‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth’: so begins the Book of Genesis and, with it, the Old Testament, and, with that, the Bible. But where did this Creation story come from, ‘in the beginning’? How was it shaped? Did it rely on earlier accounts? And is […]
The term ‘scapegoat’ is well-known: it refers to an innocent person who has to carry the blame for something on behalf of other people. But where does the term ‘scapegoat’ originate? ‘Scapegoating’ originates in the Bible, in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, which tells of how two goats would […]
The phrase ‘the writing is on the wall’ is now often used to describe an impending disaster. But where does it originate? It actually has its roots in the story of Belshazzar’s feast from the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament. But who Belshazzar was, and what this famous […]
The story of how the sun stood still during one of Joshua’s battles is well-known, although that battle it was and why the sun might have stood still are questions whose answers are less well-known, and, in the case of the ‘why’ question, may be ultimately unanswerable altogether.
Who is being described here, in this Bible verse? For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb This is from the Book of Judges 13:5, in which the birth […]