2. The Sacred Jawbone is a Sign - it is such an obvious improbable element in the story as to raise questions. In Hamlet's Mill other such jawbones are mentioned, first of all the weapon which Samson used to slay the Philistines:

"The story of Samson stands out in the Bible as a grand theme of absurdities. Sunday school pupils must long have been puzzled about his weapon for killing Philistenes. But there is much more to puzzle about (Judges XV):

15. And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith.

16. And Samson said, with the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.

17. And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Ramathle'hi.

18. And he was sore athirst, and called on the Lord, and said, Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant: and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?

19. But God clave an hollow place that was in the jaw, and there came water thereout; and when he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived: wherefore he called the name thereof En-hak'ko-te, which is in Le'hi unto this day,

20. And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.

The passage has been bowdlerized in the Revised Version to make it more plausible, but verse 18 is an unshakable reminder that this was not an ordinary bone, or even 'the place' of it as suggested recently. For that jaw is in heaven. It was the name given by the Babylonians to the Hyades, which were placed in Taurus as the 'Jaw of the Bull'.

If we remember the classig tag 'the rainy Hyades' it is because Hyades meant 'watery'. In the Babylonian creation epic, which antedates Samson, Marduk uses the Hyades as a boomeranglike weapon to destroy the brood of heavenly monsters. The whole story takes place among the gods. It is known, too, that Indra's powerful weapon, Vaira, the Thunderbolt made of the bones of a horse-headed Dadhyank, was not of this earth ..."

This is a picture of a quijada:

"The jawbone is a percussion instrument consisting of the lower jawbone of a donkey, horse or zebra. The jawbone is dried out and the teeth loosened. When struck with the hand, the teeth rattle, producing a powerful buzzing sound. The playing technique involves striking the large end of the jaw with the palm, or a beater is used to strike the teeth or bone and pulled along the teeth which act as a rasp. These ingredients provide the basis for a wide variety of combinations and rhythms.

In Spanish the jawbone is called quijada. It is one of the main instruments used by Afro-Peruvian musical ensembles and is used in many other Latin American cultures ..." (Wikipedia)