Samson Agonistes is a difficult text to negotiate in the twenty-first century. The new face of terrorism and the war against terror, the currency of terms like jihad and suicide bombings in everyday vocabulary, the justifications suggested for many forms of the culture of violence in many corners of the world today cannot but have an impact on the way we now read Samson Agonistes. A ‘new alternative Samson’ had begun to emerge some time ago, reaching its culmination in John Carey's reading and in Joseph Wittreich's Interpreting Samson Agonistes, a Samson whose story is not an allegory of redemption but one of violence, lust and rash presumptions of divine guidance. More recently, in Shifting Contexts: Reinterpreting Samson Agonistes and Altering Eyes: New Perspectives on Samson Agonistes, as well as other recent works, Wittreich and other scholars have sought to open up a text long regarded as one to be examined for its conformity to scriptural traditions. The new readings begin with the beliefs