Talk:Delilah

Needs Elaboration
This article seems to assume prior knowledge of the story itself. It could do with a much beefier introduction. Not enough of the basics (which were the reason I came here, as I've never read the story myself).

The article also focuses too much on Delilah in art and literature. How about some contributions from Bible scholarship and maybe Jewish tradition, the Talmud, etc.? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 36.88.144.85 (talk) 15:44, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

The {} sign/s
One or more of the sign/s: placed on this page without any discussion, explanation or reasoning have been removed pending further discussion. (The category Category:Bible stories is now up for a vote for deletion at Categories for deletion) Thank you. IZAK 11:01, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Clarity
Mythic elements in the tale do not necessarily undercut a historic reality for a cultural champion, given the name Samson.
 * I don't understand what this sentence means. It has the tone of a counterargument, but I don't see anything preceding this line in the article that it would be disputing. If it's a legitimate point, then the language needs to be cleaned up (e.g., "undercut" is a very odd verb in this context, and "given the name Samson" requires explanation) — but if not, then it needs to be deleted. Cribcage 15:01, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

"Etymology"
.." meaning "[One who] weakened or uprooted or donkey" "Donkey"? Common sense suggests the possibility of an error in this "etymology". --Wetman 19:07, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Just some anon vandalism that remained longer than normal, it seems. Nufy8 06:19, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Was Delilah a Philistine?
I always presumed that Delilah was a Philistine woman, because she appeared to be 'on their side'. And I actually edited the Samson article to reflect this.

Having done this however, I began to have doubts, and reading the text, there is no mention of Delilah's ethnic origins. The only clue is that she came from the valley of Sorek, wherever that may have been (commentators put it between Philistia and Judah, which is not helpful). she could just as easily have been a treacherous Hebrew woman.

If anyone has any clue as to the answer (perhaps there is no answer though), I'd be happy to know it.

Nick Michael 14:19, 26 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Time for a Bare mentions of "Delilah" in market-driven culture article, don't you think? --Wetman 06:22, 8 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Expand on what you mean? Might just be a section in this article. And the article title could be improved. Lentower 17:01, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I second the Wetman's proposal with enthusiasm. It currently is just a section in this article - and with far too much prominence IMHO. Same goes for Samson, although less so. Trouble is, should sections such as Other cultural references (art, classical music, literature...) have their own article(s) too? --Nick Michael 19:27, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Cultural references
Even leaving aside that the two "cultural references" sections are unsorted and unsourced, some of the examples seem to include only the name "Delilah" rather than referencing the biblical figure. These should be removed and, when appropriate, moved to Delilah (disambiguation).  tk tk  tk  04:29, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

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Possibly outdated sources
Delilah did not cut Samson's hair herself; she ordered a servant to do it for her: "[18] And when Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, Come up this once, for he hath shewed me all his heart. Then the lords of the Philistines came up unto her, and brought money in their hand. [19] And she made him sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and his strength went from him. [20] And she said, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that the LORD was departed from him. (Judges 16:18-20; KJV)"

The notion that she cut his hair herself stems from artistic representations, which often inaccurately show her cutting his hair herself because it looks more dramatic that way.

On a related side note, as you can tell from the passage above, the account only says she was paid for her efforts. It does not state that she was paid with "1,100 pieces of silver." I noticed that the source of both of these misstatements was the 1901-1906 Jewish Encyclopedia. We may want to be more careful about using really old sources like this one; even on subjects such as ancient history, older sources can be outdated. Generally speaking, I think we should try to incorporate more contemporary scholarly books and articles as sources. If a source was written prior to around 1940, we may want to regard it with caution and make sure to back up any statements from it with more recent scholarly writings. --Katolophyromai (talk) 02:52, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh. I see that you have corrected the passage to show that it states she was paid 1,100 pieces of silver in Judges 16:5 when the Philistines first come to her. I guess I was looking at the wrong verse. Thank you very much for correcting that! --Katolophyromai (talk) 03:07, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
 * No problem!

Copyright issues
I have removed the huge quotation from the NSRV Bible, sourced to bible.oremus.org. According to the permissions page on that website, quotations from the NSRV are permitted but must include a copyright notice. This has not been included in any of the revisions, so they are essentially copyvio, as far as I can tell. On top of that, including a huge quotation of the story from one version of the Bible is not a substitute for encyclopedic writing about the story. Especially because translations can vary, altering the details of the story in a way that the reader ought to be aware of.

I have replaced it with a reasonably well-written paragraph summary from the November 5, 2017 revision of the article and have revision-deleted the violating revisions. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 07:24, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Seems overkill, frankly. It would have been better to replace with one of the many versions one can quote (and the status of the copyright notice is perhaps questionable). We should include a biblical quotation here, as we normally do. A summary by who-knows-who is no substitute, especially if "translations can vary, altering the details of the story in a way that the reader ought to be aware of". The account here is longer than that of most OT incidents, but even so. Johnbod (talk) 11:02, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * As we normally do where? I just looked at the articles for a bunch of major Biblical figures (Samson, David, Isaac, Adam, Noah, Isaac, Abraham, and Solomon, for examples) and all of them are written as encyclopedic summaries with citations where needed. Some have select quotations included, but none use vast tracts of Biblical quotations as a full-out replacement for summarizing and explaining the narrative, which actually is standard practice. The largest quote I could find was in Solomon under "Sins and Punishment", but even that was smaller than what I removed from this article.
 * I'm not sure why you worry about summaries written by "who-knows-who", as that is essentially the entire purpose of Wikipedia. We summarize and explain based on reliable sources, and we don't have to be experts to do so. If there are significant details that vary between translations, they ought to be pointed out with referenced explanations for why they matter. We certainly can't just pick one translation and dump it in wholesale.
 * The large quote I removed from is a version released in 1989, so the copyright does apply. The permissions page is quite clear about what one needs to do in order to quote freely from that version, and those instructions were not followed. Therefore the revisions including that quote needed to be removed, even though there were quite a few of them. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 13:37, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

I suggest that the quote be added back from a Bible that is out of copyright, never copyrighted, or allows short passages to be quoted without attribution. I also suggest that the new summary paragraph be left as well. — Lentower (talk) 16:16, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Delilah is not a "major Biblical figure" like those mentioned, and appears only in a single incident/passage in the OT, and it is usual to quote the relevant passage in such cases, or as PMC puts it, "pick one translation and dump it in wholesale". I hesitate to point out examples for fear of provoking further zapping. Johnbod (talk) 16:28, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Is there a consensus anywhere as to which translation to use in this case? KJV? NET Bible? StAnselm (talk) 19:01, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't believe so. There should be something in between these two. Johnbod (talk) 19:03, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying we can't use quotes. Obviously we can use quotes. But if we do use quotes, they are supposed to be illustrative. Dumping in five entire paragraphs of Bible verse is not a substitution for actually summarizing the narrative in an encyclopedic manner, which is what the previous version was doing entirely. So even if we pick a version that's not a copyright violation, we still shouldn't go back to doing that, because that's not the point of what we do here. We summarize and explain, we don't just dump primary text in and say "there ya go." &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 01:25, 8 March 2018 (UTC)


 * The New Revised Standard Version is not out of copyright. It is a translation of the original text, and the translation is most certainly copyright. Whether or not to include the passage here is a matter of editorial discretion, but given that there are plenty of available public domain translations, this would not qualify under WP:NFCCP as there are many free equivalents and it is not a brief quotation but rather the main story. Whether or not it would qualify under the law for fair use is irrelevant, as the English Wikipedia is free to set our policy on fair use stricter than the law. This means you should not use long quotes from this translation of the Bible as this fails the most fundamental criteria under English Wikipedia policy: there are free alternatives. Premeditate Chaos' actions here were justified. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:30, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * That was never the issue; have you read the above? He could have substituted a free version, & that is what myself and Lentower (and perhaps User:StAnselm) are saying should now be done (keeping the summary he has returned). The passage is on the long side, but not inordinately so. I'm also slightly alarmed that, judging from the deleted edit summaries (which are all that I can see), he has also removed edits to several other sections of the article, without any attempt to replace useful edits there. Johnbod (talk) 02:44, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I misread one of the lines as saying that the Bible was out of copyright, which is why I posted that. My apologies. I think her revdel was justified here based on the copyright status. From the revdel'd diff, it looks like she only removed the non-free content. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:08, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * , when removing copyright violations via revdel, it's standard practice to revdel all the revisions where the infringing content exists in the text, even if the intervening edit is related to something else. I revdel'd 133 revisions between now and Nov 5 2017 because they all contained the infringing text. I did not make any other alterations or removals to the text in my edit where I removed the infringing text, so I am not sure where you are getting the impression that I did. That edit was not a revert to the previous version, it was its own edit where I removed only the problematic material and then re-inserted the summary that had been removed. Also, it's "she". &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 10:45, 8 March 2018 (UTC)
 * As I said, I can only see the ordinary edit history, from which none of this is evident. Glad to hear it. Johnbod (talk) 14:58, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Dalidá?
Is there any mileage in asking why the Septuagint (translated from Hebrew by Greek-speaking Jews in Alexandria) insists on Dalidá? A sole example might be corruption of lambda to delta, either minuscule or majuscule, but there are a dozen examples. If it's a woman's name, the translators should have been familiar with it. Also, if Sampson fell in love with her, she's unlikely to have been a Philistine, unless it's a Romeo and Juliette type fiction. But interestingly, he went to Gaza to visit a prostitute. This might remind us of Gilgamesh (or was it Enkidu?) FangoFuficius (talk) 08:49, 3 June 2023 (UTC)