User blog comment:GSFB/Samson vs Cerberus (Greek Myth)/@comment-8012490-20130430205854/@comment-5232784-20130430233126

1: Samson and Hercules are probably about the same: though the feats of Hercules sometimes dwarf those of Samson when only the scripture is concerned, when the folklore outside the Bible is added, Hercule's feats are not superbly greater, if greater at all, than Samson's. Indeed, being able to hold up the heavens is a neat trick, but how heavy is air? How heavy is the sky in ancient Greek accounts? We have no way to measure this quantitively. Meanwhile, Samson can move two mountains together the way you can rub two pebbles together in your hand (according to folklore, not the Bible).

Plus, let us not forget; while Hercules had his strength due to being the child of Zeus, King of the Greek Gods, who was not omnipotent (he could not defeat his father Cronus and the Titans by himself, with merely the snap of a finger (he had an army of gods and giants, and it took 10 years for him to win. Plus, in some accounts, even Zeus had no authority over Fate.), Samson is a man who was gifted with supernatural strength by Yahweh, the Almighty/Omnipotent God of the armies of Israel, a being whose power was unlimited (He is the God of all things, not just the sky. Zeus, though powerful, was Lord over the heavens, and though he outranked the other gods in authority (and Homer states that he had more supernatural power than all the other gods combined), he did not have power over the oceans and the underworld like Poseidon and Hades, respectively)

2: Samson does not have armor: is flesh alone is highly resistant to injury (or the 1,000 Philistines whom he fought in one encounter would have cut him down before Samson could slay them all).