40 idioms
As western culture seeks to dissociate itself from its Christian heritage (albeit while holding onto Christian values), a shared memory of the stories told in the book behind that heritage is being lost.
With that, we have lost many of the images and idioms conveyed in those stories. In some cases this just results in a loss of the English language’s richness: Beyonce fans can enjoy the Destiny’s Child’s Intro (The Writing’s on the Wall) without understanding the phrase’s origins in iron age Babylon (though Radiohead’s Spectre should probably have been preferred to Sam Smith’s The Writing’s on the Wall regardless of etymological concerns), but Gen Z’ers are much less likely to have a Damascus moment than the generations before them.
But more is at stake. Just before the evacuation of Dunkirk, a soldier could reportedy send a telegram that said simply, “but if not”, trusting his readers to make the connection to the King James Bible:
If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up. (Daniel 3:17-18, KJV)
Just as Daniel’s friends could trust both in the possibility of God’s deliverance from trial, and the certainty of his goodness whether or not they were delivered from trial, so the soldier could assert his williningess to fight on for his country. It seems hard now to picture a soldier either using those words, or having those sentiments. With the loss of our Biblical heritage, we are losing the Biblical values that shaped our civilisation. More importantly, we are losing our understanding of the gospel of Christ, whose sacrifice transformed the world and can transform us.
This website introduces a few dozen phrases inherited from the Bible, and presents them in their original context. We start at the beginning.