The Bible is a vast holy book, and a lot of religious people don’t know everything about it. A user asked the forum, “What is something most people don’t know about the Bible?” Here are the top responses.
CRUCIFIXION
“Crucifixion is said to be the worst pain imaginable. That is why we have the word ‘excruciating,’ which derives from the Latin word crux or cruces.”
SETH
“Cain and Abel had a brother named Seth, and no one cared about him.”
MONEY
“The Bible doesn’t say that ‘money is the root of all evil.’ It says, ‘The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.'”
PHARISEES
“Not all the Pharisees opposed or hated Jesus; the ones mentioned in the New Testament that were portrayed as hypocritical and trying to trick Jesus were likely an ‘in-group’ within the Pharisee group, and I think Paul remained a Pharisee even after his conversion. Some Pharisees even defended Jesus.”
ABIMELECH
“There is a good story about a guy named Abimelech who had a rock dropped on his head by a woman. As he was dying, he begged his servant to run him through with his sword so that people would say that a girl didn’t kill him. 9: 52-54.”
BOOK OF ESTHER
“The Book of Esther doesn’t mention God by name. Neither does Song of Songs.”
GO THE EXTRA MILE
“‘Go the extra mile’ is the third call of Jesus in the same passage. Today, we use this saying in the same way we say ‘Give 110%’, but it has a different meaning.
‘If anyone forces you to go one mile, also go the second mile’ is the actual verse, and the ‘anyone’ that Jesus is referring to is Roman soldiers, who would often force the lower classes to carry their armor.
As you can imagine, this was hard for the civilians. Roman law dictated that soldiers could cause people to have their armor for no more than one mile. If the Roman soldiers made people over that one mile, severe punishments were handed out by commanding officers.
Imagine the panic in a Roman soldier’s eyes when he sees the civilian carrying his heavy armor continue walking after the one-mile marker. If his commanding officer weren’t already beating him, he would beg and plead, maybe force the civilians to give up their burden.
The power dynamic switches automatically. By going the extra mile, the civilian reasserts human dignity and takes back the power.
Jesus is showing his followers how to protest and neutralize oppressive systems in these passages. In short, Jesus stands for and with the oppressed. What we think we know about the Bible changes when we read it through this lens.”
MOSES AND THE JEWISH
“Moses and the Jewish people didn’t wander through the desert lost for 40 years right after they escaped Egypt. They made it to the promised land in an average amount of time for walking but were met with armies of the already settled.
Nearly every person demanded to go back to Egypt to live as an enslaved person rather than face certain death in the ‘promised land.’ God said none of the currently living Jews would get to enjoy the promised land, so Moses led them around the desert for 40 years until all the haters had died.
If I remember correctly, Moses himself made God rather mad, so he wasn’t allowed to enter the promised land either. He died outside it directly after 40 years of wandering.”
MARY MAGDALENE
“Despite what many Christians and much of popular culture believe, Mary Magdalene was not a courtesan. She’s just often mixed up with an unnamed ‘female sinner’ who also washed Jesus’s feet with her hair.
Here are some biblical sources:
1) Mary Magdalene is often confused with (or possibly the same as) Mary of Bethany, who washed Jesus with her hair. Mary of Bethany is further confused with a woman ‘who was a sinner’ (often thought to be a courtesan, although it doesn’t say that) who also washed Jesus’s feet with her hair.
Anointing at Bethany (Matthew 26:6-13 and Mark 14:3-9 mention just ‘a woman’ who uses costly ointment to anoint Jesus’s head at the house of Simon the Leper.
2) ‘Sinful Woman’ (Luke 7:36-50) tells of a ‘woman in the city, who was a sinner’ who went to Jesus at the Pharisee’s house and ‘stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair.’
Though she is just called ‘a sinner,’ she is often assumed in churches and popular culture to be a courtesan
3) Mary Magdalene is mentioned many times in many contexts, but a critical passage directly follows the sinful woman passage in Luke (Luke 8:1-3), where she is mentioned as one of several women who accompany Jesus and the disciples.
It says, ‘Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out.’ Presumably, this proximity in mentions contributes to the confusion
4) Jesus Visits Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42) mentions Martha and her sister Mary (who I assumed was, and was taught in church/Sunday school was Mary Magdalene, though this might be wrong: there are a lot of Marys in the Bible.
The Mary in this story is the sister of Martha and Lazarus (Mary of Bethany). Mary sits at Jesus’s feet and listens to him.
5) The Death of Lazarus (John 11:1-44, and again in John 12:1-8) Lazarus of Bethany, brother to Mary and Martha, falls ill. Mary and Martha send to Jesus for help, but before he gets there, Lazarus dies. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead.
In John 11 and John 12, Mary of Bethany is mentioned to have washed Jesus’s feet with costly perfume and her hair. It is the story where Judas complains about the cost of the smell.”
PLAGUES IN EXODUS
“The 10 Plagues in Exodus are all attacks on Egyptian gods. For example, turning the Nile to blood: The Nile was a god to the Egyptians, and then turning it to blood was imagery of killing said God.
Frogs were also considered gods, and when frogs flipped everywhere (Plague Six or something), Egyptians would be horrified to step on one of their gods. Like the Nile, when God cast darkness upon Egypt, it was like killing the sun (Egyptian god Ra).
So, it was huge that God asked the Jews to slaughter a lamb at the first Passover. The lamb was an Egyptian god. God said, ‘Kill this animal that Egyptians consider a god, and paint your doorposts with its blood,’ and everyone knew that the penalty would be death. So God told them to risk their lives to trust that He would deliver them.
Some of the Plagues dealt with animals that symbolized Egyptian gods (e.g., frogs and lambs). Others attacked the powers of Egyptian gods (your God can cure boils? Well, I hope he can because you all have them now).
The last plague involved killing a lamb, which symbolized, I believe, an Egyptian fertility god, and also directly struck Pharoah, who was considered a god, by killing his son.”
SHECHEM
“This is my favorite battle strategy in the Bible. Schechem, a prince, raped Dinah, the daughter of Jacob & Leah. He fell in love with her and asked her father for her hand in marriage afterward.
Schechem’s father told Jacob a marriage between Dinah & Shechem would mean an alliance between their tribes.
Jacob’s sons replied to that offer by insisting that their sister could only marry a circumcised man. If their two tribes are to ally, then all the men must be circumcised. Being stupid & infatuated, Shechem agreed. While all the men were still in pain because they just got their foreskin lopped off, Jacob’s sons attacked and slaughtered everyone.”
PRODIGAL SON
“In the story of the prodigal son, nobody realizes how significant it is that not only did the father take the son back, but he ran out to greet him upon his return. In that culture, grown men were never seen running. It was an embarrassment for a grown man to run to the utmost extreme.
The fact that the father not only took the son back but ran out to him is supposed to illustrate how much God loves us, just like that father loved his son so much he didn’t even care about being seen doing something considered flawed.
GREYHOUND
“The only breed of dog named in the bible is the Greyhound.”
NEPHILIM
“My favorite has to be within Genesis 6:4
‘The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.’
I’m also a huge Diablo fan, so I find this part so in.”
LOT AND HIS FAMILY
“The whole story of Lot and his family. Lots of people know the part about God sending angels to tell him to get out of town cause it’s full of sinners, and he’s gonna burn that down. Then his wife turns around to look and gets turned to salt for whatever reason.
But people don’t know that once in the mountains, Lot’s two daughters are like, oh, the world’s over. Let’s get dad drunk.
Our father is getting old, and there are no men in the whole world to marry us so that we can have children. Come on, let’s get our father drunk so that we can sleep with him and have children by him (Genesis 19:31-32).
Yeah, so they did that and got pregnant, but it turns out that not everyone was dead, just that one city.”
NEW TESTAMENT
“That just the New Testament has more than 10x the number of surviving manuscripts as the Iliad, and all of the manuscripts have a higher accuracy rating, making the Bible the most well-preserved book of all time.”
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This article was originally published on Mrs. Daaku Studio.