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being able to help them out of the difficulty, I feel impelled 
to call attention to another passage, where honey appears in 
a strange combination. I mean Judges 14. 8, where it is said 
that bees and honey were found in the carcase of a lion, a 
place which evidently was not calculated to improve the flavour 
of the honey. Luther’s translation has: ,carcase of a lion.‘ The 
»Probe-Bibel* (1) amended it into ,a body* (Leib) of a lion, 
which did not remove the difficulty. In this case the ,Probe- 
Bibel* has attempted to smooth over a knotty point which had 
been a puzzle, and an excuse for incredulity, for a very long 
time. The difficulty had to be overcome at any price, and two 
Separate ways have been tried in order to effect this. Some 
have followed both ways simultaneously. 
The one way is taken by the old Syriac translation, which, 
instead of body or carcase (mappelet and gewiijja in hebrew) uses 
the word skeleton. Supposing a clean and bleached skeleton, we 
can easily imagine that a swarm of bees might settle within 
it, although the building of combs under such circumstances 
would require an expenditure of wax greater than usual. But, 
as the transformation of a carcase into a skeleton requires a 
good deal of time, it seemed evident that the interval between 
the killing of the lion and the return of Samson to it, on his 
way to his bride, should be equally long. So whilst verse 8 
says distinctly ,and he came back in a few days“, as Luther cor- 
rectly translated it, some expounders, in the interest of the 
their carcase-theory, have changed the ,few days“ into a whole 
year. So, for instance did Levi ben Gerson, who says in a note: 
,samson returned a year after, to marry the woman; it seems 
that twelve months had been granted her for her preparations‘ (2). 
(1) The ,Probe-Bibel* is a German translation of the Bible with merely 
tentative corrections of Luther’s version, intended to elicit amendements and 
criticisms. The first edition was published in Halle 1883, and is commonly 
called ,die sogenannte Probebibel". 
(2) Twelve months is a much longer interval than is usually granted, by 
the Hebrew Law. to a bride between the engagement and the marriage. (Remark 
hy Prot. Merx.) 
