Myths & Religion / Common Knowledge

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Classical Mythology

See also Classical Mythology:

Oedipus the King: Oedipus killed his father and slept with his mother. While that is factually true, most people assume that he did so intentionally, which he didn't. He didn't even know that the man he killed was his father nor that the woman he had sex with was his mother. His parents in fact had their son's fate foretold to them, so they left him for dead. He was then adopted and, once he reached adulthood, heard a similar prophecy and went to drastic lengths to avoid doing such horrible things to his adoptive parents. He then got into a fight with a stranger on the road and killed him, not knowing that it was the king of Thebes. He later married the recently widowed queen of Thebes as a reward for ridding the city of the Sphinx on his way to the city; some versions of the story have the queen wearing a necklace that kept her youthful, thus making it even less likely that Oedipus would think she was his mother. It was many years again before anyone learned the truth. The Oedipus Complex — which Sigmund Freud named after him — might be solely responsible for misconception.^note It's worth mentioning that Oedipus was so horrified and disgusted when he learned that he had murdered his father and had sex with his mother, that he gouged his own eyes out (presumably the ancient Greek equivalent of Brain Bleach), while Jocasta committed suicide after discovering the truth.
As a general note, many classical scholars have warned against confusing Greek Religion with Greek Mythology. For instance, taking The Iliad as definitive evidence about what the Greeks believed would be like taking Paradise Lost as a Christian religious text. The ancient Greeks and Romans, in fact, had several religions (Pythagoreanism, the Arcadian, Dionysian and Elusinian Mysteries, Orphism, Platonism and the Roman civic religion were some of the primary ones over history), which usually had very different theologies and practices from one another. It appears that the Greeks themselves had some trouble with this distinction, something that Socrates famously lamented in Plato's Republic.
Myths do not state that Atlas was forced to hold the Earth on his shoulders. Atlas and his brother Menoetius sided with the Titans in the Titanomachy, the war between the Titans and the Olympians. After the Titans were defeated, Zeus punished Atlas for his betrayal by making him stand at the western edge of Gaia (i.e. the Earth) and hold up Uranus (the heavens) on his shoulders. Uranus being the husband of Gaia in Greek mythology, this had the effect of ensuring the two would never be able to embrace again. In classical art, Atlas is often depicted as holding up the celestial sphere. The misconception of him having to hold up the Earth possibly comes from the Farnese Atlas, which was a 2nd-century Roman marble copy of a Hellenistic sculpture that depicted Atlas kneeling with a globe weighing heavily on his shoulders.
Hades was not the Greek expy of Satan (comic-strip gags notwithstanding). In fact, the two literally have nothing in common. Satan is a corrupting influence who exists on Earth, and will be punished at the end of time by being thrown into Hell, where he will be just as much a prisoner as its other denizens. Hades is the ruler of the Underworld, which is where people go after they die. He is a generally a benevolent ruler, and by all accounts reasonably good (at least, by Greek Deity standards; he's done some crappy stuff by modern standards). It's primarily in Anglo-American folklore that (wrongly) views Satan as the king of Hell, which has decided that the Underworld = Hell and thus Hades = Satan. The power over the underworld attributed to both of them is also completely incomparable; Satan has no special power over Hell, whereas Hades not only has dominion over the Underworld, but is, at worst the second most powerful of all the gods not named Zeus.
This is often taken to the other extreme by claiming that Hades was intended as a purely decent figure. All accounts from the time actually suggest the opposite; the Greeks generally feared him, and Agamemnon in The Iliad outright calls him "loathed more than any other god." For instance, Hades was very frequently referred to by epithets like "the rich one", "the host of many", and "the notorious," implicitly because the Greeks feared drawing his attention. This wasn't because he was specifically evil or unpleasant, but rather because he was the one god who came for everybody, and could never be convinced to stop, only to delay his actions. To modern audiences who view him as a character in a story, this makes him seem fair rather than capricious, but to ancient Greeks who viewed him as an actual being who would come for them as well, this made him seem utterly terrifying.
By extension, it's generally believed that Persephone is an innocent Damsel in Distress and flower goddess who just wants to be free of her husband and doesn't take much role in running the Underworld. While the oldest and most common telling of the myth claims that her abduction was not willing and suggests he had to trick her to stay, all her appearances consistently show her as a fairly equal partner to Hades in his rulership of the underworld. In fact, two of her epithets, Despoina ("the mistress") and Kore ("the girl") both suggest that the Greeks saw her as a feared enough figure that they didn't like saying her name (not helped by her cult being pretty secretive), which is corroborated by stories like The Odyssey describing her as "dread Persephone." In fact, there's some pretty serious evidence to suggest that Persephone predates Hades, and was considered an underworld goddess before he even existed.
Some people claim that there's an "original" version of the myth of Persephone where she walks into the Underworld of her own free will, and the story about her being abducted by Hades was written later to strip her of her agency. In reality, this version of the story was written in 1978 by Charlene Spretnak, partly as a hypothetical, and partly to bowdlerise the story for her young daughter. Another writer, Marjorie Graham, wrote an adaptation of this version of the story without crediting Spretnak or otherwise acknowledging its origins, claiming it really was the original version of the Persephone myth, and the misconception snowballed from there.
Zeus, meanwhile, is not the equivalent of, or even similar to, the Judeo-Christian God. While more powerful than all the gods of Olympus combined, he was neither omnipotent or omniscient. He was definitely wiser and stronger than any mortal could possibly be, but he still had his limits, and was tricked from time to time. He was often called out on his selfishness, capriciousness, and greed by other gods, though the overall perception of him among Greeks was roundly positive and he was still generally seen as a protector, a savior, and the patron of kingship, society, and hospitality.
- Modern pop-culture and internet memes often portray Zeus as a gleeful Serial Rapist who is never punished and treats women like tissue paper in general. He isn't even a rapist at all (let alone a serial one) in many stories, and in fact the earliest known source to describe the family of the gods, Hesiod's Theogony, simply calls him a consensual polygamist. Part of the issue is extremely strong Values Dissonance; the Greek concept of consent was very different, and the actual term "rape" originally meant something more along the lines of "abduction."
Pandora was never given a Box in any classic myth. The idea of "Pandora's Box" is Newer Than They Think, credited to the Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus, due to an error in his translation of Hesiod's Pandora in which he confused pithos (storage jar) with pyxis (box).
Despite certain nations using it as such, the Caduceus, with its heavenly angelic wings and the two serpents, is not a symbol of health. It is a symbol of commerce and the effigy of Hermes. Not to say there isn't a Greek symbol for health that is a rod and snake, but it's the Rod of Asclepius and it only had the one snake and zero wings.
People will often call Heracles/Hercules a brutish meathead, frequently when talking about how different the idea of a hero in Ancient Greece is from the modern conception of one. However, while Heracles did have a bad habit of letting his emotions get the better of him, he wasn't an idiot. To the contrary, he was an intelligent and cunning man, and his smarts arguably played a role comparable to his Super-Strength in his achievements.^note His bouts of less-than-smart behavior are more the result of his Hair-Trigger Temper, as well as using his prodigious strength as a first resort rather than a last. When calm, he's actually quite clever.
Hestia gave her throne to Dionysus after he ascended to Olympus, right? Well, this is commonly assumed to be the case (and is often claimed to be such, even in more academic sources), but there's no mention of it ever happening in the original myths. Lists of which Greek gods were Olympians were inconsistent, with the most common difference being that some lists include Hestia, and some include Dionysus, but very few include both, which seems to have given rise to this belief as an explanation among modern scholars.
The War God Ares was unanimously disliked by the Greeks, who always portrayed him as a Hate Sink or a Butt-Monkey in myths before Romans reimagined him as the benevolent Mars. It's not totally inaccurate, but it's also more complicated than that. His portrayal and characterization in the whole mythology, just like many other gods, wildly depends on the writer. While he often assumes an antagonistic role, he is also portrayed heroically in some stories; he was a protector to the Amazons and once saved his daughter Alsippe from being raped by Halirrhothius (and was acquitted for killing the latter).
- Ares is frequently thought to have been the patron god of Sparta in the same way Athena was to Athens, which stems from the assumption that the notoriously militaristic Spartans loved Ares for being a bloodthirsty war god. In reality, Spartans did not worship Ares any more than they did the other gods (in fact, Athena had a much bigger cult presence and temple in Sparta than Ares, who only had a minor shrine). This was because the Spartans valued obedience far more than fighting prowess; Ares was infamous in the mythology for his constant disobedience and unruliness because of how violent he was. The Greeks largely saw him as a chaotic deity who needed appeasement, not a deity who could be bargained with through sacrifices; because of this, his worship was fairly limited in comparison to gods like Zeus and Athena. The only Greek polis that held him as a patron god was a small one called Metropolis in Ionia.
Everyone "knows" Medusa was originally a beautiful human woman who got turned into a gorgon by Athena as punishment for being raped by Poseidon in one of the goddess' temples. But in reality, this origin seems to have been invented by Ovid (a Roman poet writing in the 1st century AD, by which point the Greek myths were thousands of years old) out of whole cloth for The Metamorphoses. Earlier versions of her myth say she was always a horrible monster, though where exactly she came from varied. Moreover, most versions of the Perseus myth, which tells the story of how the heroic son of Zeus hunted down Medusa and slew her, denote that Medusa had two sisters who were not only equally hideous, but also immortal (making for three monstrous Gorgons), so Perseus had to take great pains to not only pick the right one to decapitate, but to not alert the other unkillable two. This adds considerable doubt on the veracity of the original "cursed by the gods" story, which was probably tacked on by other storytellers who wanted to make Medusa more sympathetic.
- Though at least one or two Greek sources mention Medusa being transformed, she is in no way sympathetic in those versions, typically either she being transformed for the usual hubristic "claiming to be more beautiful than the gods (in this case Athena specifically)" or she willingly slept with Poseidon in Athena's temple despite having sworn an oath of celibacy to Athena. In these versions her sisters were punished as well because they aided her either in fanning her hubris or helping Poseidon slip into the temple in order to meet with Medusa. And, even in Ovid's poem, it's ambiguous if their sex was consensual or not as he used the Latin verb "vitiasse" which is translated to "violate" or "corrupt", leaving it largely unknown if he meant that as in "rape", or "seduction", or if it was referring to her oath of celibacy or Athena's temple which was "violated" or "corrupted". Even later translations typically use somewhat ambiguous terms like "seduced", "ravished", or "she yielded".
Perseus is often imagined as having ridden Pegasus. But there's no indication the two ever even met one another in the original myths. It was Bellerophon who rode Pegasus, and Perseus got around using a pair of winged sandals (more properly called talaria).
- Thanks to Disney's animated film, Hercules is sometimes imagined as having ridden Pegasus too, when they never even met in the original myths.
Zeus being famous for his randiness and Shapeshifting Seducer tendencies, he's sometimes depicted as the father of Half-Human Hybrids like the minotaur or the centaurs. The former was the product of a bull belonging to Poseidon and a human woman, the latter of the spectacularly Stupid Evil human Ixion (who decided to rape Zeus' wife while invited to Olympus) and a cloud nymph enchanted to look like Hera.
Everyone knows that Orpheus tried to bring his dead wife Eurydice back from the Underworld, but failed when he disobeyed Hades and Persephone's order that he not look back at Eurydice until they were safely in the upper world. But it's sometimes mistakenly assumed that he looked back because Eurydice didn't know he was forbidden to do so and begged him to look at her until he couldn't resist any longer. This is actually an adaptational change from Christoph von Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice. In the original versions of the myth, he just looked back because his longing to see her overwhelmed him (Virgil) or because he was afraid she might not be there (Ovid). Eurydice is also sometimes misremembered as turning to stone when Orpheus looks back at her instead of vanishing back into the Underworld: this probably results from people confusing this myth with the Bible story of Lot's Wife, who turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back at the destruction of Sodom against the angels' orders.
The story of Pygmalion and Galatea is about a sculptor who carves a marble statue of his ideal woman and falls in love with it, leading Venus to turn it into an actual woman. Well, this is mostly accurate... except the statue is unnamed in the original text, as far as we can tell; no surviving source gives her one. The name Galatea was only widely associated with the statue after 1762. For that matter, she wasn't a marble sculpture before being turned human; she was actually carved from ivory.

The Bible, Judaism and Christianity

See also The Bible, Judaism and Christianity.

It's commonly thought that God in the New Testament is all-loving, in comparison to the massacre-happy God of the Old Testament—some have even used this apparent disconnect to theorize that the "God" of the Old Testament is a different being entirely. But while God in the New Testament doesn't wipe out whole cities and peoples like He did in the Old Testament, He still kills at least two people (Ananias and Saphira) for their sins, possibly smites another (depending on which version of Judas Iscariot's death you are reading), and seriously injures another (Simon Magus). In addition, His Son makes it clear that all sinners will face divine wrath at the time of the Second Coming. Hagiographies^noteaccounts of the lives of saints regularly contain accounts of God lethally punishing heretics, persecutors, and other evildoers well after even the time of the New Testament.
Satan / Devil:
- Everybody "knows" that Satan and the demons rule over hell to torment the damned. Except that The Bible plainly says that Satan and his demons will be punished right along with the damned. Hell is Satan's prison, not his kingdom. Also, Satan, along with every other demon, was once a glorious angel, and they rebelled against God. In Christian belief, nothing originated as evil.
  - That Satan is banished in the first place is in question, at least for most of the Old Testament. He is instead simply an accusing angel. We can safely blame Paradise Lost for this one. The first mention of Satan actually being banished is in Revelation 12:7-9, though there are some references to this in earlier books (like Luke 10:18). One can read the Old Testament, and conclude instead that Satan simply is an angel with a bad job of telling people why they suck.
  - Conversely, the idea that Satan is only a villain in the New Testament is also untrue; he is already depicted as an evil being in the Apocrypha of Second Temple Judaism, written between the two Testaments. These stories, however, are much more obscure due to not being considered "official" parts of the Bible; in fact, one theory is that they were deliberately left out because they gave too much Character Development to supernatural beings other than God Himself and thus constituted borderline polytheism. In addition to Satan, a number of other evil angels appear in the stories of this period as well, such as the Big Bad Duumvirate Azazel and Samyaza from the Book of Enoch, The Trickster smooth-talking Mastema of Jubilees, and Blood Knight Belial of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
- Satan doesn't look like a red guy with horns and pitchfork. According to Revelation 12:3 (the only physical description of Satan in the Bible) he looks like a seven-headed dragon with ten horns. In other passages, he is described as masquerading as a being/spirit of light.
- Most people think of the Devil as being a central figure in the Bible or at least a figure that is prominently featured. In actuality, the Devil only directly appears in about six or seven chapters of the entire Bible. Especially in the Old Testament.
- The word "ha-satan" in Hebrew literally means "the adversary" "the accuser" or "the prosecutor". This is made fairly explicit in the Book of Job, where Satan is an angelic minion whose purpose is to test humans to see if they will continue to obey the laws of God when forced to suffer. Furthermore, the fact that it starts with "ha-"—"the"—means that it's actually more of a title than anything else. Lucifer is just the most well-known Satan.
- The Satan we all know and uh... know, is frequently portrayed with aspects of Pan (horns, hooves, goatee) and Poseidon's trident. It's Common Knowledge that this was propaganda by the early Christian church to discredit Pagan cults by associating them with the Devil. But the truth is that Satan's portrayal varied wildly during the Early Middle Ages, and these aspects didn't show up until around the 13th century, when Roman paganism was essentially dead as an actual faith. After a renewed interest in pagan art arose, the syncretism between Satan and the old gods was cemented, based not on a desire to mock or disrespect them, but on Rule of Cool. It was just as common to use pagan divinities as sources to depict holy things, hence the Grandpa God images based on Jupiter's idols (which are also not meant to be accurate).
- It's Common Knowledge that Satan causes human misfortune. Actually, ummm...
  I am the one who forms light and creates darkness; the one who brings about peace and creates calamity. I am the Lord, who accomplishes all these things.
- Lucifer is almost always used as another name for Satan, however, there is little justification in the Bible for this. The name only comes up in the Book of Isaiah, and there it seems to be referring to the Babylonian Emperor Nebuchadnezzar II.
- It's commonly said that Satan is the Serpent who tricked Eve into eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. While many Christians do believe they were the same, this is not universally accepted and some believe the Serpent was something other than the devil. The claim they're the same being is often attributed to an alleged Call-Back in Revelation that describes Satan as "that old serpent", but this connection is somewhat flimsy as the same segment also describes said Satan-serpent as having seven heads and being able to stand, while the serpent in Genesis is never described as anything but a normal serpent who is eventually cursed to crawl on its stomach for the rest of its life - an issue Satan is never implied to suffer from.
  - There's also the idea that the Serpent actively misled and lied to Eve about what eating the fruit would do out of malice, but the Serpent can and has been seen as being more honest than God in that story. God claims eating from the tree would kill Adam the very same day, while the serpent tells Eve that eating from the tree would let them better understand the world. While an argument could be made for a "spiritual" death and/or giving them the ability to die, on the surface the serpents' account of the consequences is more accurate, as neither Adam nor Eve physically die "the same day" and instead are exiled for losing their child-like innocence and for disobeying God.
  - Actually, in the original Hebrew, God's words to Adam and Eve translate literally to "dying you will die" in a sense that meant that they wouldn't die immediately, but will die at a later time, which happened, thus God is not dishonest.
  - John 8:44 also addresses who is the liar, and a murderer.
  - Genesis 3 indicates the serpent lied. Therefore it is not a Common Knowledge dispute, but rather a textual and or spiritual dispute.
On a related note, "antichrist" is not singular according to the Bible, but plural. It refers to anyone opposing Christ and or the Christian religion-thus, it's really anti-Christ. This was later combined with the character of the end-of-the-world dictator described in various prophecies (called the Little Horn in Daniel, the Man of Sin in Thessalonians, and The Beast in Revelation), who of course would also be "anti-Christ" going by this.
Continuing the Hell theme:
- Fire, brimstone and eternal torment are often described as "Old Testament". In fact, the entire concept comes from the New Testament, mainly from the Gospels and the Book of Revelation, which describes God throwing death, Hell, etc. into a lake of fire and brimstone, after Judgment Day.
- The word "Hell" is an English word that is used to translate a variety of different words from Hebrew and Greek in the Bible, the actual words used in the New Testament are generally Sheol or Gehenna, both of which are used in the Old Testament. Sheol is the land of the dead and equivalent to Hades. Gehenna — the OT sometimes gives it an older name — is a valley outside Jerusalem where apostate Hebrews and pagans would sacrifice their children to the Caananite gods in burnt offerings. Only one of them — Gehenna — implied punishment, the other was just where people go when they die. The Greek translation maintained this distinction by using Hades and Tartarus respectively, but early English lacked the words to make this distinction, so they were all just translated into "Hell". This leads to a bit of confusion in some cases, and is one of the sources of the misconception that Hades was the ancient Greek equivalent to Hell. In fact, this is sometimes used by those who oppose the concept of Hell to assert that it is an imposition of Greek culture foreign to the religion (which is not necessarily true, it's more of a quirk of translation). Hell is also not a strictly Abrahamic concept, though obviously the details and what the realm is called vary by tradition. Most religions that believe in some form of afterlife have some variant of a Hell realm, the ones that believe in reincarnation simply believe your stay there is long, but temporary.
- Generally, the very specific picture of Hell predominant in modern culture — a great big cavern world beneath the earth, filled with fire and flames, populated by damned souls engaged in a variety of ironic punishments and by cackling demons holding a variety of pointy implements — isn't rooted in any particular part of the Bible. In point of fact, the scriptures are kind of light on the details of what the dead experience after they die. This view is derived from a few other sources: firstly, the aforementioned linguistic muddles caused some conflation with the Greco-Roman Tartarus, which does work that way (specifically, Tartarus was an abyss beneath every other part of existence where Titans, monsters, and mortals who really pissed off the gods where sent, with the mortals specifically being given personalized torments to while away eternity with). Secondly, The Divine Comedy depicted Hell as a very compartmentalized pit where sinners are placed in punishments tailored to very specific sins and infractions. The Comedy was intended primarily as a political and cultural satire, but that context is largely lost on modern audiences and its view of Hell has since become the dominant one in European and American culture.
It's commonly believed — in Catholicism at least — that Purgatory is a realm "between" Heaven and Hell where you go when you're not good enough for Heaven or bad enough for Hell. The vast majority of Christianity holds that anyone who sincerely repents of their sins is bound for Heaven, those that believe in Purgatory simply believe that this is a temporary pass-through to Heaven where you perform penance that you didn't get to do in your lifetime. Whether or not penance is even necessary indeed varies from denomination to denomination, which obviously affects the belief in the need for and the existence of Purgatory.
A common argument of the militant atheist, or at least an argument that God is not worth following, is the accusation that he "raped" the Virgin Mary by impregnating her "without her consent". The simple fact is that the Bible says God chose Mary because she was highly favored (or "full of grace", depending on the translation), the implication being that she would ultimately feel honored to be chosen. In the scene where she is visited by the angel Gabriel, while she expresses surprise, her ultimate response to the entire idea is "Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word", making it clear that she was willing. While Gabriel phrases the process as though it will happen, he never coerces or threatens her, and Mary is repeatedly stated throughout the rest of the story to feel blessed that she is the mother of the Messiah.
The Immaculate Conception of Mary does not mean that Mary's parents conceived her in some supernatural way without involving any sex (though this is true of Mary herself giving birth to Jesus). It is instead the teaching that Mary was conceived without original sin. It is one of the dogmas of the Catholic Church, in that it is believed to be part of divine revelation and thus binding on the Catholic faithful (though Eritrean and Ethiopian Orthodox Churches also accept the doctrine). Other different Churches reject the doctrine on different grounds; many Protestants claim that it is not biblical (though Anglicans accept it as a pious devotion), while the Eastern Christian Churches reject it due to differences in understanding of original sin, though they affirm Mary's sinlessness and preservation from sin.
Somehow, during the debate in the United States over immigration and the border crisis, it became popular to refer to Mary and Joseph as "refugees". They were not refugees; they were going to Joseph's hometown to register for a census. They did, however, flee Bethlehem and spent time in Egypt until Herod the Great died. Then they returned to Nazareth. It could still be debated whether that makes them refugees.
Anything covered by Word of Dante qualifies. Paradise Lost especially has greatly changed how people view the basic relationship between Satan and God, despite not being intended or recognized as canon.
Angels:
- Our Angels Are Different. Angels, Cherubim and Seraphim are three distinct kinds of beings, not all of which look like humans with wings. Generally, when angels turn up in scripture, they're either not described in much detail or stated to look largely like humans (wings are sometimes present and sometimes not) or they look mildly to highly outlandish. While it's commonly claimed that Biblical angels look like Eldritch Abominations, even the ones that actually are somewhat eldritch (like the Cherubim) generally still have some human traits. The claim isn't entirely false (see Ezekiel), it's just inaccurate to say it applies to all or even just the majority of Biblical depictions of angels. Only three types of "eldritch" angel are described in any detail, and these are:
  - Cherubim (Cherub is singular) are described by Ezekiel as winged creatures with four faces (one human, one lion, one ox, and one eagle) and bodies covered in eyes.
  - Ezekiel also describes entities like two nested wheel with eyes all along their rims, usually identified as Ophanim.
  - Seraphim are described as having six wings and using four to cover themselves. Looking at their bodies beneath them causes humans to burn away from their unfiltered glory.
- The Hebrew word for "angel", mal'ach, literally means "messenger", and so does "angel" in Greek. Angels in the earliest books of the Bible look like ordinary humans. For example, the story where Abraham hosted the three angels is meant to depict him as a paragon of hospitality, not as sucking up to heavenly beings — because he didn't know they were heavenly beings.
- What an archangel is varies depending on who you ask, but the Bible only mentions one, and that is Michael. Christian tradition is that every named angel is an archangel, which includes Gabriel and (sometimes) Raphael, and Jewish tradition recognizes anywhere between one and ten archangels, again, depending upon who you ask. But Michael remains the only angel explicitly revered to as the Archangel, to the point where if "archangel" is mentioned in the Bible without a name, it's generally assumed to be referring to Michael. The idea of archangels as a genus of angels with higher status is largely rooted in Medieval mysticism and angeology.
- Christians do not become angels when they go to Heaven. They just go to Heaven. Angels are an entirely separate order created by God, and none of them were ever human. There is a term for a human soul that resides in Heaven — a saint.
Prostitutes:
- Mary Magdalene was never identified as a prostitute. She is mentioned for the first time in a passage following the famous "cast the first stone" scene. The two women were combined hundreds of years later in order to cut down on the number of characters. Mary came to Jesus with "demons in her head", possibly referring to her having some sort of mental illness that he cured. In addition, we never see Mary Magdalene anoint Jesus with perfume or wash his feet in the Gospels. The unnamed "woman who was a sinner" mentioned above did that, and much later, just before his death, a different Mary anointed him with perfume again—but that was Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. Mary, like James, John, and Joshua, was a pretty common name back then.^note
- In any case, the woman to be stoned in John was certainly not a prostitute. She was an adulteress, which under Mosaic law meant she must have been married. A single woman sleeping with a married man was not considered adultery. Non-religious prostitution was and still is legal in Judaism.
- The Bible rarely refers to women as being prostitutes. The word often translated as such (zona, זנה) actually means a sexually or religiously loose person. While the word could be used for a prostitute and at times it is heavily implied, it is only rarely outright stated they are. It is more often used to refer to people that are not committed to their religion.
Jesus:
- No one actually has anything more than a general idea of what Jesus looks like — specific descriptions of him don't actually exist in the Biblical canon — so just about every depiction of Jesus that exists now has some form of artistic license applied. We do know, both from the Gospel accounts and the prophecies of Isaiah (if you consider the latter to refer to Jesus at all), that he was not considered very attractive, and in fact was so physically unremarkable that he couldn't be picked out from a crowd. Arraying him in ethereal beauty dressed in kingly majesty is meant to be entirely symbolic of his resurrected and glorified form, not an accurate depiction of what he looked like in life. On the question of ethnicity, there is a great deal of regional variation in how he is depicted, usually coinciding with what is considered attractive in that time and place. Genetic studies done on contemporaneous people in the same geographical space have placed his ethnic background as most likely congruent with a Mizrahi Jew or Lebanese person, but that doesn't give us much more than a broad suite of physical traits within certain limits. Still, it's fair to suggest that those traits — e.g. fair to olive skin, dark eyes, dark wavy to slightly curly hair, lots of body hair, below-average height — are the most likely possibilities. The earliest icons of Christ, some dating as far back as the 1st Century, fit this broad outline rather well. Also keep in mind that, looking phenomenally typical for a Semitic person living in the Mediterranean at the time, he was likely bearded and had shoulder-length hair, if not shorter. Since he was a carpenter (or possibly a stonemason) in an era well before power tools, it's also very likely that he had a fairly muscular build.
- Of the four horsemen of the first four seals, only Death's role is made explicit. War and Famine are identified by the first carrying a large sword and going off to make war and sow strife, and the second holding a scale while a voice behind him cites hugely inflated grain prices and warns against touching pricier goods. Fair enough. Pestilence is thornier, and indeed, to the Catholic and Orthodox Churches the first horseman is "Conquest," since he identifies himself as a conqueror. Other traditions have him as Christ himself or the Antichrist. Since conquest and war are so closely related, however, a minority of theologians came to the conclusion that this is the metaphorical conqueror of "Pestilence," and this idea somehow stuck.
- The Magi did not come to visit Christ on the day of his birth at the stable. By then, some time had passed and Jesus's family is noted to be living in a house.^note Indeed, the story of Herod and the Magi is found in Matthew, whereas the story of the census and the inn is in Luke - nothing in Matthew suggests that Mary and Joseph did not live in Bethlehem before fleeing to Egypt (the two birth narratives, while not necessarily irreconcilable, have very few details in common). On that note, Common Knowledge has it that there were three, and only three, magi. The Bible does not specify a number, but speaks of a group, who give three gifts. Additionally, the very idea that Jesus was born in an inn's stable is itself Common Knowledge, fueled by a bad translation. The word "Kataluma" is more accurately translated (even within the Bible itself) as "guest rooms". He was most likely born in the living room of some relatives who had taken their flock in for the night. The stable would be the warmest area of the house. The Bible also doesn't say the wise men were kings or that they rode on camels.
- Another myth of the Nativity story is that Mary gave birth the very night that she and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem, and that the urgency of her condition – that she was either in labor already or close to it – was why they had to settle for a stable instead of looking for other shelter after being turned away from the inn. But not only were they probably not turned away from an inn, and not only did the birth most likely take place in a relative's house as noted above, the Gospel of Luke simply says "While they were there [in Bethlehem], the time came for her to give birth." It might have been several days or even weeks after they arrived.
- Many a Christian will tell you that Jesus said, "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime." Actually that phrase does not appear at all in the Bible. It in fact originates from a book written in the late 19th century.
- A bit of Common Knowledge popularised by Dan Brown is that the Council of Nicea sought to suppress parts of the Bible because they contained truths about Jesus that could shake and even destroy the very foundations of the Church. In fact, the Council of Nicea had nothing to do with the formation of the Bible (it was a forum to decide on how divine Christ actually was). The four Gospels to be included in the Bible had in fact been decided a century before the Council of Nicea and the Apocryphal gospels that survive, far from containing any earth-shattering revelations about Jesus, actually just consist of rather abstruse and obscure mystical writing. In fact, there was no officially established canon at all (the canon being mainly conventional through long-term use) until the Council of Trent, 1200 years after Nicea, and that was to keep certain books in the Bible against some of the Protestant reformers who wanted to remove them. The Council of Nicea also did not establish the doctrine of the Trinity, that was the Council of Constantinople. Nicea only defined that Christ and God the Father were consubstantial, Constantinople added the Holy Spirit to the mix.
- Everyone "knows" that Jesus was first around when Mary got pregnant (at least everyone who hasn't been raised in the church). Except that Jesus, like God the Father, and the Holy Spirit, are all eternal. Jesus is "begotten not made" in the Nicene Creed, and John 1:2 states "The Word (later defined as Jesus) was with God in the beginning."
- That Muhammad is historical, but Jesus is legendary and cannot be historically proven. Actually, most historians accept that there is a historical character named Jesus (well, "Yeshua") (it's his divinity they debate). Sorry, Alexa.
- Jesus was not crucified by being impaled through his palms, nor was anyone in Real Life ever crucified this way. Being nailed by the palms wouldn't be enough to support someone's body weight and the nails would just rip their hands apart. Crucifixion was done by being impaled through the wrists, or by just tying the hands to the cross.
Everyone knows that the Mark of Cain was a curse placed upon Cain by God. Except that, if you actually read the story, it isn't. God cursed Cain, then when Cain complained that on top of that anyone he met would kill him, God blessed him with a mark of protection such that any who harmed him would suffer vengeance sevenfold. This countered Cain's objection and ensured that he would only suffer the intended curse.
- Despite what some white supremacists claim, nowhere is it claimed that the mark of Cain is dark skin. The idea likely originates from slaveowners and other racists coming up with a justification for treating colored folk like lesser beings.
Noah did not just bring two of every animal aboard the ark. He brought two pairs of every "unclean" animal, seven pairs of every "clean" animal, as well as seven pairs of every bird. And it wasn't for eating. They weren't actually supposed to eat any until the flood was done. Animal sacrifice was part of worship at this time, and Noah sacrificed a lamb when they survived the flood, so they needed the spare clean animals for this as well. Also Genesis tells us God brought the animals to Noah, not the often used description that he went looking for them.
Job's wife did not die. His children all died, and his slaves, but his wife is actually a minor character in her own right (Job's misfortunes all come in the opening chapters).
Almost any Christian schoolchild will tell you the Fruit in the Garden of Eden was an apple. The Bible, in any language, does not specify what it was. Jewish tradition claims it to be a fig, wheat, or grapes, and Islam sometimes holds that it was a pomegranate. The apple connection came from the Latin words for apple (malum) and evil (mālum), though some say it's because apples are usually the first solid food children eat in the Western world. The only fruit explicitly mentioned as being in the Garden Of Eden are figs, as Adam and Eve use their leaves to cover themselves up.
- Another explanation is that "apple" is often used generically to mean "fruit" (including vegetables). For example, "pomegranate" literally means "seeded apple", and potatoes in French are pommes de terre, "apples of the Earth".
Most people think that Cain and Abel were Adam and Eve's only children. Well, they were... for a while. The Bible explicitly mentions that after Abel's murder Adam and Eve had other children (although only Seth is named). If the whole human race is descended from Adam and Eve (though that's debatable - see below), then they must have had daughters as well as sons to become their sons' wives.
It's almost universally believed that Adam and Eve were the ancestors of the entire human race – that their sons and daughters married each other and had children, who had children, etc. Yet while some passages seem to imply this (for example, Eve's name means "life," because she's destined to be "the mother of all living"), the wives of Adam and Eve's sons are never actually said to be their sisters, and when Cain is exiled by God after killing Abel, he protests "whoever finds me will slay me," implying that there are other people in the world beyond his family's dwelling-place. Some scholars argue that God created more people at the dawn of time than just Adam and Eve, so that the human race wouldn't be spawned from incest; Adam and Eve were just the first.
Nun and sister are often used interchangeably. While it is usually appropriate to call a nun "Sister" as a title (or Mother), a nun and a sister are actually two different things. It's more of a technical distinction than anything else, but a nun is usually attached to a monastery or cloister, while sisters are usually deployed out in the world. Nuns also take "solemn" vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, while a sister takes "simple" vows, the difference between the two being roughly the difference between swearing an oath by God and making an earnest promise.
The Bible is not plagiarized from Egyptian mythology. It's claimed that the figure Horus was born of a virgin, rose from the dead, had twelve disciples and resurrected Asar (which apparently translates to Lazarus). Horus was born to the goddess Isis after she retrieved the dismembered body parts of her murdered husband, Osiris. Asar doesn't translate to Lazarus at all and John the Baptist was not based on Anup the Baptizer, who isn't even a recorded figure in Egyptian mythology.
Many people think that Jacob served Laban for seven years, then thought he married Rachel but instead married Leah. Then Jacob served Laban for seven more years and then really married Rachel. Actually, Jacob married Rachel 7 days after marrying Leah, and then worked for seven more years to repay Laban for her.
Two misconceptions about Joseph, son of Jacob:
- Jacob showed everyone that Joseph was his favorite son by giving him a "coat of many colors," right? Or as Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice called it, an amazing technicolor dreamcoat? Well, maybe yes, maybe no. The exact translation of the word "passim," which describes the coat, is uncertain – it might mean "multicolored," but it might also just mean "long" (a long robe alone would have been a marker of high status in ancient Canaan, since average working men would have worn short, sleeveless tunics), or else "embroidered," "ornate," "made of fine wool," or "made of silk." The "many colors" translation is only the best known because it's used in the Septuagint and the King James Version.
- Joseph is often believed to have been the youngest of Jacob's twelve sons – a classic case of Youngest Child Wins. Actually, he was the second youngest, while the true youngest was Benjamin.
One common way to criticize Christian beliefs is to claim something isn't even in the Bible. Many Christian denominations, notably the Catholic Church, reject the idea of being "sola scriptura", or basing their beliefs entirely off the Bible, believing that God can reveal truths to us through tradition. Some notable example are the Marian doctrines of the Assumption and Coronation^note; from a Catholic perspective, it makes perfect sense they are not explicitly defined in the Bible: Mary was still living on Earth when the texts of Bible were being written.^note
Everyone knows Elisha sent two bears to maul a group of children that were making fun of him for being bald. What's often missed is that the bald insults weren't the only thing the teenagers were doing—they were also mocking his mentor Elijah for dying (technically being taken into Heaven) and threatening Elisha's life. Also, it was God that sent the bears; Elisha only rebuked the boys.
- Many Biblical scholars, both Jewish and Christians, have also raised the argument that the "little children" is a mistranslation and the original meaning referred more to young adult males, possibly even thugs or soldiers, who could have been a legitimate threat to Elisha.
Lilith. Her story — originally created as the first woman, didn't fancy being subservient to Adam, was cast out of Eden as a result and replaced with Eve — is fairly well-known today, and it's a widespread belief that it comes from or is linked with the Jewish and Christian scriptures in some form. It isn't. There is exactly one mention of "Lilit" in the scriptures, found in the Book of Isaiah as one of the wild beasts to come to the ruins of Edom alongside wildcats, jackals and goats; modern texts usually translate it as "screech-owl". Otherwise, she originated in Babylonian Jewish folklore as a demon who killed children and birthed other demons. The modern version of the story was by all appearances invented by the Alphabet of Ben Sirach, an 8th Century book of proverbs and stories that may or may not have been satirical. The story caught a lot of popularity since, but it's about as relevant to theology as, say, the story of Faust and Mephistopheles.
Some young-earth creationists who don't try to completely dismiss the existence of dinosaurs often use the description of the "leviathan" to prove men and dinosaurs co-existed. The focus is usually put to a single sentence that compares the beast's tail with cedar trees, with the idea being that while the verses could be describing a mundane large animal such as a rhino or an elephant, neither has a large tree-like tail so the creature must have been a dinosaur. The problem here is twofold — they often claim the verse describes the tail looking like a cedar tree, but in actuality it makes no mention of its appearance, only what its (capable of) doing (Some translations say "sway", others "stiffen", for example). The other issue is that the only types of cedar tree that could be reasonably compared with the tail of a sauropod are native to North America, which is either intentionally ignored or the YEC is assuming that all cedar trees are identical to what they're familiar with. Long story short, the alternative (an elephant whose tail is reacting to the wind) is much more likely as it makes sense in the setting, doesn't require ignoring or altering the actual text, nor raises the problem of ancient people using something they've never seen to describe something else to their contemporaries and readers. And finally, this isn't even going to the theory that due to the mention of the creature's "stones" a bit later, the whole bit may be describing another type of tail entirely. ^note
Mormonism:
- Everybody knows that Mormonism teaches that the Garden of Eden was located in what is now Jackson County, Missouri. Except not really. While a few early Mormons believed this, Joseph Smith wasn't one of them, and the belief isn't official doctrine. Smith actually just prophesied that Jackson County would be the location of a future holy site, which he specifically described as a "New Jerusalem".
- Also: "Mormon" doesn't necessarily mean "Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints". While the CJCLDS is the largest and most well-known religious organization affiliated with the Latter-Day Saints movement, it isn't the only one.
Everyone "knows" that Moses grew up thinking he was the biological son of the Pharaoh's daughter, and didn't learn until adulthood that he was really a Hebrew. That's certainly the way most adaptations portray it. But the Bible never says any such thing; it just says "One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens." As far as the text implies, he always knew he was of Hebrew birth and only the princess's foster son.
Everyone "knows" David killed Goliath with his sling. While that's certainly possible (the text leaves it somewhat ambiguous), people often forget that David also cut off Goliath's head with his own sword after making that famous shot with his sling. Due to the context, it's possible that he just used his sling to knock him unconscious, allowing him to kill him by decapitating him.
Everybody knows that Samson got his superhuman strength from his hair, which is why he lost his strength when his hair was cut. Not quite. In fact: Samson was a Nazirite, a member of an exclusive Hebrew religious order whose members took a vow to abstain from cutting their hair (similar to the practice of kesh observed by Sikhs), as well as to abstain from touching dead bodies and eating food made from grapes. Samson had already broken the other two vows before Delilah's betrayal (he got drunk on wine on multiple occasions, and once grabbed a honeycomb that was nestling in the corpse of a lion), so when Delilah forcibly cut his hair, it caused him to lose God's favor for failing to uphold any of his vows. This is why he didn't regain his strength from letting his hair grow back—he got it by praying to God and acknowledging that he'd let Him down, and asking Him for one final chance.
Everybody knows that "666" is the number of Satan. Except it's not: it's the number of one of the two "Beasts" described in the Book of Revelation, whose arrival will herald the End of the World. The "Beast" in question is usually thought to be The Antichrist, although the book never explicitly says this.
It is often repeated by fundamentalist Evangelicals that the Bible expressly forbids homosexuality. Whether this means the act or the inclination has been hotly debated but it has been largely agreed upon since at least the 1940s that the Bible does not affirm LGBTQIA+ "lifestyles". Some ministries have even based their entire focus on ridding the world of the "gay disease". The problem here is that the Bible could not possibly forbid homosexuality by name, as such a word did not exist until 1868, when Karl-Maria Kertbeny first coined the term. The word itself did not appear in the Bible until the 1950s, and even then in only some translations. While this doesn't settle the debate of whether or not the Christian God approves of LGBTQIA+ actions or inclinations, it does take one of the most commonly used passages (1 Corinthians 6) almost entirely out of the discussion.
- It was also not widely accepted until well into the 20th century that there were such things as men who were only attracted to men or women who were only attracted to women, or men born with female bodies, et al. The idea of men or women who desired romantic intimacy with each other was hardly an idea in biblical times. Soldiers who conquered nations would often humiliate their victims through rape, and some men kept "catamites" or male sex slaves, and assumed dominance over them. There is a strong argument that the passages that seem to be against same-sex relationships (such as Lev. 20:13) are actually speaking of these sorts of arrangements, and not to loving, committed, monogamous same-sex relationships—in short, war crimes, not consensual relationships.
Modern discourse about "the true meaning of Christmas" can easily give one the impression that modern traditions of winter gift-giving (and their associated myths and iconography) are entirely secular in nature, and that they've always been at odds with the "proper" observation of Jesus' birth. Actually, many "secular" Christmas traditions are Christian in origin (although they have their roots in Winter Solstice celebrations that predate Christianity), with some of them being outright started by the Church. Saint Nicholas of Myra (the original basis for Santa Claus) has been a revered figure in the Catholic and Orthodox churches for centuries, with the Dutch holiday of Sinterklaas being explicitly dedicated to him. Similarly: the name "Kris Kringle" is derived from the German legend of the Christkindl (a benevolent apparition of the infant Jesus who brings gifts to children around the Winter Solstice), which is believed to have been popularized by Martin Luther himself.
Everyone knows that Christianity is descended from/is an offshoot off Judaism. It's more complicated than that. Judaism, being such an ancient religion, has gone through various changes throughout its history, with major events like the razing of the first temple and the Babylonian exile having profound effects on the religion. The second and final razing of the temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 78 CE was effectively the "death knell" to traditional ("Second Temple") Judaism as it meant several important rituals could no longer be performed, leading to the emergence of Rabbinical Judaism alongside early Christianity. A case could be made that Judaism and Christianity effectively split off and went their own way after the fall of Second Temple Judaism.
The term "Easter" derives from an ancient Anglo-Saxon goddess named Ēostre. This is repeated so much as fact that most casual observers have no clue that this is very controversial among historians and linguists. It's an explanation that's been around for a long time, first mentioned by the English monk Bede, who died in the year 735. The problem is, Bede is the only source we have for the existence of the goddess Ēostre. He mentioned her as an explanation for why the Anglo-Saxons called April Ēosturmōnaþ ("Easter-month"). There's been some speculation that Bede just made up the goddess to explain the name, though others have pointed out that a Christian monk inventing a fictional pagan goddess for a scholarly work seems unlikely. The more obvious link is with the German word for Easter, Ostern, and the thought is they both derive from root words meaning "east", with the associations of dawn and increasing daylight connecting it to the start of spring. Meanwhile, the occasional claim that the name Easter is somehow connected to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar (frequently mentioned in Chick Tracts) has been thoroughly debunked; it originated in an 1853 anti-Catholic tract by a Scottish minister.
It's often said that the apostle Paul changed his name (from Saul) when he converted to Christianity. However, the book of Acts continues to call him Saul for several chapters after his conversion. The first time he's referred to as Paul is when he travels to the island of Cyprus. Since "Saul" is a Hebrew name and "Paulos" (Παῦλος) is a Greek transliteration of a Latin name, the logical inference is that he went by that name when traveling among Greek-speakers in order to better relate to them.
It is all too often believed that the Bible condemns and prohibits alcohol consumption as a whole. It does not; it specifically condemns drunkenness as unwise debauchery. The fact that the 19th-century temperance movement lobbied for prohibition of alcoholic beverages on the grounds of (carefully selected) verses from the Bible doesn't help.
- On that note, at least since the late 19th century, mega-teetotal Christians have insisted that all of the Bible's references to wine, except for the ones that condemn drunkenness, referred only to grape juice. Not only is this a misconception, it's an anachronism to boot. Non-fermented grape juice was only feasible in 1869, when a Methodist minister named Thomas Bramwell Welch invented a way to pasteurize grape juice to prevent fermentation, as a way to get out of serving wine during communion. Before then, grape juice started fermenting mere minutes after the grapes were pressed, since grape skins are naturally covered in yeast.

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