historical significance, and that of {Franz Karl} Movers for saying that Abraham is only the ancient national god of the Semites, El, who was also their first king or their ancestor, and that Israel, Abraham's grandson, was the Semitic Herakles Palaemon.* The Israelite knew no longer how his forerunners had lived and thought in those ages, while they were still heathen; and he flooded his past history with the light which shone for him, but was of recent origin. He unconsciously falsified the facts of the history, because he did not care particularly for facts. Everything heathen received a Yahwistic sense, the heathen form a Yahwistic significance, the heathen substance a Yahwistic form. Only under these conditions could the past history of Israel be made intelligible to the mind of the people.
And then, when priests and prophets came to reduce the popular stories to writing, they could certainly only complete what the populace had already begun. They also were not historians or investigators at all; instead of transporting themselves into a past age, they raised the past age to the light of the present. No doubt they were more consistent and more inventive than the populace; for they wrote with an intelligence which marks and attempts to explain inconsistencies; and even in the interest of a certain political or religious object. The heathenism, which they could not understand, seemed to them impossible; they discovered everywhere at least Yahwistic motives.
Thus, I think, the Biblical narrative of Samson was an old heathen story, transformed by a Yahwistic colouring, given to it first by the Israelitish populace, and subsequently by the author of the narrative. I have endeavoured, by the aid of parallel instances, to trace the mode of this transformation and to recover the original form and meaning of the old story.
12. GENERAL PSYCHOLOGICAL REFLECTION.
We must now attempt to realise the psychological relations and processes upon which is based the preservation and transformation of heathen ideas within the range of Monotheism, the fact of which has been exhibited above.
We require here to see clearly, at least in broad outline, what relations ideas of recent growth, especially on religion and morals, bear to older representations. For from this it will then be easy to make the application to the special case before us, the relation of the monotheistic Yahwistic ideas to the older heathen representations among the Israelites. The story of Samson will then present only a special instance of this relation.
[...] {p.444}
13. HISTORY OF THE MYTH OF THE SUN-GOD.
We will now review the entire history of the old Semitic God of the Sun or of Heat, as he was present to the national consciousness of Israel.
I wonder whether I am mistaken? I flatter myself that I know the particle by which was expressed the greatest revolution ever experienced in the development of the human mind, or rather by which the mind itself was brought into existence. It is the particle 'as' in the verse {Ps. XIX. 6 [5]} "And he [the Sun] is as a bridegroom, coming out of his chamber; he rejoices as a hero to run his course." Nature appears to us as a man, as mind, but is not man or mind. This is the birth of Mind, the generation of Poetry. This 'as' is unknown not only to the Vedas, but even to the Greeks. This does not mean that the Greeks had no poetry at all, but only that there is an inherent defect in their poetry, which is connected with the deepest foundation of their national mind. Helios, driving along the celestial road with fiery steeds, is not poetry, but only becomes poetical when we tacitly insert the 'as' of the Psalmist. He to whom Helios is a conscious being is childlike, if not childish: the Psalmist is poetical.
Now when such psalms were being spread abroad increasingly in Israel; when Yahweh was acknowledged as the being that brings up the sun, the stars and the rainclouds, that builds the house and guards the city; then the old Sun-god or Herakles was forgotten; that is, his divinity, and that only, was forgotten. His deeds were still recounted; but deeds demand an agent. And thus out of the god, who could exist no longer in the presence of Yahweh, a man was made, who with Yahweh's force to aid him performed superhuman things, but in other respects lived among men and within human conditions, worked quite as a man, and even enjoyed his superhuman {p.445} power only on human terms, namely the terms of Naziritism.
Deeds were reported of some one who had long hair. But who wore his hair long, but the Nazirite consecrated to Yahweh? Deeds were told, which no one could accomplish unless exceptionally endowed with strength by Yahweh; and Yahweh would give such privilege only to the Nazirite consecrated to him. Consequently, when Samson was no longer a god, he must be a Nazirite. Nevertheless, he was distinguished beyond all other Nazirites: he was so from his very birth, like Samuel, to whom with Naziritism was granted Prophecy, a gift vouchsafed to others only later in life and occasionally. The strictly mythical character, the allusion to a religion of nature, was entirely lost from the stories about Samson. Whatever happened to him took a purely human character.
There was also a dim memory of the same forgotten god, that he was Melqart, i.e. 'king or guardian of the city.' Samson, now reduced to humanity, could have been such a guardian only in a human sense, though perhaps in an extraordinary degree. Now Israel preserved from the first half of its political existence the memory of no other enemy so dangerous, so difficult to withstand, and again in its subsequent weakness so hateful, as the Philistines against them Samson must have fought. No other foe had laid on Israel so hard a yoke or such bitter degradation as the Philistines: but Samson must have avenged this on them. He must not only have conquered them, but likewise have given them a taste of his great physical and intellectual superiority: the Nazirite consecrated to Yahweh could scoff at the Philistines. Thus Samson was in the end a Judge, Shôphêt; for in the age of the Judges, the wars with the Philistines had begun, and after Eli and Samuel, Saul and David, or even beside any of them, Samson could not have lived. These were not deliberations, but unconscious impulses, which shaped the legend of Samson in the national mind of Israel.
{p.446} No feature of the Solar hero has suffered a more characteristic conversion than his end, as is seen by a comparison with the corresponding polytheistic legends. Orion is blinded by the father of his lady-love, and Samson had his eyes put out. But Orion kindled the light of his eyes again at the rays of Helios, whereas Samson remains blind, and only prays to be endowed with strength to avenge the loss of one of his two eyes.1 It is true, his hair grows again and brings back his strength: after the winter comes a new spring. But all in vain— Samson dies, notwithstanding. He dies like Herakles: but there is no Iolaos to wake him to a new life, no Athene and Apollon to lead him to Olympos, no Zeus and Here to present to him Hebe, the personification of the enjoyment of perpetual youth. Samson dies and remains dead; he dies, and tears down with him his own pillars-the pillars on which he had built the world-to find a grave beneath them. The heathen god is dead, and draws his own world down with him into his own nothingness; his battles were a play of shadows. Yahweh lives, he hath established the world by his wisdom,' 'he giveth rain, the autumn and the spring showers, each in its season, and keepeth to us the prescribed weeks of harvest,' 'cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night; he lives, the Lord of the world, the King of the earth, and his hero is Israel.
1. Judges XVI. 28: 'Give me strength only this once, O God, and I will avenge myself with the vengeance of one of my two eyes on the Philistines.' This is the only possible meaning of the very simple Hebrew words nekam achath mishshethê ênay, which were misunderstood by the LXX and Vulg.; and the German and English versions have merely followed the latter.-TR. 2 Jer. X. 12, V. 24; Gen. VIII. 22.
And then, when priests and prophets came to reduce the popular stories to writing, they could certainly only complete what the populace had already begun. They also were not historians or investigators at all; instead of transporting themselves into a past age, they raised the past age to the light of the present. No doubt they were more consistent and more inventive than the populace; for they wrote with an intelligence which marks and attempts to explain inconsistencies; and even in the interest of a certain political or religious object. The heathenism, which they could not understand, seemed to them impossible; they discovered everywhere at least Yahwistic motives.
Thus, I think, the Biblical narrative of Samson was an old heathen story, transformed by a Yahwistic colouring, given to it first by the Israelitish populace, and subsequently by the author of the narrative. I have endeavoured, by the aid of parallel instances, to trace the mode of this transformation and to recover the original form and meaning of the old story.
12. GENERAL PSYCHOLOGICAL REFLECTION.
We must now attempt to realise the psychological relations and processes upon which is based the preservation and transformation of heathen ideas within the range of Monotheism, the fact of which has been exhibited above.
We require here to see clearly, at least in broad outline, what relations ideas of recent growth, especially on religion and morals, bear to older representations. For from this it will then be easy to make the application to the special case before us, the relation of the monotheistic Yahwistic ideas to the older heathen representations among the Israelites. The story of Samson will then present only a special instance of this relation.
[...] {p.444}
13. HISTORY OF THE MYTH OF THE SUN-GOD.
We will now review the entire history of the old Semitic God of the Sun or of Heat, as he was present to the national consciousness of Israel.
I wonder whether I am mistaken? I flatter myself that I know the particle by which was expressed the greatest revolution ever experienced in the development of the human mind, or rather by which the mind itself was brought into existence. It is the particle 'as' in the verse {Ps. XIX. 6 [5]} "And he [the Sun] is as a bridegroom, coming out of his chamber; he rejoices as a hero to run his course." Nature appears to us as a man, as mind, but is not man or mind. This is the birth of Mind, the generation of Poetry. This 'as' is unknown not only to the Vedas, but even to the Greeks. This does not mean that the Greeks had no poetry at all, but only that there is an inherent defect in their poetry, which is connected with the deepest foundation of their national mind. Helios, driving along the celestial road with fiery steeds, is not poetry, but only becomes poetical when we tacitly insert the 'as' of the Psalmist. He to whom Helios is a conscious being is childlike, if not childish: the Psalmist is poetical.
Now when such psalms were being spread abroad increasingly in Israel; when Yahweh was acknowledged as the being that brings up the sun, the stars and the rainclouds, that builds the house and guards the city; then the old Sun-god or Herakles was forgotten; that is, his divinity, and that only, was forgotten. His deeds were still recounted; but deeds demand an agent. And thus out of the god, who could exist no longer in the presence of Yahweh, a man was made, who with Yahweh's force to aid him performed superhuman things, but in other respects lived among men and within human conditions, worked quite as a man, and even enjoyed his superhuman {p.445} power only on human terms, namely the terms of Naziritism.
Deeds were reported of some one who had long hair. But who wore his hair long, but the Nazirite consecrated to Yahweh? Deeds were told, which no one could accomplish unless exceptionally endowed with strength by Yahweh; and Yahweh would give such privilege only to the Nazirite consecrated to him. Consequently, when Samson was no longer a god, he must be a Nazirite. Nevertheless, he was distinguished beyond all other Nazirites: he was so from his very birth, like Samuel, to whom with Naziritism was granted Prophecy, a gift vouchsafed to others only later in life and occasionally. The strictly mythical character, the allusion to a religion of nature, was entirely lost from the stories about Samson. Whatever happened to him took a purely human character.
There was also a dim memory of the same forgotten god, that he was Melqart, i.e. 'king or guardian of the city.' Samson, now reduced to humanity, could have been such a guardian only in a human sense, though perhaps in an extraordinary degree. Now Israel preserved from the first half of its political existence the memory of no other enemy so dangerous, so difficult to withstand, and again in its subsequent weakness so hateful, as the Philistines against them Samson must have fought. No other foe had laid on Israel so hard a yoke or such bitter degradation as the Philistines: but Samson must have avenged this on them. He must not only have conquered them, but likewise have given them a taste of his great physical and intellectual superiority: the Nazirite consecrated to Yahweh could scoff at the Philistines. Thus Samson was in the end a Judge, Shôphêt; for in the age of the Judges, the wars with the Philistines had begun, and after Eli and Samuel, Saul and David, or even beside any of them, Samson could not have lived. These were not deliberations, but unconscious impulses, which shaped the legend of Samson in the national mind of Israel.
{p.446} No feature of the Solar hero has suffered a more characteristic conversion than his end, as is seen by a comparison with the corresponding polytheistic legends. Orion is blinded by the father of his lady-love, and Samson had his eyes put out. But Orion kindled the light of his eyes again at the rays of Helios, whereas Samson remains blind, and only prays to be endowed with strength to avenge the loss of one of his two eyes.1 It is true, his hair grows again and brings back his strength: after the winter comes a new spring. But all in vain— Samson dies, notwithstanding. He dies like Herakles: but there is no Iolaos to wake him to a new life, no Athene and Apollon to lead him to Olympos, no Zeus and Here to present to him Hebe, the personification of the enjoyment of perpetual youth. Samson dies and remains dead; he dies, and tears down with him his own pillars-the pillars on which he had built the world-to find a grave beneath them. The heathen god is dead, and draws his own world down with him into his own nothingness; his battles were a play of shadows. Yahweh lives, he hath established the world by his wisdom,' 'he giveth rain, the autumn and the spring showers, each in its season, and keepeth to us the prescribed weeks of harvest,' 'cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night; he lives, the Lord of the world, the King of the earth, and his hero is Israel.
1. Judges XVI. 28: 'Give me strength only this once, O God, and I will avenge myself with the vengeance of one of my two eyes on the Philistines.' This is the only possible meaning of the very simple Hebrew words nekam achath mishshethê ênay, which were misunderstood by the LXX and Vulg.; and the German and English versions have merely followed the latter.-TR. 2 Jer. X. 12, V. 24; Gen. VIII. 22.
* The reference is to F. K. Movers' "Die Phonizier'" = Untersuchungen über die Religion und die Gottheiten der Phönizier, mit Rücksicht auf die verwandten Culte der Karthager, Syrer, Babylonier, Assyrer, der Hebräer und der Aegypter [1841], p.396:
Jacob or Israel also wrestles with Elohim in the sand, where he injures himself on the hip, just as Herakles once did, and now receives the other name 'Israel', another 'Palaemon' (see below).
p.429:
The proof, however, has already been given for the most part; for it has been shown that: 1) Phoenician Herakles not only shares the names Baal, Makar – and in combined Baal-Makar {=Melqart} with the Supreme God, or Bel-Saturn {=Kronos}, but that both the name and symbolism of Saturn-Kiyyun or Khonsu as the Sustainer of the World, as symbolized by the Pillars of Heaven, were also transferred to Khonsu-Herakles, see above Ch. III; 2) that the idea of Saturn and Herakles as Akmon {=Meteoric Stone, Anvil, Thunderbolt = Ouranos}, or Philosophus, then of them as Revealers of the Law, is based on this fundamental meaning, according to which both are, through Wisdom, the Bearers and Sustainers of the World's Order; 3) the mythical conceptions of Herakles would still have to be compared, according to which he was thought of as a Fighter against Typhon and kin, i.e., against factors which oppose World Order.
From that idea of Belitan, as the Supreme Being who governs the World according to immutable Laws and maintains Order and Unity in it, the myth of a struggle has now arisen, in which Herakles, as his representative (in the service of King Eurystheus, according to Greek myth. But Nicomachus reports probably the original, at least certainly the Phoenician view of this strange relationship to Eurystheus, when he interprets him as Supreme God on whose behalf the Hero performed his laborious tasks (in John Lydus, De Mensibus, {April} 4.46 or 4.67/120: Herakles was called ‘Time’ [Kronos] by Nicomachus {of Gerasa?} – but indeed, also the Sun; he spoke as follows: "Herakles [is] the one who breaks around the air with the turning Cycle of the seasons — that is, the Sun"), overpowering factors hostile to the World Order, as Demiurge (in place of old Bel) already having subdued Chaos, kills the Typhonian beings and monsters; then, after he cleansing the water and seas, erecting the Pillars of the World; or according to another myth {Claudius Aelianus, His Various History, 5.3}, whereas the Pillars were previously named after the personified Chaos, i.e. The Pillars of Briareos}, Herakles names the Pillars after himself. But whether Phoenician religion also knew Herakles (or that god the Greeks consider ‘Herakles’) as a mythical Hero of battle or whether perhaps only later theocrasy made him so, this might well be asked first. As an answer, the general remark suffices that this idea is too essential to the Greek Herakles for it to be expected that Greeks would have compared a Phoenician god with him if the two had not been related to each other in this point. We also already know myths of the battles with Ousoos, with Typhon, the latter since Hiram's time {c.950 BC}, and that supposedly as early as Elijah {c.550 BC? 1 Kings 18:27}, Tyrian-Israelite Baal does not listen to his prophets because he is on a journey perhaps (to Libya). But we go further here and having no hesitation boldly assert: so long as Greek mythologists do not prove an independent development of the entire Greek Herakles myth with better reasons, and so long as they cannot give even a half-sufficient interpretation of the name, then those who rely mainly on the testimony of Herodotus, claiming the mythical cycle of Herakles as oriental, especially Phoenician, however spiritlessly they may also interpret his name (that would be as 'the peddler,' from going around to sell his wares as a merchant: cf. 1 Kings 10:15; Friedrich Münter, Religion der Karthager [1821], p.41, and Henricus A. Hamaker, Miscellanea Phoenicia [1821], p.240, have also presented this tasteless etymology), they are correct. Phoenician Baal was called Hercules - ‘Herakles’ as a mythical Fighting-Hero with a Phoenician name. We prove this for the following reasons: Herodotus conducted his research on the age and origin of the Greek hero in Tyre at a time when the Phoenician deities were not yet so Hellenized that even the native name was changed for the foreign one or that the latter had become more common. But in Egypt Herodotus heard and from where he was directed to Tyre, and in Phoenicia, even no other name than Herakles to designate the Tyrian god, but only this one as the common one. Otherwise, with precision with which he treats this very subject he surely would have mentioned it. And if the name had merely been exceptional, he might have arrived at the conjecture a god had been passed off to him as Herakles, which he was not at all. One will not reply here Herakles is otherwise called ‘Melqart’ or ‘Baal’, even in the Maltese inscription, so Phoenicians did not know the name in that language. By this objection one would only evade the point in question. Each of these names puts the god under a different point of view; as ‘Melqart’ he is the City-Protector of Tyre, its πολιούχος {=Divine Protector}. In his highest relation, he is ‘Baal.’ As the minor Baal, then ancient Baal, he is called ‘Herakles’ according to his mythical character as a hero of battle against Typhonian beings. Knowing no other name than this, because first the Traveling Hero and later the Herakles’ god-cult had come to them, the Greeks therefore could not, even in the inscriptio Melitensis bilinguis, replace this name of Baal and Melqart with any other. Furthermore, this Phoenician god is called Herakles everywhere his cult was introduced otherwise: in Thasos, Tarsus, Malta, Gades, Carthage. How can this agreement be explained other than by the fact he was actually so-called by Phoenicians? For example, in Thasos or Gades wouldn’t the god’s other name have been preserved and become known to us if it had been the more common one, and if the sanctuaries there had been erected to the god not so much from the point of view of Herakles, but as Baal or Baalshamin? But then we know a god of Asia Minor, Ἤρ {Plato’s Er?}, who like Herakles travels through the Zodiac, is burned on the pyre, and, being equal to him as Bel, has written sacred books: who would doubt the identity or deny that the name Ἤρ is to be considered for the first syllable in Ἡρακλῆς! But the Phoenician form of the name can also be proven; we owe it to an excerpt in Etym. M. from the Phoenician history of Claudius Julius, which attributes to him as Archegetis of Gades the construction of this city: "Gades... as Claudius Julius says in his Phoenician Histories, that Archaleus, son of Phoenix, having founded a city, named it in the Phoenician script, for among them 'Gadeiron' means 'built from small things.'" Here, then, the foundation of Gades, which originated from Tyre, is attributed to an Archaleus; he is a mythical and not historical subject, as is evident from his derivation from a father 'Phoenix' and also from other, more historically-sourced accounts of Gades’ colonization. Therefore, his name, as merely mythical, must all the more be considered only as another form of 'Hercol', Hercules.
From that idea of Belitan, as the Supreme Being who governs the World according to immutable Laws and maintains Order and Unity in it, the myth of a struggle has now arisen, in which Herakles, as his representative (in the service of King Eurystheus, according to Greek myth. But Nicomachus reports probably the original, at least certainly the Phoenician view of this strange relationship to Eurystheus, when he interprets him as Supreme God on whose behalf the Hero performed his laborious tasks (in John Lydus, De Mensibus, {April} 4.46 or 4.67/120: Herakles was called ‘Time’ [Kronos] by Nicomachus {of Gerasa?} – but indeed, also the Sun; he spoke as follows: "Herakles [is] the one who breaks around the air with the turning Cycle of the seasons — that is, the Sun"), overpowering factors hostile to the World Order, as Demiurge (in place of old Bel) already having subdued Chaos, kills the Typhonian beings and monsters; then, after he cleansing the water and seas, erecting the Pillars of the World; or according to another myth {Claudius Aelianus, His Various History, 5.3}, whereas the Pillars were previously named after the personified Chaos, i.e. The Pillars of Briareos}, Herakles names the Pillars after himself. But whether Phoenician religion also knew Herakles (or that god the Greeks consider ‘Herakles’) as a mythical Hero of battle or whether perhaps only later theocrasy made him so, this might well be asked first. As an answer, the general remark suffices that this idea is too essential to the Greek Herakles for it to be expected that Greeks would have compared a Phoenician god with him if the two had not been related to each other in this point. We also already know myths of the battles with Ousoos, with Typhon, the latter since Hiram's time {c.950 BC}, and that supposedly as early as Elijah {c.550 BC? 1 Kings 18:27}, Tyrian-Israelite Baal does not listen to his prophets because he is on a journey perhaps (to Libya). But we go further here and having no hesitation boldly assert: so long as Greek mythologists do not prove an independent development of the entire Greek Herakles myth with better reasons, and so long as they cannot give even a half-sufficient interpretation of the name, then those who rely mainly on the testimony of Herodotus, claiming the mythical cycle of Herakles as oriental, especially Phoenician, however spiritlessly they may also interpret his name (that would be as 'the peddler,' from going around to sell his wares as a merchant: cf. 1 Kings 10:15; Friedrich Münter, Religion der Karthager [1821], p.41, and Henricus A. Hamaker, Miscellanea Phoenicia [1821], p.240, have also presented this tasteless etymology), they are correct. Phoenician Baal was called Hercules - ‘Herakles’ as a mythical Fighting-Hero with a Phoenician name. We prove this for the following reasons: Herodotus conducted his research on the age and origin of the Greek hero in Tyre at a time when the Phoenician deities were not yet so Hellenized that even the native name was changed for the foreign one or that the latter had become more common. But in Egypt Herodotus heard and from where he was directed to Tyre, and in Phoenicia, even no other name than Herakles to designate the Tyrian god, but only this one as the common one. Otherwise, with precision with which he treats this very subject he surely would have mentioned it. And if the name had merely been exceptional, he might have arrived at the conjecture a god had been passed off to him as Herakles, which he was not at all. One will not reply here Herakles is otherwise called ‘Melqart’ or ‘Baal’, even in the Maltese inscription, so Phoenicians did not know the name in that language. By this objection one would only evade the point in question. Each of these names puts the god under a different point of view; as ‘Melqart’ he is the City-Protector of Tyre, its πολιούχος {=Divine Protector}. In his highest relation, he is ‘Baal.’ As the minor Baal, then ancient Baal, he is called ‘Herakles’ according to his mythical character as a hero of battle against Typhonian beings. Knowing no other name than this, because first the Traveling Hero and later the Herakles’ god-cult had come to them, the Greeks therefore could not, even in the inscriptio Melitensis bilinguis, replace this name of Baal and Melqart with any other. Furthermore, this Phoenician god is called Herakles everywhere his cult was introduced otherwise: in Thasos, Tarsus, Malta, Gades, Carthage. How can this agreement be explained other than by the fact he was actually so-called by Phoenicians? For example, in Thasos or Gades wouldn’t the god’s other name have been preserved and become known to us if it had been the more common one, and if the sanctuaries there had been erected to the god not so much from the point of view of Herakles, but as Baal or Baalshamin? But then we know a god of Asia Minor, Ἤρ {Plato’s Er?}, who like Herakles travels through the Zodiac, is burned on the pyre, and, being equal to him as Bel, has written sacred books: who would doubt the identity or deny that the name Ἤρ is to be considered for the first syllable in Ἡρακλῆς! But the Phoenician form of the name can also be proven; we owe it to an excerpt in Etym. M. from the Phoenician history of Claudius Julius, which attributes to him as Archegetis of Gades the construction of this city: "Gades... as Claudius Julius says in his Phoenician Histories, that Archaleus, son of Phoenix, having founded a city, named it in the Phoenician script, for among them 'Gadeiron' means 'built from small things.'" Here, then, the foundation of Gades, which originated from Tyre, is attributed to an Archaleus; he is a mythical and not historical subject, as is evident from his derivation from a father 'Phoenix' and also from other, more historically-sourced accounts of Gades’ colonization. Therefore, his name, as merely mythical, must all the more be considered only as another form of 'Hercol', Hercules.
Chajjim Steinthal (1823–1899)
Samson, the Nazirite:
Art in Derek Jarman's Cottage: "He-Man clutches a classical plaster cast, c.1988."
