Gideon Gideon Gideon () or Gedeon, also named Jerubbaal, and Jerubbesheth, was a military leader, judge and prophet whose calling and victory over the Midianites are recounted in chapters 6 to 8 of the Book of Judges in the Hebrew Bible. Gideon was the son of Joash, from the Abiezrite clan in the tribe of Manasseh and lived in Ephra (Ophrah). As a leader of the Israelites, he won a decisive victory over a Midianite army despite a vast numerical disadvantage, leading a troop of 300 'valiant' men. The nineteenth-century Strong's Concordance derives the name "Jerubbaal" from "Baal will contend", in
Carnival in Bern he has to destroy the altar of Ba'al. Although the story, as told in von Rüte's play, was taken from the Book of Judges and was about Jews, Rüte (as before him Manuel) meant to attack the idolatry of Catholic clerics. Von Rüte's Gideon defeats Zwinglian authority by destroying the Ba'al altar. However, in contrast to the plays of the earlier decade, von Rüte's plays show a shift away from "protestant polemics" as he eventually uses the Bernese Bear as an allegorical figure. The tradition of Reformation era carnival theater (Fasnachtspiele) came to an end in the mid-1530s and Bernese