Trivia / The Bible

• Adaptation Overdosed: The Bible has been adapted hundreds of times, covering just about every medium there is, which can be expected, since it's the religious text for the world's largest religion. Among the most commonly adapted Bible stories are the stories of Noah, Moses and Jesus.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!:
  • The often-quoted "money is the root of all evil", while technically a valid quote, leaves out a crucial section that changes the meaning. It actually says that the love of money is the root of all evil, or a root of many evils depending on which translation you use.
  • "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." Paul said something vaguely similar, but not quite....
  • "I am all things to all men, that I might win some of them" means going the extra mile. Roman soldiers were entitled to make conquered Jews carry their packs, but only for a mile.
  • "Pride goeth before the fall". Parodied hilariously in Bill Fitzhugh's "Pest Control", as two Colombian drug lords debate semantics and paraphrasing right after they shot a trespasser to death and had his body torn apart by dogs.
  • "Spare the rod and spoil the child" is usually considered a easier-to-remember summation of Proverbs 13:24, "He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him."
  • Mary is not the Queen of Heaven. "The queen of heaven" described in the Bible is an entity that should be ignored if you come away with the most positive possible reading of her, is possibly an enemy of the Jews Mary descended from, and predates Mary by seven hundred years.
  • Nowhere in the Bible will you find the phrase "the lion and the lamb shall lay down together…". That's a paraphrase of Isaiah 11:6, which actually says "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them."
  • Neither will you find "The Lord works in mysterious ways". This may be a simplified version of Romans 11:33, which says, "Oh, how great are God's riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways!"
• Completely Different Title: Happens to some books when translated from Hebrew/Greek to English.
  • In Hebrew, the names of the Torah/Pentateuch books are named after their first lines. Genesis is Bereshit ("In the beginning..."), Exodus is Shemot ("These are the names..."), Leviticus is called Vayikra ("And He Called..."), Numbers is Bamidbar ("In the wilderness..."), and Deuteronomy is Devarim ("Words..."). The English names come from an ancient Greek translation called the Septuagint.
  • Same applies to Lamentations, which is called Eikah ("How...") in Hebrew.
  • The Books of Samuel are called the "Books of Kings" in the Greek Septuagint, and are grouped together with the Books of Kings. This trend caries on in some old-timey Catholic and Orthodox bibles, so instead of "1 Samuel - 2 Samuel - 1 Kings - 2 Kings", it's "1 Kings - 2 Kings - 3 Kings - 4 Kings".
  • The Books of Chronicles has uncertain translations for the title. In Hebrew, it's Dīvrē-hayYāmīm (meaning "The Matter of Days"). When translated into Greek it was rendered Paraleipoménon (meaning "Of Things Omitted" - in reference to things ommitted from Samuel/Kings). "Paralipomenon" is still used in old-timey Catholic and Orthodox bibles, but it's now being phased out. But around the Reformation and onwards, the English-speaking world used the translation "Chronicles".
• Extremely Lengthy Creation: It took centuries to create — although to be fair, it is composed of far more than a single book.
• Fountain of Expies: Jesus. This Very Wiki gives us the Crystal Dragon Jesus and Messianic Archetype tropes; if the authors have encountered Christianity, they can be assumed to be expys. Some of the most well-known, though, include Luke Skywalker and his father, Aslan, and Superman. In Real Life, many individuals have claimed to be His reincarnation.
• God Never Said That:
  • It's popularly assumed that the Roman soldier who pierced Jesus' side to confirm his death had his blindness cured when he touched his eyes with his blood-stained hands. This actually isn't anywhere in the Bible, but comes from a medieval best-seller The Golden Legend. And who would hire a blind soldier anyway?
  • The bit about Mary Magdalene being a harlot. She was actually a former victim of demon possession, while the harlot was from another passage. Also the bit about her being in love with Jesus, which might qualify as one of the oldest examples of Shipping by the fandom.
  • Many other notions that have become canon in modern Biblical religions (both Christianity and Judaism) actually never appeared in the Bible, or require an extremely strained reading of Scripture to arrive at. The pre-tribulation Rapture was invented (or at least popularized) by John Darby in the 19th century. Etc.
  • The popular phrase "God helps those who help themselves" is not found in the Bible. Nor was it said by Benjamin Franklin, the most common other source. Variants are found in the writings of Ancient Greek thinkers and it was first encountered in its modern phrasing in the work of Algernon Sidney, a British soldier, politician, and anti-Monarchist political theorist. And it was Billie Holiday who said another variant, "God bless the child that's got its own."
• Life Imitates Art: A lot of the doomsday prophecies in Book of Revelation and similar books appear to parallel the commonly believed scenario/story as to how the Dinosaurs went extinct.
  • Wormwood being described as a celestial body falling to Earth can obviously be compared to the asteroid that fell to Earth and bootstrapped the dinosaurs' judgement day.
  • The world shaking to its core during the start of many apocalypse scenarios can be thought similarly to the magnitude 11 earthquake that ripped apart entire mountains and islands not long after impact.
  • The ring of megatsunamis drowning entire archipelagos and shorelines created by the Collison could resemble a real life Great Flood ala Noah's Ark.
  • The global firestorm that razes the earth a few days after the impact is similar to many depictions of rapture involving the world being set on fire as the demons of hell erupt from the Earth much like how toxic chemicals from below the earth were displaced into the surface.
  • The world going dark from the soot and debris covering the atmosphere is reminiscent of the second to last plague from the Book of Exodus.
  • Also involving wormwood, it's highly likely that the water turning bitter after wormwood fell to earth was much like how common watering holes were poisoned following the aftermath of the collision releasing toxic chemicals as well as the drastic acidification of the ocean that accompanied it.
• Referenced by...:
  • Anakin Skywalker of Star Wars fame, was conceived by a Sentient Cosmic Force to fulfill a prophecy and usher in a New Era.
  • The Big Good of Warhammer 40,000 (well, kinda) is a half-god, half-man whose life and works are an unattainable pinnacle, but you're supposed to try and emulate him regardless. The Horus Heresy even directly references the Fall of Lucifer-The Emperor's favorite subordinate becomes prideful and takes a swing at the boss. After he gets curbstomped, all his friends jump ship and are now running around making trouble for everyone else.
  • We ourselves have catalogued a list of Biblical Motifs.
• Science Marches On: The concept of the world being a few thousand years old—a tenet of Young Earth Creationism—stems from early attempts to date the age of the Earth by various scholars and historians, who used known history in conjunction with the Bible (note that Genesis, in the original Hebrew, doesn't give a specific date or rate of creation). Later on, the science of geology developed, and scientists found out that the world is much, much older than they thought...
• Word of Dante: Obviously, The Divine Comedy. But also...
  • The whole "Lucifer = Satan" thing.
  • The Antichrist/'false messiah' concept. Revelation describes a despot ruler and his false prophet, but there's nothing about him actually claiming to be any kind of Jewish messiah.
  • Judas' motives (e.g. claiming he was a Miser Advisor) for telling Jesus that they could have sold the oil and used the funds for the benefit of the poor.
  • The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge being an apple.
  • The whole story of Lilith. It originated not from any Biblical text, but from a medieval satire called the Alphabet of Sirach. Eventually some people didn't realize it's satire and assumed the story was removed from the Bible.
  • Mary being impregnated at the age of 12 or 14. The Bible makes no mention of the age of Mary at any point. This age comes from the Protoevangelum of James - a book written over 100 years after Jesus.
  • The names of the three magi - Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar - and the idea that there were three of them at all. The Bible never mentions their names, and it doesn't say how many there were either. It was assumed there were three of them because they brought three gifts.
• Word of Saint Paul: Orthodox and Catholic Christians use historical extra-biblical tradition and history gathered over centuries, as well as bishops to teach and define Biblical texts to form their faith teachings. Protestant Christianity generally takes the Bible alone as the sole source of divine information. A few, such as the Mormons, Take a Third Option with tomes of their own to supplement.

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