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FAMOUS EVENTS THAT NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED

BY BENITO CERENO/UPDATED: JUNE 15, 2022 7:55 AM EDT

The ancient Greek writer Herodotus had two nicknames, “the father of history” and “the father of lies,” and the people who called him by these names used them to mean the same thing. History as we receive it is often skewed by various biases and propagandistic impulses; it is, as the saying goes, written by the winners.

As it turns out, a lot of things you think you know about history are just flat-out wrong. Not even just that some elements have been exaggerated or downplayed; they just completely didn’t happen at all. Some of the foundational stories of American — and even Western — culture are complete fabrications meant to pass on some greater truth, or in some cases to achieve some more sinister purpose.

This list takes a look at events from across history that embody the message from Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried, that “a thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.”

PAUL REVERE’S MIDNIGHT RIDE
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“Listen, my children, and you shall hear / Of the made-up ride of Paul Revere!” The legendary image of Paul Revere as a lone rider blasting through the Massachusetts countryside warning American colonials that the British were coming has its origins in an 1860 poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which he wrote primarily to warn America that it was in danger of breaking apart. See? Like Paul Revere gave out a warning, Longfellow was also issuing a warning. Parallelism.

Anyway, as Biography.com lays out, Longfellow greatly rearranged and simplified much of the real historical narrative of the night of April 18, 1775. For one thing, Paul Revere didn’t receive the famous “one if by land, two if by sea” lantern signals — he sent them. He wasn’t a solo rider; he was just one part of a larger warning system including Dr. Samuel Prescott, who actually warned the militia at Lexington and Concord after Revere was arrested outside Lexington. He didn’t shout “The British are coming!” either. The one quote we have from him was his reply to someone telling him he was making too much noise: “Noise! You’ll have noise enough before long! The regulars are coming out!” Revere was important — and a hero — but his deeds have been much exaggerated.

So why did Longfellow turn Paul Revere into his solo hero? Probably because “Listen, my children, and you shall hear / Of the midnight ride of Samuel Prescott” doesn’t rhyme.

STOCK TRADERS JUMPING TO THEIR DEATHS AFTER THE 1929 MARKET CRASH
Wikipedia
On October 29, 1929, a day that would be known as Black Tuesday, the stock market crashed at an unprecedented rate, losing billions of dollars of value. This market collapse, together with increased unemployment and bank failures, led to what was then the longest and most significant economic downturn in history, the Great Depression.

One of the major causes of the market crash was the fact that a decade of speculation (and many other confusing factors that you don’t come to a listicle to learn about) had inflated the market. The point is there were a lot of investors whose lives were tied up in these bad investments who suddenly found that not only was all their money gone, they had also screwed up the world so bad that it would take the whole globe agreeing to kill Adolf Hitler to get us out of it.

As such, the popular notion, even at the time of the Depression, was that stockbrokers on Wall Street committed suicide en masse by jumping out of buildings on the day of the crash, to the point that Will Rogers joked that you had to stand in line for a free window. The idea is popular enough to have inspired a bizarre arcade game in 1982 in which you catch suicidal investors falling from the sky. However, according to The Straight Dope, suicide rates did not actually spike during October 1929, and those investors who did kill themselves largely didn’t do so by jumping out windows.

THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT
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The story of the exodus is one of the central stories of Judaism, telling how the people of Israel were freed from slavery in Egypt by God, entering into a covenant with him and ultimately leading to their arrival in the promised land. The story is spread out over the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, four of the five books of the Torah, the central scriptures of the Jewish faith.

The story might be familiar to you, as it is foundational to much of Western culture. The Jewish people are held in slavery in Egypt, Moses tells the Pharaoh “let my people go,” there are some plagues, they walk across the sea, they wander in the desert, etc. If you need more reminders, you can check out the SparkNotes.

At any rate, while it might be easy to dismiss the more magical aspects of the story (sticks turning into snakes, angels of death, waterbending, and so on), you might similarly conclude that, well, it’s likely that the Jewish people were held in servitude in Egypt for a while (no, they did not build the pyramids) and then escaped or were let go and wandered around looking for a place to settle. However, as Rabbi David Wolpe points out, there is no direct archaeological evidence that the Israelites were ever in Sinai. Double however, he also points out quite rightly that the historical fact of the situation pales in the face of the emotional and spiritual truth the story provides people.

GEORGE WASHINGTON AND THE CHERRY TREE
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If you know one thing about George Washington, it’s likely that he was the first American president. If you know another, it might be that his face is on money and/or Mount Rushmore. A third thing might be that he had wooden teeth (which is false, by the way). If you’re a big shot who can hold five facts in your head at one time, you might also know the story of the cherry tree, which goes as follows:

As a child, George Washington was given a hatchet as a gift by his father. Then he went and took his ax and gave a cherry tree thirty whacks. When he found what he had done, George gave his father thirty-one. No, wait. Scratch that last part. When George’s father discovered his son had chopped at his cherry tree, the future president replied, “I cannot tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet.”

However, as The Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington points out, that didn’t happen. The story was introduced in the fifth edition of a biography of Washington from 1806 by an author named Mason Locke Weems, who wanted to tie Washington’s political success to a life of virtue. The book was a bestseller, and now the story is everywhere. The irony of crafting a dishonest story in order to impart the value of a life of honesty was apparently lost on Weems, who was probably too busy rolling around in dollar bills from his book sales to even think about it.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS’S DISCOVERY OF AMERICA
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Pretty much every school child in America learns on their first day of history class that America was discovered by the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, who, in 1492, sailed the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria across the Atlantic Ocean in an attempt to reach Asia and subsequently prove that the world was round.

Except, as the Washington Post points out, almost none of that is true. For one thing, it had been well known since the time of ancient Greece that the Earth is round; Columbus, however, did think it was smaller than it actually is thanks to some bad math. He definitely didn’t “discover” America: even setting aside the fact that there were thousands of people already living there, he wasn’t even the first European to land in the Western Hemisphere, either. Leif Erikson is believed to have landed and made a settlement in North America 500 years prior. Also, of course, Columbus never set foot on the soild of the North American mainland, but only various islands in the Caribbean. Heck, his ships weren’t even named the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. You have been soundly lied to.

NERO FIDDLING WHILE ROME BURNED
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An enormous fire hit the city of Rome during the early days of its empire, in 64 C.E. The fire burned for six days and consumed 70 percent of the city, leaving about half the people without homes. Popular legend states that the emperor Nero, who always fancied himself to be a great artist (to the extent that his dying words were allegedly, “Qualis artifex pereo,” or “What an artist dies in me!”) spent the time during the fire playing music and singing about Rome’s destruction. This story gave rise to the popular expression, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned,” which has gone on to describe anyone who acts ineffectually during a time of crisis.

The first part of the saying is easy enough to debunk: as History points out, the fiddle did not exist until about a thousand years later. If Nero was playing anything at all, it would have been a cithara, an instrument similar to a lyre whose name is the source of our word “guitar.” However, there’s no evidence he was cithara-ing while Rome burned either. The closest report comes from the Roman historian Tacitus, who says there were claims that Nero sang about the destruction of Troy during the fire, but even Tacitus found this story spurious.

The fact is, though, that Nero was still kind of a jerk about the fire even if he didn’t fiddle during it. He blamed the whole thing on the still-obscure religious cult called Christians and then built a big house for himself on the ruins.

MARIE ANTOINETTE’S SUGGESTION TO ‘LET THEM EAT CAKE’
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Why did the angry peasant class of the French revolution cut off the head of their queen, Marie-Antoinette? According to popular knowledge, it was because she said they should eat cake.

The story goes that someone told the queen that the people of France had no bread, to which she responded, “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche,” or “let them eat cake.” Well, no. That actually means “let them eat brioche,” which frequent Food Network viewers or IHOP patrons will know is just a fancy, more expensive bread. The effect is the same, but you might be picturing it wrong. The joke is that it’s exactly the kind of thing an out-of-touch, oblivious person would say, like complaining that young people crushed by debt aren’t buying enough napkins. (“Millennials are killing the cake industry,” says queen.)

But if you have picked up on the premise of this article by now, you probably realize that there is no historical evidence that Marie Antoinette ever said any such thing. Encyclopedia Britannica explains that variations of that story used to laugh at rich people had existed around the world in other languages for centuries before Marie-Antoinette was even born. The first occurrence in print of the French-language “brioche” version was in a book by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who attributes the quote to an anonymous princess. Marie-Antoinette was a princess at the time, but too young for anyone to care about her bread opinions. Rousseau-inspired revolutionaries likely applied her name to the story as a form of propaganda.

BEN FRANKLIN’S KITE EXPERIMENT
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One of the best known stories of America’s founding fathers is that of inventor-statesman-diplomat-ladies’ man Ben Franklin discovering electricity by flying a kite with a key tied to it in a storm. The kite is struck by lightning, Franklin touches the key, gets shocked, and probably says something like, “Wow, it turns out electricity exists!” There are, of course, more reasonable claims about this story, namely that he was simply proving that lightning was electrical in nature, and so on.

But, as Mental Floss explains, the experiment definitely didn’t happen that way, if it even happened at all. Most likely, the kite business was just a thought experiment that Franklin devised to determine whether lightning was indeed electricity (the existence of which people already knew about), proposing the idea in a letter to a friend. When the letter was published in France, French scientist Thomas-Francois Dalibard performed an experiment with a lightning rod proving Franklin’s hypothesis correct.

Whether or not Franklin subsequently flew a kite in a lightning storm is a matter of some debate among historians. What is not up for debate, however, is the bit about him touching a charged key and getting a shock. Thanks to an experiment performed by the Mythbusters, we know that even a much less powerful charge than an actual lightning strike would have fried Old Ben to a crisp. That said, despite all the mythery here, it is true that Franklin is responsible for proving that lightning and electricity are the same phenomenon.

MARTIN LUTHER NAILING HIS 95 THESES TO THE CHURCH DOOR
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The story goes that on All Hallows’ Eve in 1517, an obscure monk named Martin Luther from the small German town of Wittenburg strolled up to the Castle Church and hammered to the door a list of his soon-to-be-famous 95 theses, which laid out grievances with the Catholic church, primarily centered on the sale of indulgences (more or less the church exchanging forgiveness of sin for money). This bold act kicked off the Protestant Reformation and changed the world.

Is it real, though? Did this brassy monk stroll up to the church door, hammer in hand, and ring out revolution across the land? Nah, says Luther researcher Erwin Iserloh. This story was first written by someone who could not possibly have witnessed it, and first published after Luther died, having gone his whole life without mentioning this story to anyone. Additionally, Luther, who to his final breath considered himself a good and loyal Catholic, would not have done anything to so dramatically provoke his superiors in the church hierarchy. (This obviously did not work out.) So how did Martin Luther actually deliver his 95 theses to church leaders asking them to cease the sale of indulgences? Well, most likely though a letter with the theses attached. But the image of a man nailing his complaints to the door of a church is so striking that it won’t likely be replaced by a man mailing a letter.

THE GULF OF TONKIN INCIDENT
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Not all fake historical events happened (or, well, didn’t happen) in the distant past. It’s easy to say, “Well, of course people believed these fake stories in falcon times. They didn’t even have Snopes to fact-check.” But there are major, world-shaking events reported in living memory that completely, actually, weirdly didn’t happen.

One such occurrence was the Gulf of Tonkin incident, a confrontation between ships in the Gulf of Tonkin near North Vietnam that led to the U.S. becoming more directly involved in the Vietnam War, which you may remember as the setting of the middle part of Forrest Gump. According to reports, on two separate occasions, an American destroyer was pursued and attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in 1964. The result of these reports was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized President Johnson to more or less go buckwild on Vietnam, which, as you know, turned out just super, super well. (It did not.)

Great news, everyone: We were all punked. As reported by the U.S. Naval Institute, declassified documents have revealed that in the initial encounter, the U.S. ship fired the first (warning) shots but never reported that, making the Vietnamese look more like aggressors. The second incident never even happened at all. Instead, U.S. ships motored around in a storm shooting torpedoes at tall waves, which could look like ships on radar, for hours. It was initially reported as an attack to the higher-ups, but when they realized the mistake, they decided to go with it anyway. Oh, well. At least no one ever again exaggerated a foreign threat in order to push the U.S. into a war, right? Right?

LADY GODIVA’S NAKED RIDE
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The story is pretty well known: Lady Godiva, the wife of Leofric, the lord of Coventry, England, felt sympathy for the exorbitant tax burden placed on the peasantry of the medieval town. Leofric tells his pleading wife that he will lower taxes when she rides naked through the town, which she does. In a side element to that tale, out of respect, all of the villagers stay indoors while she rides, except for one randy boy named Tom who decided to take a look, getting struck blind and inspiring the phrase “peeping Tom” at the same time. Also apparently chocolate was involved in some way? Maybe that last part is wrong.

Well, actually, most of it is probably wrong. The story is based on a real person, a woman named Godifu (the Anglo-Saxon name that the Latin “Godiva” comes from) who was the wife of Leofric, the real count of Coventry. But as Harvard Magazine explains, historians of the time did not indicate there was anything notable about this woman outside of being married to an important man, and you’d think “Oh yeah, there was that one time she and a horse streaked the town to lower taxes” would have garnered a mention. It wasn’t until two centuries later that monks started recording this legend, likely as a way of explaining certain historical acts of generosity on the part of Leofric, later spread even more via poems and artists looking for classy reasons (like history) to paint naked ladies.

ROMULUS AT ROME
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Who founded Rome? Most schoolchildren could answer this question: It was Romulus, after whom Rome was named. He had a twin brother, Remus, whom he killed after Remus jumped over the still-in-progress walls of Rome because Romulus didn’t like the metaphorical precedent his brother was setting. You might also have heard that the two were already at loggerheads fighting over who had seen the more important birds. Even if you didn’t know that part, you probably know they were raised by a wolf who nursed them as babies. Their father, of course, was the god Mars, and Romulus himself became the god Quirinus after he disappeared in a magical whirlwind to save him from the murderous jealousy of Roman senators.

How far into that paragraph did you get before you realized that maybe — just maybe — Romulus and Remus were not actually real? As Theodor Mommsen told the New York Times, the legendary account of Rome’s foundation in 753 B.C. is “out of the question.” Romulus was almost certainly a legendary figure, whose name was likely a back-formation from the name Rome, not vice versa. Despite the Times’ coverage of the fringe beliefs of archaeologist Andrea Carandini that excavations uncovering signs of Roman settlement in the eighth century B.C. (including a cave under the Palatine Hill that tradition says is where Romulus and Remus gobbled up wolf milk), the overwhelming scholarly consensus is that the presence of, like, a wall does not prove that Rome’s most famous wolf boys were a real thing.

ET TU, BRUTE?
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All things considered, Shakespeare’s famous play Julius Caesar is actually a pretty decently accurate depiction of the events leading up to and following the assassination of the last great leader of Republican Rome prior to the emergence of the empire under Caesar’s adopted son Octavian, later known as Augustus. Billy Shakes used ancient historians Plutarch and Suetonius as his primary sources for the broad strokes and just kind of jazzed their version of events up a bit. There are definitely inaccuracies propagated by the play, however: The soothsayer (who was real) didn’t say “beware the Ides of March,” for example, and Shakespeare (like Plutarch before him) really undersells the importance of Decimus.

One notable dramatic change that Shakespeare makes comes with what is arguably the play’s most iconic line, which in a play full of iconic lines — the aforementioned “beware the Ides of March,” “let slip the dogs of war,” “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears,” and the line that, for better or worse, gave us “the fault in our stars” — is really saying something. In Shakespeare’s version of events, the dying Caesar stops fighting his attackers when he sees his friend Brutus is among his killers, gasping out, “Et tu, Brute?” which has become the go-to interjection for those suffering betrayal. According to Suetonius, some bystanders said Caesar intoned the Greek “Kai su, teknon? (You too, my child?)” but Suetonius and Plutarch both agree that history’s most famous soldier was probably too busy fighting back to actually chime in with history’s most famous dying words.

THE NAKED TRUTH
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You might not know the beginning of the story: The tyrant Hiero suspects that a golden crown he commissioned might not be pure gold due to the machinations of a greedy goldsmith, so he commands a local mathematician to prove the crown has been laced with silver. You probably know the rest, though: That mathematician, Archimedes, is pondering the problem when he sits down in the bath. The water rising around him causes him to realize that he can measure volume with water displacement, and then he runs naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting “Eureka!” or “I’ve found it!”

This story has led to the word “eureka” being a common expression for discovery and epiphany; it’s even the state motto of California thanks to its long association with the gold rush. There is, of course, just one problem: Archimedes never said this. Well, okay, sure, yes, he probably said the words “I found it” at some point in his life. He just didn’t do it in what was likely history’s only math-inspired streaking session. As Scientific American points out, there is no record of this story until it’s told by Archimedes fanboy Vitruvius, almost 200 years after it is supposed to have happened. Even for Galileo, this story didn’t pass the smell test, as he knew a scientist like Archimedes would have had more accurate ways of making such a measurement. It’s hard to keep a good story about nudity and displacement down once it pops up, though. People just love nudity and displacement.

THE GRAVITY OF THE SITUATION
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The image is an indelible one, indeed one of the best known in science history: A young Isaac Newton sits under an apple tree when suddenly an apple drops on his head, and presumably as soon as he stops hollering at the tree, he has discovered gravity, thereby ensuring his place in history and a legacy of having fruit-and-cake snacks named after him. (That last bit is a joke; let’s not spread more myths in a list busting myths, shall we? The Fig Newton was actually named after a city in Massachusetts.)

But while the image of an apple wanging Isaac Newton on his be-wigged head has come to be considered the quintessence of the “aha!” moment, things didn’t happen exactly that way. As History relates, Newton was forced to leave Cambridge University in 1665 thanks to a little bit of plague going around. He returned to his childhood home of Woolsthorpe Manor and, while wandering through its orchard, saw an apple fall from a tree and drop to the ground. This caused him to ponder why an apple, as well as other things like cats and pumpkins and buckets of sand, always fall down and not up or sideways or whatever. (Was he high at the time? History has no answers on this point.) This led him to develop his theory of universal gravitation, and fame awaited.

So. Did he discover gravity because of a falling apple? Yes. Did it bonk his bean? No. Is this splitting hairs? Only history can judge.

HORSED TO DEATH
Johann Baptist von Lampi/Wikipedia
Look, here’s some facts up top: Catherine the Great was a German princess who gained control of Russia by staging a coup against her own maniacal husband and making herself empress. From there, she not only enriched Russia by building schools, writing laws, and winning wars, she also protected her vast country from invasion and annexation by more powerful European neighbors such that Russia prospered to a degree unmatched by most rulers before or since. Catherine the Great was, in short, pretty boss.

And yet the only thing you probably “know” about her is that she died trying to do the nasty with a horse. How dare you. Well, more accurately, how dare generations of rumor-spreaders going back to her own lifetime. Accusations that Catherine’s insatiable sexual appetite was at the heart of her political success were incredibly common during her time, attempting to undercut her political ability as a woman by showing her to be some ungodly freak of nature. Such tales only grew upon her death, with the intent being to show that her unbridled desire (pun moderately intended) for sex had ultimately led to her own destruction, crushed when a horse fell out of a sex swing.

Snopes has some more facts for you: Catherine the Great died of natural causes, alone and with no horses in the vicinity. November 5, 1796, she drank some coffee and sat down to write. Three hours later, she was found on the floor, having suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. Take that horse talk back to the barn where it belongs.

DEADLY SANDWICH
Wikipedia
“Mama” Cass Elliot was a singer and actress probably best known for being a member of The Mamas & the Papas, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame group best known for the songs “California Dreamin'” and “Monday, Monday.” Following that group’s breakup, Mama Cass would release five solo albums and make numerous TV appearances. Most importantly, in 1973, she teamed up with Scooby and the gang to stop the Green Glob Ghosts from haunting the Sugarplum Candy Factory.

Sadly, Mama Cass passed away on July 29, 1974, at the tragically young age of 33. Following her death there was no shortage of increasingly buckwild theories surrounding the circumstances: that she died of a drug overdose, that the FBI assassinated her, that she was pregnant with John Lennon’s baby, and so on. But no rumor has plagued the public consciousness more than the idea that Mama Cass died from choking on a ham sandwich.

As Snopes points out, this story has a certain prurient interest for those who would want to shame Elliot for her weight: They could say she died from gluttony, she died eating the most pedestrian thing ever, she died while ironically eating ham like a pig. This story has its origins in a hasty, inaccurate assessment by the first doctor on the scene. In fact, Elliot had no food in her windpipe (and no drugs in her system) and had died from a heart attack related to fluctuations in her weight from constant crash diets. Let the gross sandwich myth die a shameful death.

TIMELY TRAINS
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Sure, yes, Benito Mussolini was a brutal, Machiavellian dictator whose fascist regime had no underlying philosophy other than to use violence, deception, and terror to subjugate the people of Italy under the heel of its nationalist leader, but hey, at least he made the trains run on time.

Or did he? Nah. He didn’t.

As Snopes explains, “fascist efficiency” was a myth propagated by Mussolini and his followers to engender the support of the people so he could, of course, shore up more power. The notion that Mussolini’s policies were responsible for Italian trains being reliable and punctual was a rumor spread by the fascists to convince people that fascism was a system that was good for them and benefited them in concrete, everyday ways.

The fact of the matter is that while the Italian rail system had in fact fallen into disrepair during World War I, most of the repairs and improvements that happened were done in the 1920s before Mussolini rose to power, though he was happy to take credit for them. That said, the trains didn’t even run on time despite these non-Mussolini repairs. People who lived in Italy at the time have widely attested to the fact that Mussolini’s far-famed railway punctuality was a bunch of bologna (this is an Italy pun). So next time anyone tries to devil’s advocate their way into telling you that fascism is at least efficient, give them the boot (this is another Italy joke).

BEES?! BEADS!
Alfred Fredericks/Wikipedia
These days, real estate in Manhattan goes for over $1,700 a square foot, but one of the most commonly repeated stories from America’s colonial history says the whole shebang was sold by the local Native American tribes to Dutch colonists for a mere $24. And not even $24 cash. They say it was beads. How many beads can you buy for $24? That’s gotta be, like, at least 70, 75 beads? The point is that the story is meant to illustrate what a historically bad deal the Native Americans got, getting some trinkets in exchange for what is now some of the most valuable real estate in the world.

Anyway, that’s not exactly what happened. As Mental Floss points out, the truth is a lot more complicated. For one thing, that $24 figure has not been adjusted for inflation since historians first reported in in the 19th century. These days the total would be about $1,000. Still not a fair price by any stretch, but not quite as low as the story goes. Additionally, the original deed of sale has been lost, so we don’t know exactly what goods were traded, but the deed from the sale of Staten Island might give us an idea: clothing, gunpowder, kettles, lead, axes, knives, and other tools that would have certainly been more useful than beads. Lastly, the Natives most likely saw this sale as giving usage rights to the Dutch, not relinquishing the land wholesale. Unfortunately, even this modestly better bargain didn’t work out great for them, either.

SOMETHING DOESN’T ADD UP
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If you ever failed a test, especially a math test, as a child, there’s a chance some adult told you to cheer up because even Albert Einstein failed math as a kid. The lesson, supposedly, is that even though you don’t know the difference between a trapezoid and a rhombus now, one day you could have literally some of the most important ideas of all time and revolutionize physics forever. Maybe, in fact, your inability to do long division is a good sign?

Well, the Washington Post hates to be the bearer of bad news, but it seems that young Einstein’s legendarily poor elementary school performance has been somewhat overblown. He in fact got very good grades in school, though he bristled at their rote methods of teaching. By age 11 he was studying college physics texts and at 13 talking up how much he loved Immanuel Kant. Unless you can boast the same, your F in math might just literally mean you’re bad at math.

Did Einstein fail anything, though? He did! He failed the entrance exam to Zurich Polytechnic the first time he took it, when he was still 16, almost two years away from graduating high school. But it turns out the reason he failed was because the exam was in French, a language he had barely studied. But while he had trouble with the language and biology sections, there was one part he still aced. Yeah, it was math. Young Einstein definitely knew his trapezoids from his rhombuses.

MISTER WORLDWIDE
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Who was the first person to sail all the way around the world? Chances are good you said Ferdinand Magellan. Chances are also okay that you just shrugged and said Christopher Columbus (though it’s important to remember he actually only made it halfway around and tried to convince everyone that he had made it the whole way by calling Haiti “India”). Chances are actually mega good that you said “Who cares? I wish you would just tell me what the cast of The Good Place looks like now” and continued scrolling. But let’s get back to Ferdinand Magellan. He’s the guy that tends to get credit in history books and trivia flashcards for being the first person to circumnavigate the globe.

But, as History says, Ferdinand Magellan was just almost-the-first to circumnavigate the globe. You see, while Magellan set out in 1519 and managed to lead his dudes across the Atlantic, through South America, and over most of the Pacific Ocean, he got killed by natives in the Philippines during a scuffle there. So while it’s true that his ship made it back to Spain in 1522, Magellan was not there to cross the finish line. In fact, only 18 of Magellan’s original crew of 260 men made it back home. It’s probably better to give the credit to Juan Sebastian Elcano, who took over command after Magellan’s death, though History argues for Magellan’s Malay slave Enrique, who may have completed the journey in a piecemeal fashion before any European.

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BIBLE MYSTERIES THAT REMAIN UNSOLVED
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BY KATHY BENJAMIN/MAY 30, 2019 11:24 AM EDT
Considering the Bible is based around some pretty mystical ideas, it’s surprisingly grounded in reality in other ways. It says, for example, exactly how big Noah’s ark was, what the Ark of the Covenant looked like, and has endless lists of who begat whom. Jesus gets four whole books that cover his relatively short ministry, and they include details about locations, family relationships, even clothing. But despite all the specific information, there is still room for plenty of mystery.

Sometimes the Bible just leaves out information that seems important and would be really helpful to scholars. Other times the information is there and made sense to readers at some point, but our understanding has been lost to history. Perhaps most famously, there are objects mentioned in the Bible that disappeared at some point, and people are still looking for them today. But despite all the interest, there are still plenty of biblical mysteries that haven’t been solved.

WHERE IS THE ARK OF THE COVENANT?
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The Ark of the Covenant was an extremely fancy box used to hold the original tablets with the Ten Commandments engraved on them. It was supposed to have incredible powers, and killed anyone who touched it or looked inside (as seen in the documentary Raiders of the Lost Ark). But this unbelievably important and powerful object went missing when the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem in 587 B.C., and no one knows what happened to it.

According to History, one theory is that the Ark was moved safely to Egypt before the sacking. From there, it supposedly made its way to Aksum in Ethiopia. And that’s where it is today. Mystery solved, right? Not exactly. While Smithsonian says a monastery in Aksum does claim to have the Ark (Ethiopians believe the Ark arrived well before the sacking of Jerusalem, brought back in secret by the illegitimate son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba) no one gets to see it. Everyone just has to take their word for it. That includes, bizarrely, even the head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The only person allowed to see the Ark is a single, virgin monk. After he is selected for this special position, he enters the Ark’s compound (above) to guard it, then never leaves again. His job is to pray constantly and burn incense. He’s there until he dies, when another guy gets the gig. The rest of the world is apparently never going to get proof one way or the other.

WHERE DID THE LOST TRIBES OF ISRAEL GO?
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After Moses died, the Jews divided into a dozen tribes, each led by a different guy. Two of those tribes stuck around, but according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the other 10 were conquered by the Assyrians in 721 B.C. Logic says the members probably just assimilated with the new group over time, and that’s why they disappear from history as distinct entities. But there are modern people in far-flung places claiming to be direct descendants of some of these Lost Tribes.

Bible Odyssey says Richard Brothers wrote in 1794 that England was the home of the Lost Tribes, and he was their prophet. Despite the fact he was writing this from an insane asylum, a bunch of people got onboard with the idea. PBS says the Japanese as a whole are also supposed to be a Lost Tribe, as well as groups in China, Afghanistan, the Crimea, the Caucasus, Kenya, Zimbabwe (pictured), Nigeria, Armenia, Persia, Central Asia, North Siberia, West Africa, Peru, South America, Australia, and Ireland. The claim of a sect of Ethiopian Jews is taken seriously by Israel, and most of them live there now. Many people have said Native Americans are descended from the Lost Tribes, most famously Joseph Smith, who made it a key part of Mormon history.

The people with the most evidence they may be a Lost Tribe are a group of Jews in India. A genetic study in 2016 found they have some genes unrelated to other Indians, but similar to many Jews.

WHAT YEAR WAS JESUS BORN?
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Theoretically, Jesus’ birth year should be simple to pinpoint. Luke is very clear that Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem because of a Roman census. He also says Herod was king at the time. According to Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, there was a census in Judea in (what we now call) 6 A.D.; the only problem is Herod had been dead for 10 years at that point. Since the two events don’t overlap, which one should be used to pinpoint when Jesus was born? Most Bible scholars pick Herod’s reign and place Jesus’ birth between 7 and 4 B.C.

The other Biblical clue to the time of Jesus’ birth is the apparently extremely noticeable star that showed up. But as Historic Mysteries points out, there is no Greek, Roman, or Babylonian record of any weird astronomical activity during those years. If Jesus’ birth is based on something happening in the sky, there are various other options. 12-11 B.C. is a possibility because of the appearance of Halley’s comet. There was a local census at that time, and the historical record shows the comet was seen in the right area. Live Science reports there was another visible comet that was very slow moving 5 B.C. that was noted by Chinese observers. Or the star might not have been a comet at all. One astronomer argued the “star” was a conjunction of Venus and Jupiter in 2 B.C., while others say it was one between Saturn and Jupiter in 7 B.C.

WHAT DID JESUS DO DURING HIS “LOST YEARS”?
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The time between Jesus’ birth and when he starts preaching around age 30 is virtually ignored in the four gospels. Obviously, lots of people throughout history wanted to know what Jesus did in those “lost years.” There is absolutely zero evidence, but that didn’t stop some individuals from coming up with outlandish theories.

SBS found despite coming from a working-class family in the Middle East, Jesus sure seemed to like to travel, allegedly going everywhere. One archaeologist wrote a book promoting the theory that young Jesus made it all the way to the Western Hemisphere, visiting tribes in “Peru, South and Central America, Mexico and North America.” Another legend has it that at 21, Jesus came to Japan to study with a Buddhist master.

But there are two big theories out there. The first was put forward by Nicolas Notovitch, a Russian who visited a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas and claimed he saw proof Jesus traveled to India, Nepal, and Tibet to study with yogis. Notovitch wrote a book about it in 1894, and people freaked out. But others have claimed they verified it since then.

English poet William Blake wrote “Jerusalem” in the 1800s, and it was turned into a popular hymn. It recounted the legend that Jesus came to England with his uncle during his lost years. But not everyone thinks it’s a fairy tale. The BBC reports in 2009 an academic wrote a book saying it was “plausible” and Jesus had “plenty of time” to make the journey.

WHERE IS THE HOLY GRAIL?
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Even though it doesn’t make much sense anyone would think it was important to grab and save a cup used by a random itinerant preacher at a random Passover meal, people have always been obsessed with the Holy Grail. It became a common theme in medieval literature, and legend had it the Grail was buried in England by Jesus’ uncle or taken from the Holy Land by the Knights Templar. The stories hardly stop there, however; the BBC reports more than 200 places in Europe alone claim they are in possession of the one true Grail. (If you’re outside Europe, don’t worry, you might have it, too. Other claimants can be found in Nova Scotia and Maryland, for example.) A cup in Valencia, Spain, (pictured) is usually the one given most legitimacy and got more clout when two recent popes used it in religious ceremonies.

But this is an argument that is still very much ongoing. As recently as 2014, a new cup was declared to maybe, possibly be the Holy Grail. According to History, two historians argued a different cup in León, Spain, fit the bill. Scientific dating showed it was the right age, and it resembled the description of the Grail included in medieval Egyptian parchments. It was allegedly given to the king of Spain and held in the Basilica of San Isidoro from the 11th century. Since the 1950s, it had been sitting in the basement. So, is this one the real Grail? We will probably never know for sure.

WHAT DAY DID JESUS DIE?
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Everyone knows Jesus died on Good Friday; the problem is the Gospels don’t even agree on what day that is. According to Christianity.com, this was because the authors were more concerned with symbolism than accuracy. That’s why, as the book Jesus, Interrupted points out, in three of the gospels, Jesus dies on Passover, but then John goes rogue and says he died the day before Passover. Scholars don’t even agree if he died on a Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday.

Some geologists aren’t letting the Biblical disagreement worry them, and say they have the exact day down. NBC News reported in 2012 that the researchers based their idea on Matthew’s description of Jesus’ death, which brings on an earthquake: “The earth shook, the rocks split, and the tombs broke open.” So they analyzed the seismic activity in the area at the time. They found there was an earthquake sometimes between 26 and 36 A.D. This overlaps with the years Pontius Pilate was procurator of Judea, so it fits with what the Bible says. Once they added in the rest of the Biblical clues, the geologists found a few dates that work, and settled on Friday, April 3, 33 A.D. as the most likely, although it’s impossible to know for sure. Three of the gospels also mention it going dark in the afternoon during the crucifixion, so the researchers also planned on looking into dust storms related to the seismic activity to pinpoint it further, although it’s not clear what they found on that one.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LOST BOOKS OF THE BIBLE?
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The Bible wasn’t codified until about 400 A.D. Before that, there were lots of books considered holy or important by both Jews and Christians, and some of them didn’t make the final cut. We have plenty of these books today, but others never got a chance because they are completely lost to history. The only reason we know about them is because books that did make it into the Bible mention these works.

According to Reluctant Skeptic, there are 22 of these lost books (although Bible Review says some may be the same thing under different names, so there could be as few as half a dozen). Over and over again in the Old Testament, an author will casually be like, “and of course you can find this information in X book,” only we don’t have X anymore. From what the Bible tells us, these lost books include the histories of various kings and prophets, genealogies, and songs (similar to Psalms). The Book of the Wars of the Lord, as explained by the Jewish Virtual Library, sounds especially fun: an epic poem all about how God destroyed the various enemies of Israel.

But there may be an even more important lost book not included on the list. Ancient Pages reports many scholars think two of the gospels were written based on information from a previous work, known as the Q source. While it’s an extremely controversial theory, proof of Q would be one of the most important discoveries ever.

HOW IS GOD’S NAME PRONOUNCED?
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Judaism has strict rules about the personal name of God. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, while there isn’t a rule about writing God’s name down, there is a prohibition against erasing or defacing it in any way. To make sure this couldn’t happen, his name just wasn’t written down. A rule also developed that Jews couldn’t say God’s name outside the Temple. Then the Temple was destroyed, so that effectively meant no one could say it, ever. Since it couldn’t be written down either, this was a problem. Scholars passed down the correct pronunciation for a while, but eventually, everyone forgot how to say their god’s name.

The Encyclopedia Britannica says when God revealed his personal name to Moses, it was written down as YHWH. This is called the tetragrammaton. But because of how Hebrew works, that doesn’t tell us how to pronounce the name correctly. Early Christian writers used something similar to Yahweh. Then Latin-speaking scholars came along and had another problem because “y” doesn’t exist in Latin. They replaced it with an “i” (also used for “j,” which Latin also doesn’t have), and people started pronouncing the tetragrammaton as Jehovah, which was definitely wrong. It wasn’t until the 1800s that scholars switched back to Yahweh, but again, that’s probably not right, although it might be closer.

So according to Jewish tradition, their god (who is also the god of Christians and Muslims) has a personal name that he totally told humans once, and no one knows it.

WHO WAS THE PHARAOH IN EXODUS?
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The pharaoh in the Book of Exodus is a real jerk. Moses nicely asks him to let his people (the Jews) leave Egypt, and the guy refuses and punishes the Jewish slaves. So Moses brings down the wrath of God, there are a bunch of horrible plagues, and eventually the pharaoh gives in. But even then, he changes his mind and tries to make the Jews come back, so Moses has to part the Red Sea and the Jews finally escape. But the Bible fails to mention the name of said pharaoh. Since there are no Egyptian records of this event (which, according to National Geographic, doesn’t automatically mean it didn’t happen, since pharaohs were not in the habit of recording their losses) historians and religious scholars don’t know who it was.

There are theories, of course. The name that usually come up, especially in movies about Exodus, is Ramses II. This is based on very scant clues in the Bible about the Israelites building cities for the pharaoh. Ramses had some building projects that would fit the bill. Plus, the first mention of “Israel” as a place shows up during the reign of Ramses’ son. That means the Jews must have left by then, possibly quite recently.

But not everyone agrees on Ramses II. In the Jerusalem Post, one scholar uses various bits of evidence from the Bible to place the Exodus around 1330 B.C., smack in the middle of King Tutankhamun’s reign. So the debate rages on.

WHAT DOES SELAH MEAN?
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The Hebrew word “Selah” is all over the Old Testament. According to Ancient Pages, it’s used almost 80 times, which means it’s three times as common as “hallelujah” and twice as common as “amen.” But while those words, also from Hebrew originally, are now used and understood around the world, no one says Selah. The writers of the New Testament didn’t use it either, and that’s because by the time they were writing, the meaning of the word was long forgotten. Even when people started translating the Old Testament from Hebrew to Greek way back in 270 B.C., they had to speculate on its meaning.

No one has figured it out since, either. As Christianity.com puts it, the true meaning of Selah is a mystery. There are plenty of theories. Since the word is used in Psalms so much, and since the Psalms were originally meant to be sung, scholars think it might be some kind of musical notation. Possible translations include “silence,” “pause,” “end,” “a louder strain,” “piano” (meaning soft, not the instrument), “intermission,” or “a pause in the voices singing, while the instruments perform alone.” A lot of those are a similar idea, but some modern versions of the Bible don’t even bother trying to translate, just keeping “Selah” and assuming the reader will figure it out.

Good luck, because at least one music expert doesn’t think the word is a notation but part of the lyrics, possibly meant to be closer to “amen” than any musical instruction.

WHERE IS OPHIR?
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Ophir is often referred to as the Biblical El Dorado. According to New Advent, the Old Testament can’t get enough of mentioning this amazing place. It comes up in Genesis, Job, Isaiah, 1 Kings, 2 Chronicles, and the Psalms. Sailors would go on three-year missions to bring back everything from gold, silver, and precious stones, to ivory and fancy woods, to apes and peacocks. These shipments were supposedly a large part of the reason King Solomon got so rich. Obviously, it would be great to know where this luxurious location was, but Ancient Pages says scholars have been wondering for 2,000 years.

Ancient Greek translators of the Old Testament placed Ophir somewhere in India, Sri Lanka, or the Malay Peninsula. Others have proposed various parts of the Arabian Peninsula. The Jewish historian Eupolemus placed it on an island in the Red Sea. But there’s also evidence it might be in Africa somewhere, even though Africa is sadly lacking in peacocks. In 1871, a German geologist visited what is now Zimbabwe and announced he’d found ruins that were definitely Ophir, and his claim was supported by some other scholars at the time. The Roman mathematician Ptolemy and the Arab traveler Ibn Batuta both wrote about a place just as rich as Ophir in present-day Mozambique, while the Ancient Egyptians recorded information on the extremely wealthy land of Punt, most likely in modern Somalia. If both places were real, Punt and Ophir might be the same and might be in East Africa, but who knows?

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HUGE BIBLE STORYLINES THAT COMPLETELY DISAPPEARED
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BY MORRIS M./UPDATED: DEC. 21, 2020 9:18 AM EDT
The Bible is known as the “greatest story ever told,” which is not bad considering it doesn’t have even a single scene set in Westeros. People who use this phrase are presumably referring to the sublime beauty of the book or the impact it had on their lives, as opposed to the Bible’s value as a work of fiction. That’s because the Bible’s multi-millennia narrative isn’t the sort of sweeping, expert piece of storytelling you’d expect from Game of Thrones. It’s the sort of sprawling, convoluted mess you’d expect from the worst seasons of Lost.

Just like J.J. Abrams, God loves nothing more than inserting clues and Easter eggs into his narrative that never lead anywhere. There are characters who are mentioned once in reverential tones and then never appear again. Events that are described that seem like they’re of major importance, but then get totally forgotten. They say God giveth and taketh away, but judging by these examples he sometimes giveth and then forgetteth all about it.

CAIN LIVES IN THE LAND OF NOD, BUT GOOD LUCK FINDING IT!
Pietro Novelli
Early in Genesis, we get one of the Bible’s all-time hits: the story of Cain and Abel. It’s a simple tale. Cain and Abel both make offerings to God, God prefers Abel’s, so Cain murders his brother in a fit of jealous rage. Genesis 4:16-17 ends with God sending Cain to live in the Land of Nod, where he takes a wife, has a son, and builds a city. Sounds straightforward … until you realize the Bible fails to mention where or what this mysterious place is.

We don’t even know if it’s metaphorical. “Nod” comes from a word that means wandering or exile, so some scholars suggest it’s just a fancy way of saying Cain had to leave his people. On the other hand, a lot of locations in the Old Testament are real places, so maybe Nod is, too? Everywhere from the Caucasus to China have been suggested as possible locations. But it’s not like it matters. After that one major name check, the Land of Nod never appears again.

If you want to know what crazy adventures Cain got up to there, you need to turn to Josephus’ first-century book Antiquities of the Jews. In what reads like an excellent early example of fan fiction, Josephus has Cain spend his exile doing wicked things like raping, murdering, and, um, creating the first system of weights and measures. What a complicated man.

MELCHIZEDEK IS BASICALLY THE IMMORTAL SON OF GOD, BUT LET’S NOT MENTION HIM AGAIN
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Have you ever watched a series that goes out of its way to introduce an insanely powerful character whose mere existence changes everything, only for that character to never appear again? Of course you haven’t. No one writes the groundwork for Thanos, ominously introduces him at the end of Avengers, and then pretends he doesn’t exist anymore. The Bible on the other hand loves pulling stuff like that. Just check out Melchizedek, a priest who appears out of nowhere and is apparently immortal.

The clearest reference to the unkillable priest (easy action movie title) comes in Hebrews 7. There, the author describes Melchizedek as a guy “without father or mother … without beginning of days or end of life, resembling the son of God.” This eternal proto-Jesus was once so important that Abraham paid tithes to him. According to Britannica, this has no parallel in Biblical literature. Melchizedek was a Canaanite, and for a Hebrew as important as Abraham to give respect to a Canaanite … let’s just say it’s unusual.

There’s also Psalm 110, which vaguely alludes to Melchizedek being a prototype for a future messiah. That messiah turned out to be Jesus, so it’s entirely possible Melchizedek is God’s first attempt at making mankind’s savior. Basically, this guy is a major deal and, after briefly introducing him, the Bible decides we don’t need to know any more about him. Typical.

THE NEPHILIM DIED IN THE FLOOD, OR DID THEY?
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Of all the merely-hinted-at backstory in the Bible, the history of the Nephilim has to be the most tantalizing. Genesis 6 says they were created by the union of “sons of God” and “daughters of humans,” with the King James Version flat-out calling them giants. But before we can learn much about them, God goes and destroys the entire Earth in an apocalyptic flood, and everything not on Noah’s Ark drowns.

But, like a Doctor Who cliffhanger giving us the merest glimpse of a Dalek to keep us coming back next week, the fourth book of the Bible then drops in a gasp-inducing passage. Numbers 13:32-33 includes a report on a nearby land some of the Israelites visit, where the Nephilim still roam and are now so big that the Israelites look like “grasshoppers” to them. If you’re hoping for Attack on Titan: Bible Edition, though, prepare to be disappointed. After that the Nephilim drop out the tale for good.

We hear about something vaguely Nephilim-like in Deuteronomy 3, where the defeated king Og is said to sleep in a bed nine cubits (13.5 feet) long. But Og is apparently a Rephaite, a different race of giants the Bible tells us exists then never bothers to fill us in on. You also have Goliath in 1 Samuel; he was abnormally tall but shorter than Og. But … whatever. Giants, sometimes, maybe. No biggie.

SO SUDDENLY WITCHES CAN RAISE THE DEAD
Benjamin West
It’s pretty clear God does not want us consulting with witches. Leviticus 19:31 says you will be defiled by them, while other verses stress they are tools of Satan. So, witches exist and have powers, but stay away from them because it’s really all a load of evil baloney. Oh, except for that time the King of Israel visited a witch and she totally summoned the dead spirit of a great Hebrew prophet.

In 1 Samuel 28, the judge-prophet Samuel has recently died, and Saul has turned Israel into his personal kingdom. With the Philistines massing on their borders, Saul prays to God for guidance but gets nothing in reply. So he has his men track down the last witch in the kingdom and asks her instead. The Witch of Endor summons Samuel’s spirit, which promptly chastises Saul for straying from God and predicts he and his sons will die in battle the very next day. Spoiler alert: he’s right.

This is a major plot twist, up there with discovering the island in Lost can travel through time. Rather than just tricksters, witches are capable of calling on the spirits of God’s most beloved prophets and having them deliver accurate prophecies. It seems like something that should shake up the Biblical narrative, but no. By the time we get to Galatians 5, witchcraft is morally ranked alongside drunkenness and orgies again.

IS THERE A TALKING DONKEY WANDERING ABOUT?
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It’s said you can find the answers to everything in the Bible. Apparently that includes the question “what would happen if Shrek were set in ancient Judea?” In Numbers 22:21-39, a guy called Balaam goes out for a ride on his donkey. Three times, the donkey notices an angel blocking the way ahead, and is beaten by Balaam for refusing to go on. After the third time, the Bible says God “opened the donkey’s mouth.” In plain English, God gives this donkey the power to talk. The best part? At no point does the Bible specify that this power was taken away again.

Aside from making an awesome jumping-off point for Biblical fan fiction, the story of Balaam and his donkey raises a galaxy of questions, absolutely none of which are ever answered. Like, was the donkey a truly rational, sentient being that simply couldn’t express itself before? When we hurt animals, are we actually hurting things that can understand abstract concepts like theology? If not, isn’t there a Flowers for Algernon problem here of God giving human-level intelligence to a donkey and then taking it away again?

Not that Donkey’s power is definitely taken away again, since the Bible doesn’t specify. It could be there’s a chatty donkey wandering through the background of the rest of Numbers, but everybody’s too freaked out to ever mention it.

WATCH OUT FOR GOG AND MAGOG, WHOEVER THEY ARE
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As cameos, the fleeting appearances of Gog and Magog in the Bible barely even reach the “blink and you’ll miss it” level of duration. Taken as a pair, they appear a grand total of two times. (Gog has an extra solo appearance.) But both times, they are hella important. According to Britannica, the first reference, in Ezekiel 38, portrays Gog as the leader of a land known as Magog, and the guy who will one day attack and nearly destroy Israel. In the Book of Revelation, Gog and Magog are the two great nations of Earth that Satan will one day rally to his cause, leading to the Day of Judgment.

In pop culture terms, Gog and Magog are basically the final season Big Bad of the Bible, the unknowable threat lurking in the shadows that’s gonna spell trouble for the Superfriends/disciples at the narrative climax. As you’ve already guessed, though, that climax never comes. In the same way that a planned film trilogy might flop and fade after its second part, the Bible ends not with a conclusion, but with the Book of Revelation, effectively an extended trailer for all the awesomeness that never comes.

“Well, it is a prophecy,” you might be thinking. “Surely it might still happen in the future.” Yes, although Revelation 1:1 says this will all happen “soon,” and plenty of humans have gotten tired of waiting the last couple millennia. Maybe someday.

BEHEMOTH IS SO BIG WE NEVER GET TO SEE IT
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The Book of Job is an odd book. It features the heavenly equivalent of a drunken bet between God and Satan, which leads to God letting Satan absolutely go to town on the innocent Job. But even ignoring the idea that God will do satanic things just to prove Satan wrong, the Book of Job stands out for the flippant way it introduces major details that still have scholars scratching their heads. In Job 40:14-24, God trash-talks Job like a professional wrestler by comparing all of his accomplishments to Job’s. But rather than bagging WWE titles and pinning Stone Cold Steve Austin, God’s biggest brag turns out to be creating something called Behemoth.

Behemoth is big. God goes into epic details about its cedar-like tail and iron-like limbs, which are apparently so strong it can withstand a rushing river. He then follows this up in Job 41 with a similar brag about Leviathan, a gigantic sea monster that is apparently also a fire-breathing dragon. Some Christians think the two are meant to be dinosaurs.

You’d think a couple of dinosaurs running around the Old Testament might be something that people would mention from time to time: “Where art Ezekiel? Eaten by velociraptors, my Lord.” But, no. Behemoth appears and disappears in a single monologue.

BIBLICAL WRESTLEMANIA
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Everything can be improved with wrestling, even the Bible. In Genesis 32:22-32, Jacob and his two wives are just in the process of moving camp when a guy appears out of nowhere and starts wrestling Jacob. Like a WWE star whose title match has just been invaded, Jacob fights back and the two men grapple till dawn, presumably while Jacob’s wives get some sort of chant going and throw steel chairs into the ring. At daybreak, the two wrestlers are at a draw when the mysterious guy uses magic to dislocate Jacob’s hip. It’s at this point Jacob realizes he’s just survived an all-night wrestling match with God himself.

The consequences on the narrative are immediate. Jacob changes his name to Israel and spends the rest of his life walking with a limp. So why include it here? Think about it. Jacob wrestled God to a draw. You know that old paradox about whether God could create a rock so big that even he himself couldn’t lift it? Well, God apparently created a man so good at wrestling even God couldn’t beat him without cheating.

The implications are enormous. God can knock up a universe in six days, but he can’t even piledriver a lowly human into submission? Either Jacob is secretly divine, or the rest of the Bible should just be a how-to manual for acquiring his rad wrestling skills.

PAUL STARS IN LAZARUS II
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One of the Bible names everyone knows is Lazarus, a guy who died and was raised from the dead by Jesus. That’s a pretty nifty trick, even by Jesus’ standards. While people are rising from the dead all the time in the Old Testament, the only resurrections in the New Testament come courtesy of Jesus, and St. Peter, who explicitly has Christ working through him. Bible rule: Raising the dead from 1 A.D. onward is only for the big JC himself.

Oh, except for that time in Acts 20:7-12 when Paul literally bored a guy to death and then brought him back to life like it was no big deal.

That “bored to death” bit isn’t flippancy. Paul goes to Troas to do some preaching. There, “seated in the window was a young man Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead.” Paul rushes downstairs and brings him back to life. From that point on, people are bringing their deceased loved ones to Paul, imploring him to use his power, but no. All that happens is Eutychus’ family are so pleased that they break some bread, and no one else gets resurrected ever again.

MOSES’S CUSHITE WHAT NOW?

Moses’ wife, Zipporah, is something of a mystery. She’s namechecked in the Bible only four times, and most of those times are so she can get married to, bear a child for, or be sent away by Moses. We know almost nothing about her, which is more than we can say for Moses’ second wife. In Numbers 12:1, it’s briefly mentioned that Moses has taken a Cushite wife. And, just like that, the Bible throws a gigantic wrench in everything.

Cush was an area encompassing what is now Sudan and Ethiopia. This would imply Moses took a black wife, which is a great win for racial equality but confusing from a narrative perspective. The Cushite wife is never mentioned again, seemingly never bears Moses children, and never has any known effect on other events. So it’s tempting to suggest that Zipporah was Cushite all along and the “two” women are one and the same. Some take this view, but we already know Zipporah was a Midianite.

In the Jewish tradition, it’s claimed that Moses’ followers used “Cushite” to mean someone who looked different, and that Zipporah was called Cushite because she was so beautiful. That seems a stretch, which may be why Josephus effectively said “nah, the woman is totally a hot Ethiopian princess Moses is getting down and dirty with,” and created a backstory from first-century Jewish legends to reinforce his version.

THE CURSE OF HAM, A POISONOUS DIGRESSION
Bernardino Luini
The Bible is an odd book. There are talking donkeys, incest, and prohibitions on eating shellfish. But the oddest of all has to be the curse of Ham, which is far less delicious than it initially sounds. In Genesis 9:20-27, Noah gets loaded on wine and passes out naked in his tent. His son Ham comes in, sees his father, and runs to tell Noah’s other sons. The other sons cover their father without seeing his dongle, Noah wakes up, and then curses Canaan’s descendants to forever be slaves. If you’re thinking “back up a moment, why does Noah curse this Canaan guy?” then you’re not alone. Canaan is Ham’s son, Noah’s grandson, and is entirely blameless, yet still Noah curses him to a life of servitude.

Within the Biblical narrative, this is just another of those things that pops up and then never appears again. But this is, sadly, one case where the huge moment that disappeared didn’t vanish in the strictest sense. Out in real life, a whole bunch of people looked at this passage, looked at the human beings they were keeping chained up, and said “whelp, I guess it’s God’s will we keep slaves.”

As the New York Times describes, Islamic, Jewish, and Christian cultures have all used the curse of Ham to justify slavery over the centuries, contributing to a whole lot of human misery. If only the Bible had featured a follow-up tale where Ham gets uncursed, maybe some of that suffering could have been averted. (Or maybe people would have just found other justifications for slavery.)

EVERYONE FORGETS BARTHOLOMEW’S ADVENTURES
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The Twelve Disciples are like the rock supergroup of the Biblical narrative: super-famous together, and still recognizable alone. Most people can probably name Peter, John, Matthew, Doubting Thomas, Judas, and maybe a few more off the tops of their heads. Heck, some can probably make a good stab at relating one of their group adventures, the one where they all went off to preach following Christ’s ascension to Heaven. But Bartholomew? Not so much. According to Britannica, he’s mentioned in all four lists of Apostles in the New Testament. Aside from that, his name appears a grand total of zero times.

This is a level of obscurity-amid-fame not even the guys from U2 who aren’t Bono or the Edge can aspire to. Even the other apostles who don’t have much screentime in the New Testament are traditionally thought to have had legendary adventures. Bartholomew, on the other hand, has no legends beyond preaching here and there and getting flayed alive after he annoyed some ancient king (shown above). You might think being one of Jesus Christ’s dozen hand-picked representatives on Earth would ensure your name and deeds went down in history. Not if you’re Bartholomew.

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THE UNTOLD TRUTH OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH
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BY MORRIS M./UPDATED: JAN. 1, 2021 11:25 PM EDT
Las Vegas may like to style itself as “sin city,” but there are only two cities in world history that were so sinful God had to actually explode them with fire. Sodom and Gomorrah and their fiery fate crop up in the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament, in the Torah, and in the Quran. However, you probably know them best from Sodom’s historical association with homosexuality and hardline religious warnings circa 2013 that America would suffer the exact same fate the moment the Supreme Court allowed gay marriage, a prophecy that’s up there with “Betamax is the future of home entertainment” in the accuracy stakes.

But even without the allure of glorious sodomy, Sodom and Gomorrah have cast a long shadow over the Western imagination. Yet how much does the average dude or dudette on the street actually know about these two long-dead cities and their unlucky inhabitants? Like, did they even exist, or are they just beautiful myths? The truth is even more complicated than you probably think.

THERE WERE THREE WHOLE OTHER CITIES WE FORGOT ABOUT
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Sodom and Gomorrah are like Batman and Robin, or Superman and “disappointing Zack Snyder movies” — you’re so used to hearing them together that one without the other sounds weird. Yet this cozy linguistic partnership is as misleading as referring to The Beatles as just “John and Paul.” If Sodom and Gomorrah were the main songwriters, their band was something called the Cities of the Plain, a collection of five great cities that sat along the Jordan River in Biblical times. And you better believe this ancient city supergroup had their own George and Ringo (and some other guy).

The three forgotten cities aren’t just background details. Although they appear in the story of Lot far less than Sodom or Gomorrah, they have their own names and everything. Deuteronomy 29:22-23 identifies two of the other cities as Admah and Zeboim, while Genesis 19:23 identifies the final city as Zoar, which is presumably the fifth Beatle in our tortured analogy.

“Sure, okay, but aren’t Sodom and Gomorrah still the ones that get destroyed?” you may be wondering. Well, that’s sort of the issue. The Bible repeatedly makes it clear that Admah and Zeboim went up in the conflagration, thanks to being equally sinful. Zoar’s role is even more important. It’s the surviving town that Lot flees to as God implements his whole “Kill everyone and let me sort them out” plan. Just like Ringo, these cities deserve some cultural recognition.

WE DON’T KNOW IF THEY WERE DESTROYED BECAUSE OF HOMOSEXUALITY
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It’s time to deal with the fabulous pink elephant in the room. If the average person knows anything about the Cities of the Plain, it’s that they were incinerated because they were packed to the gills with men who enjoyed other men who enjoyed not wearing clothes. However! There’s also been a recent tradition of people saying, nuh-uh, it was because the inhabitants were unkind to strangers. So, who is right?

Well, here’s the thing. We don’t know, and anyone who is saying otherwise hasn’t even bothered to do a cursory Wikipedia search. As Britannica notes, the homosexuality interpretation has history on its side, and Biblical verses like Genesis 19:5, which make it clear the men of Sodom wanted to sexually assault the male angels in Lot’s house. On the other hand, modern Jewish scholarship suggests inhospitality was the biggest taboo circa 4,000 B.C., and the actions of Sodom’s menfolk are clearly meant to show a contrast with Lot’s willingness to invite the angels in. For Christian scholars, Jesus himself equating Sodom’s sin with inhospitality in Matthew 10:14-15 is a pretty big deal.

But then you have Jude 1:7, which almost screams “these cities died for being gay!” In short, you can go around and around on this forever and still not be any the wiser. What people believe about Sodom and Gomorrah probably tells you more about them than it does about the Bible’s intentions.

EVEN THE BIBLE HAS OTHER IDEAS OF WHY SODOM WAS DESTROYED
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While homosexuality and inhospitality are the two most likely reasons Sodom went kaboom, there are more than those two options in town. We don’t just mean on the fringes of theology, either. The Bible itself is a veritable galaxy of fan theories from different prophets on what exactly the heck God was trying to say by blowing up Sodom in such a dramatic fashion.

Let’s start with Ezekiel 16:49, which reads, in full: “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” In other words, Sodom was iced for being an Objectivist fantasyland that hated charity. Okay, now let’s look at Jeremiah 23:14, which implies adultery (regardless of gender) was what got God all het up. Fine, so what does 2 Peter 2:6-9 have to say? Something about Sodom being “lawless” which you could probably either read as the inhabitants breaking a Biblical law on steamy homosexual love, or as them breaking one of the literally zillions of other laws the Bible covers. (Shellfish, anyone?)

The reason for all these multiple interpretations is likely that the Bible’s books were all written hundreds of years apart by wildly different people, all with wildly different axes to grind. Looking for a single, unified message from God in the story of Sodom is like looking for an easy way of beating Battletoads. Impossible.

THERE’S A GOOD CHANCE WE’VE ACTUALLY FOUND SODOM
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Most of the Old Testament is set one heck of a long time ago, and the Book of Genesis is set even before that — anywhere in the region of 1 Heck Long to 10 Hella Longs beforehand. So you won’t be surprised to hear it’s difficult to find scientific proof of its cities. But one major exception might be the city of Sodom. Back in 2005, archaeologists uncovered a vast site in Jordan known as Tall el-Hammam. According to Popular Archeology, the discoveries they’ve since made may support the idea of the city being the Biblical Sodom.

Now, there are some caveats here. The lead archaeologist, Steven Collins (above), is an evangelical who went into the excavation specifically looking for Sodom. As such, it maybe ain’t surprising that he thinks he found it. On the other hand, he definitely found an actual historical site of major importance, in an area identified as the most probable location of the Cities of the Plain, dating from around when they would have existed, that just happened to have been destroyed by fire.

Yeah. Whether or not Tall el-Hammam is Sodom, it went out in a similar fashion. The team uncovered a layer of ash dating from the Middle Bronze period burying the site, alongside pottery that had burned at temperatures far too high to have been produced in a kiln. One pottery shard had even melted into glass. What could possibly cause such high temperatures in the ancient world? Good question!

ANOTHER METEOR STRIKE?
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In 2018, Steven Collins previewed a paper on what he believes happened at Tall el-Hammam. According to News Corp Australia, the signs point to the ancient city being wiped out 3,700 years ago in a cataclysmic event. It was an event that created so much heat it turned pottery to glass, swamped the surrounding land in saline water, and rendered the site uninhabitable for 700 years. We’ll give you a clue as to what could do all that: the same thing that wiped out the dinosaurs.

A meteor exploding over the Dead Sea could easily account for all the damage seen at Tall el-Hammam. Remember that meteor that exploded over a Russian city back in 2013, injuring 500 people and leaving behind some crazy YouTube videos? That was just a minor airburst. In 1908, a much bigger airburst likely occurred over Siberia’s forests. Known as the Tunguska Event, it flattened 775 square miles of forest and could have wiped out a sizable city if it hadn’t happened over freaking Siberia. This theorized Tall el-Hammam airburst would’ve been half the size of the Tunguska meteor. Difference is, it happened right beside five thriving cities.

It’s easy to see how someone witnessing such an event in 1600 B.C. would automatically assume God had just decided to blow up the world. Still, Collins’ theory hasn’t been confirmed yet. Until someone does some serious peer reviewing of his paper, a theory is all it will be.

BUT WE’VE DEFINITELY FOUND THE FIFTH CITY
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Zoar first crops up in Genesis 13, when Lot is striking out onto the plain of Jordan after parting ways with Abraham. The fifth Beatle of the five Cities of the Plain, Zoar is also the lucky one. Referred to in the Bible as the smallest, it soon winds up the biggest by default when Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim all turn into clouds of smoke and death. But Zoar also has another claim to fame. While our list of Other Cities of the Plain We’ve Discovered reads “Sodom — maybe,” Zoar is in a whole other category. We haven’t just found the city’s remains, we know plenty about its non-Biblical history, too.

Just check out the British Museum’s overview of the site, as part of their summer lecture series. Zoar, also rendered as Zoara, has evidence of Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age activity. It was a serious trading settlement. The Romans wrote about it. The Byzantines. Even Islamic sources record its existence, and these guys were only just setting up shop centuries after Sodom and the others all burned down. Researchers have been digging there at least 20 years, and new discoveries keep cropping up.

This isn’t as unlikely as you’d think. Real places feature in the Bible all the time, from Gehenna (an ancient garbage center) to Calvary (a real hill likely now buried under a church). If you want to glimpse a real Biblical site, Zoar is only a plane ride or three away.

THE ANCIENT ROMANS HAVE A WAY SIMILAR STORY
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There are quite a few instances of Biblical stories overlapping with tales from other cultures (the flood and Adam and Eve being obvious examples). The tale of Sodom and Gomorrah is no different. But rather than cropping up on an ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform or something, its doppelganger can be found somewhere much more accessible. The fables of Roman writer Ovid feature a tale called Baucis and Philemon, and it’s as close to Sodom as you can get while still keeping your pants on.

See if any of this sounds familiar. One day, two heavenly beings in disguise (in this case, Zeus and Hermes), travel to a wicked city to see if they can find any good people living there. Lo and behold, everyone in the city is kind of a total jerk except a dude called Philemon, who invites them into his home alongside his wife, Baucis. The kind couple feed their guests, who reveal themselves as gods and say they plan to destroy the city. Baucis and Philemon are told to run away and not turn back no matter what. So far, so ancient copyright infringing.

The tale ain’t a perfect copy. In Ovid’s version, Baucis doesn’t turn back and get turned into a pillar of salt, and the city is destroyed in an Atlantis-style flood rather than fire and brimstone. Oh, and the story ends with Baucis and Philemon turning into trees because that’s just how fables rolled in ancient Rome.

THE ISLAMIC VERSION IS EVEN WORSE FOR LOT’S WIFE
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The story of Sodom and Gomorrah super sucks for nearly everyone involved, but it really sucks for Lot’s unnamed wife. After Lot’s family are judged to be worth saving they are told to run for the city of Zoar and not look back, a command that’s pretty hard to obey when the whole world is exploding behind you. So Lot’s wife turns around and, hey presto, Genesis 19:26 has her turn into a pillar of salt. Ouch.

The fate of Lot’s wife is similarly cruel in the Bible and the Torah, but the Quran goes even further. While the basic outlines of the tale are the same, the Islamic scripture really sticks the knife in. In Surah Hud 11:81, the angels tell Lot to flee with his family and not look back. But rather than have Lot’s wife turn around of her own accord, the angels state: “Let not any among you look back — except your wife; indeed, she will be struck by that which strikes them (i.e., the inhabitants of Sodom).” In other words, Lot’s wife’s fate is all part of God’s crazy plan.

This raises an interesting question: What did Lot’s wife do to deserve this? Was she inhospitable to strangers? Was she secretly watching plenty of man-on-man action behind Lot’s back? Or is this just one of those unfathomable mysteries that you have to chuckle about? Discuss.

THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN HAD SOME TRULY AWFUL LUCK
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Given the whole “exploded in an apocalypse” thing, saying that the Cities of the Plain had some cruddy luck might seem like saying Noah got a little wet. But the thing most of us Joe Schmoes forget about Genesis is that Sodom and Gomorrah don’t get introduced just to be destroyed. Before Genesis 19 sets them on fire, the Cities of the Plain feature in Genesis 14 — The Phantom Menace to Genesis 19’s A New Hope. And just as Phantom Menace was a traumatic experience for cinemagoers everywhere, Genesis 14 was traumatic for all those living on the Jordan plain.

The trauma came in the shape of a guy known as Kedorlaomer (sometimes rendered Chedorlaomer), the King of Elam who’d ruled the Cities of the Plain for 13 years. In Genesis 14, the kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Zoar, Admah, and Zeboim all rebel against him and raise an army. They ride out to do battle, but fall into a bunch of tar pits and get massacred. Kedorlaomer and his allies then ransack Sodom and Gomorrah, taking all their possessions, all their food, and carrying a ton of their citizens off.

That’s right. The famous rain of fire the cities experienced was only their second apocalypse: They were already recovering from a devastating war. In this context, it’s kind of hard to judge the Sodomites for straying from God’s path. Imagine if Times Square had been destroyed in 1945 because God felt the kissing sailor was committing adultery. Sheesh.

LOT AND HIS DAUGHTERS BREAK “THAT” TABOO FOR SOME PRETTY SPURIOUS REASONS
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The mega-apocalypse is just the first part of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. No sooner is all the fire and death over than the Bible segues into another equally-famous tale: the one where Lot’s daughters get their old man blind drunk and sleep with him in order to continue his line. Given God just blew up four cities possibly for indulging in homosexuality, being suddenly all cool with incest seems a little off. The lazy explanation is that Lot’s daughters thought the rest of the human race had perished and were just doing their duty, but Genesis 19 is quite clear that the family had just left the surviving city of Zoar. So why the nights of taboo-busting passion?

For an answer, you’ll need to turn to Genesis Rabbah, a Jewish book from Roman times that offers interpretations of Genesis. Genesis Rabbah makes it clear that a messiah king was prophesied to one day come from Lot’s line, so his daughters were less interested in preserving the human race than they were preserving Lot’s genetics. Good job they did, too, since the eldest daughter gives birth to Moab, who one day leads to Ruth, who in turn leads to Obed, who eventually leads to King David.

While this clears up some issues of motivations, it does raise other points, the biggest of all being that incest is just an incredibly bad idea. Surely they could have found someone in Zoar who fancied Lot before they took off for the hills?

SAVING LOT TURNED OUT TO BE A PRETTY MIXED BAG AFTER ALL
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For an omniscient being, God occasionally acts like a guy with either a remarkable lack of foresight or a penchant for drama. Case in point: Saving Lot has a tremendous impact on the Biblical narrative, and some of it is just really, really negative for God’s chosen people, the Israelites. After Lot’s daughters seduce him, the eldest gives birth to a boy called Moab, and the youngest to a child called Ben-Ammi. Moab and Ben-Ammi both go on to found dynasties of their own, known as the Moabites and the Ammonites. According to Britannica’s two articles on the subject, the Moabites and Ammonites then spend the next few centuries waging continuous warfare on the Israelites.

You’ve heard the phrase “neighbors from Hell.” The Moabites and Ammonites were like moving in next to a bunch of beer-swilling trailer dwellers who play loud rock music at 3 a.m., and also raid and pillage your property. The Moabites so frequently fought the Israelites that “Moabite” actually became a word for a generic enemy of God. The Ammonites, meanwhile, fought the Israelites less, but still attacked them while they were rebuilding the Temple at Jerusalem.

Still, there were some positives. King David was descended from Ruth, herself a Moabite, so no Moabites means no King David and no Solomon. On the other hand, it also means no centuries of internecine warfare, and fewer regional rivals for the Israelites to worry about. Take your pick.

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THE UNTOLD TRUTH OF ADAM AND EVE
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BY KATHY BENJAMIN/UPDATED: APRIL 23, 2022 4:53 PM EDT
You don’t need to attend church to know the basic story of Adam and Eve. The Jewish and Christian creation story is ubiquitous. In the beginning, God has a creative frenzy, culminating in Adam. Adam gets lonely, so God makes him a partner, Eve, out of one of his ribs. Everything is great until a talking snake comes along and tells Eve to eat an apple, even though God specifically said not to. She does, then makes Adam do it. They realize they are naked and add some strategically placed leaves that will be very convenient to blushing artists throughout history who don’t want to show genitals. God figures out what they did and they get in trouble. Thrown out of the Garden of Eden, they have to live in the crappy regular world, and we’ve all been punished for what they did since.

But is that the whole story of Adam and Eve? Is it even what the Bible actually says? Not even close.

THE STORY OF ADAM AND EVE WAS BORROWED AND CHANGED
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Like many stories in the Bible, Genesis has elements that were borrowed from other cultures and religions. When it comes to the bits about Adam and Eve, some key pieces are cribbed from the “Enuma Elis” and “Gilgamesh.”

The Hebrews (they weren’t Jews yet) were in exile in Babylon, where they learned the “Enuma Elish” creation myth that involved a single, all-powerful god. But it was “Gilgamesh,” the Harry Potter of the ancient world, that really influenced them. According to Bible Odyssey, the hero Gilgamesh has a plant of immortality but loses it because of trickery by a snake. The gods also create a companion for the hero so he won’t be lonely, although it was a dude in that story. A seductive woman ends up being responsible for men losing the idyllic lives they were living with animals and nature. After the fall in “Gilgamesh,” the companion realizes he’s naked and the text says he has become “like a God,” both exactly like Adam and Eve after they eat the forbidden fruit in Genesis.

But this doesn’t mean the Hebrews’ version isn’t really important. They wrote the stories in Genesis after their exile was over. By writing a myth that was theirs, a creation story of their very own, they were solidifying themselves as a people. They were making their own mythology. Theologians are also fascinated by the changes they made to the bits they borrowed because it says a lot about what was important to them.

GOD CREATES HUMANS TWICE IN GENESIS
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If you actually read Genesis, you’ll notice God creates the universe and everything in it twice, and the two accounts directly contradict each other in some places. If you don’t take the creation story literally, as many Christians and Jews don’t, then it’s not an issue.

As Bible Odyssey points out, the writing styles of the two stories are totally different, and they seem to have different theological goals they want to achieve by telling their version the way they do. This would heavily imply they were written by two different people at two different times for two different reasons and combined later. But that’s a problem for some Biblical scholars who believe Genesis was one story written completely by Moses.

Some people in history have gone to great lengths to make the two versions mesh. Like when they made Adam a hermaphrodite. In the first version of creation, it says God formed Adam and Eve at the same time, “male and female he created them.” According to Hypotheses, some early Christian theologians decided this meant they had “serene undifferentiation,” or basically were both sexes. Many church leaders were uncomfortable with that idea, but it stuck around as a theory for centuries.

ThoughtCo says the two versions of creation are also where the idea of Lilith comes from. Jewish mythology says she was Adam’s first wife, who became a demon. Lilith is the woman mentioned in the first creation story, while Eve is the one made later from one of Adam’s bones.

WAS EVE MADE FROM ADAM’S BACULUM?
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It’s always important to remember that if you’re reading the Bible in English, you’re reading a translation. This becomes especially vital when you learn things like Eve was created from one of Adam’s ribs because that’s not what the original Hebrew word means. Biblical Archaeology says “tsela” appears 40 times in the Bible, and the only time it’s translated as “rib” is when Eve shows up. It usually refers to the side of something, or “limbs lateral to the vertical axis of an erect human body.” So if Eve was really just made from some vague side area of Adam, this leaves a lot of interpretation. Enter the dong bone theory.

A legitimate Biblical professor put forward the idea that Eve was in fact made from Adam’s baculum. Since the penis bone is extremely common in mammals (even other primates have one) but humans males are missing this piece of kit, Dr. Ziony Zevit thinks Genesis holds the answer. If God took a bone from Adam, then his descendants presumably wouldn’t have that bone. Men have an even number of ribs but are missing the baculum. So it stands to reason, he says, that’s the real bone God formed Eve from.

While scientists aren’t actually sure why humans lost their baculum, people were understandably not exactly thrilled with this new theory. The Times of Israel reported that many readers were incensed at the idea. One accused Zevit of trying to “damage [her] faith” and cause her to doubt the Bible.

THE BELLY BUTTON QUESTION
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It seems like such a minor thing: Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons? But it’s been a theological nightmare for millennia. If they had them, then they have the scar of a gestation that never occurred, so why would God put it there? On the other hand, if they didn’t have belly buttons, then how were they perfect representations of humans?

Fundamentalist Christians tend to be Team No Belly Button. Writing for Creation Ministries International, one said there would be no reason for God to create Adam and Eve with “a false indication that they had developed in a mother’s womb.” The book “Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?” records a Congressional committee getting involved in the debate in 1944, when it objected to a pamphlet given to soldiers that included an image of Adam and Eve with belly buttons, saying this was an insult to fundamentalists.

The debate has been a huge problem for artists through the centuries. Some just added a few convenient navel-covering leaves. Many left Adam and Eve with completely smooth stomachs. But after the Renaissance, most included belly buttons because they looked weird without them.

In a bizarre twist, the belly button debate met the evolution debate. An 1857 book said the fact Adam and Eve had belly buttons proved the Earth was only a few thousand years old. All the seemingly older stuff, like the fossil record, was just the Earth’s version of an unused belly button, “a past history of the earth that never existed except in the Divine Mind.”

GENESIS SAYS NOTHING ABOUT THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT BEING AN APPLE
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Ask anyone what fruit Adam and Eve ate that made God angry and they’ll tell you it was an apple. But if you actually read the Bible, it doesn’t say anything at all about what specific kind of fruit it was. In English translations, it’s just “the fruit” on “the tree.” Even if in the original language, the Hebrew word is “peri,” which is equally as vague. According to NPR, peri could mean “absolutely any fruit” and Jewish scholars have interpreted it as “a fig, a pomegranate, a grape, an apricot, a citron, or even wheat.” Others thought of it as an intoxicating drink, like wine.

So why is everyone so sure it’s an apple? Because of a pun. In the fourth century A.D., Pope Damasus decided the Bible needed to be translated into Latin. The scholar Jerome was given the job, and when he got to the mention of the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” he apparently decided to make a pun. In Latin, “malus” means evil, but it also means apple. So the fruit of the tree that let Adam and Eve know evil was an apple, haha, what a great joke. Early churchgoers were probably rolling in the aisles.

But it was John Milton who really cemented the image when he called the forbidden fruit an apple twice in “Paradise Lost.” After that, pretty much all artists depicted Adam and Eve eating an apple, and today it’s weird to think of it as anything else.

EVE’S SIN MEANT WOMEN DIDN’T GET TO USE PAIN MEDS IN CHILDBIRTH FOR A LONG TIME
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Evolution (or God) gave us big skulls and slim hips, so childbirth is extremely painful. Fortunately, we now have lovely drugs to take some of that agony away. But even before epidurals, there were plenty of ways to make birthing a baby less horrible for the mother. But men said no because Eve’s sin of eating the forbidden fruit meant women had to suffer.

God does punish Eve in Genesis 3:16 when he says, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children.” But as pointed out by Christianity Today, we have another translation issue. The original word used means “labor, toil, or work” everywhere else in the Bible. Only when talking about giving birth did translators decide it also included pain. Women in labor probably don’t care about the deep theological implications, they just want the pain to stop, but religious men through the centuries sure have.

An article in the Journal of Anesthesia History says Martin Luther wrote that women should be thrilled they got to “gloriously suffer” to bring forth babies. A (male) New England pastor once opined that alleviating the pain of women in childbirth would “deprive God of the pleasure of their deep, earnest cries of help.”

This theological argument resulted in a huge backlash when pain medication started being used during labor in the 1800s. Since God allegedly demanded that there be pain, taking it away was sacrilegious. Even today some people feel this way.

ISLAM HAS A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT ADAM AND EVE STORY
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Adam and Eve don’t just show up in the Jewish and Christian holy books; they make an appearance in the Quran as well. But the Islamic version of their story has some key differences from the other Abrahamic religions.

According to Al-Islam, it starts out similarly: God makes Adam and Eve, who are special compared to the animals, and tells them they can’t eat from the special tree. Then Satan comes along and tricks them into eating from the tree. But here is a major theological change. Satan tricks them both, not just Eve. They both eat from the tree and they are both equally to blame. Nowhere in the Quran is Eve a temptress, nor does God give women the punishment he does in Genesis because of what she did. The Encyclopedia Britannica says there is no concept of original sin in Islam, either. Adam and Eve were punished for what they did, but that punishment was for them alone, not all of humanity forever.

Later Islamic traditions added to the story. They say when Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden, they were separated for 200 years. When they meet up again they have two sons, Qābīl and Hābīl, who each had a twin sister. And just like Cain and Abel, Qābīl kills Hābīl. But there were plenty of other kids because Eve eventually had 20 sets of twins, and before he died Adam had 40,000 offspring.

THE PRE-ADAMITE MOVEMENT EXPLAINS EVOLUTION AND SUPPORTED SLAVERY
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In the 1800s, scholars started to understand more about the Ancient Egyptian civilization. Texts were being deciphered and monuments dated. And a lot of the stuff was really old. This presented, as American Egyptomania puts it, “a crisis for Christianity.” If the Bible is literal and Adam and Eve were only created a few thousand years ago, how could this Egyptian stuff be older than that? The pre-Adamite theory held the answer.

Pre-Adamite simply means that there were people alive before Adam. Creation Ministries International says this idea dates to 1655 when a French guy wrote two books about it. This theory solved some problems, like where Cain’s wife comes from. In Genesis, only Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel have been mentioned when Cain murders his brother. But suddenly we learn there are cities of people and Cain quickly finds a wife. The pre-Adamite theory explains where they came from.

Some Christians also liked this idea because it meant some people on Earth were descended from not-Adam and Eve and were therefore not as important. Shocking no one, those inferior people were theorized to be the less white ones, and the idea was used to justify slavery. These days some evangelicals still embrace the theory to explain evolution and why things are so old when Adam and Eve were much more recent in Genesis. They say that early humans lived for millions of years, then went extinct and God replaced them with Adam and Eve, who were special.

THE GARDEN OF EDEN HAS BEEN LOCATED EVERYWHERE
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There were lots of people throughout history who believed the Garden of Eden was a real place, and some of them set out to find it. This was complicated, since Genesis says it’s where one river splits into four, and that’s it. Not a lot to go on.

Christopher Columbus was “keenly interested” in finding the Garden of Eden, according to the University of Virginia. He thought he was close when he landed on Hispaniola, and even closer in Venezuela. The Public Domain Review says the explorer David Livingstone declared it was at the source of the Nile (although he was mad with malaria at the time). Methodist minister William Warren wrote a book in 1881 explaining how he figured out Eden was located at the North Pole. But almost simultaneously other people were publishing their proof that earthly Paradise was outside Damascus or in California’s Santa Clara Valley. The 20th century saw “proof” it was in Ohio, Florida, and Mongolia. The New York Times reported some residents of Seychelles were hoping to rediscover Eden, alleged to be on one of their islands, before Queen Elizabeth II visited in 1972. Other theories include Azerbaijan, Armenia, Bahrain, South Carolina, Somalia, or submerged in the Persian Gulf.

But the most commonly accepted location over the years has been Iraq. Not that it’s that simple. If you go to that country wanting to visit Paradise, there are two competing places that both claim to be the real Garden of Eden.

THE NUMBER OF CHRISTIANS WHO THINK THE CREATION STORY IS LITERAL IS DROPPING
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There is often an assumption that Christians believe the creation story in Genesis is absolutely literal and that Adam and Eve actually existed. There definitely are people who believe that, but in America, at least, they’re dwindling.

According to a Gallup poll in 2017, only 38 percent of adult American Christians surveyed believed God created Adam and Eve as fully human individuals about 10,000 years ago. An equal amount believed evolution happened but with God’s guidance in some way. And 19 percent of the group believed in a God-free evolution process, with Protestants more likely to believe in some version of evolution than Catholics.

Even evangelicals are starting to break from a strict interpretation. NPR reported on many “Christian scholars who say they want their faith to come into the 21st century” and catch up with accepted science. One said that believing what science tells us doesn’t mean religion is wrong. Instead it’s “an opportunity to have an increasingly accurate understanding of the world — and from a Christian perspective, that’s an increasingly accurate understanding of how God brought us into existence.”

In this, they are just following what the original writers of Genesis probably had in mind. Christian scholars have long believed it was originally written as allegory and poetry more than history. It wasn’t until St. Augustine started thinking deep theological thoughts about creation in the fourth century A.D. that anyone said it should be taken literally.

WHO WERE GENETIC ADAM AND EVE?
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In 2018, tabloids and other less reputable news sources reported on a study published in the journal Human Evolution. But they got it completely wrong. If you believed the headlines, scientists had proven the existence of Adam and Eve. They traced our genetics back and discovered we all come from one couple who lived tens of thousands of years ago. Of course, that’s not how anything works.

As Patheos points out, the study was only looking at mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA. That leaves a whole lot more chromosomal DNA that could (and almost certainly did) come from other people. Nor were Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam a couple. Not in the slightest. Scientists narrowed the time Mitochondrial Eve was on earth to 100,000-230,000 years ago. Even with that giant a time period he could overlap, Y-chromosomal Adam probably lived about 75,000 years before her. And scientists were definitely not saying these two people were the first people on Earth, either. Despite her misleading nickname, Mitochondrial Eve was supposed to represent “the most recent common mitochondrial ancestor of all living humans … not the first human woman ever.” But so many news stories got it wrong that the researchers had to release a statement saying they believed in evolution and were not saying there was a single Adam and Eve.

It was strange this was reported on at all, considering it wasn’t even a new idea. A 2013 study in the journal Science made headlines for coming to the same basic conclusion.

ADAM AND EVE HAD A LOT OF KIDS
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For almost 400 years after Jesus’ ministry, early Christians didn’t have a set book of theology. Anyone who wanted to could come up with their own stories or write their own version of history to help explain and form this new religion. One of the subjects that interested these early Christian authors was the children of Adam and Eve. Various books, now not considered official Christian theology by most mainstream denominations, discussed the daughters of Adam and Eve, giving two of them names and full lives.

But when it comes to the now-official Bible and the Torah, you might think it’s canon that Adam and Eve only had three children: Cain, Abel, and Seth. In fact, even Genesis mentions many more children for the pair, although it gives no other details. But Genesis 5:4 is very clear, “After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters.” As The Bible Answer explains, the plural on both those words indicated there would have been at least two more children of each sex, bringing the minimum number of kids they had to seven. But as Adam lived to be 800 years old, it’s easy for Biblical scholars to assume there were even more.

Jewish writings outside the Torah give even more specific numbers for the amount of kids the first couple had. Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian writing around 75-100 AD, recorded that “The number of Adam’s children, as says the old tradition, was 33 sons and 23 daughters.”

EVE AND THE SNAKE
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It can be argued that the short passage in Genesis where a talking snake convinces Eve to eat from a special tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden is one of the most impactful stories in human history. It has been used for any number of theological, social, and political purposes throughout the millennia. But the story is a lot more complicated than a Sunday School version might have imparted to many.

First, while Genesis is clear that the animal involved is a snake, it never says anything about the snake being the devil. According to The Jewish Study Bible, this detail was added later by other Jewish and Christian writers, and seems like a logical inference until you think about the story a bit deeper. God had just created the animals, after all, so did he create the snake as Satan? If so, what does that mean for this story? “Genesis: A Commentary” argues that the snake isn’t even a very important part of the morality tale at all and doesn’t deserve all the attention later retellings give to it.

It’s also significant that Eve never actually heard the commandment from God not to eat from the tree. She only got a paraphrased version from Adam. So, when the snake appears and uses what both sources point out are very good conversational and rhetorical tricks, Eve is easily led to the conclusion it is a good idea to disobey God.

CHRISTIANITY DIDN’T BLAME ADAM AND EVE FOR ‘ORIGINAL SIN’ FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS
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Many Christian denominations believe in the concept of “original sin.” This, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, is the idea that all humans are born already in a sinful state. How can a baby fresh from the womb already have sinned? Because Adam and Eve passed on their terrible sin of disobedience in the Garden of Eden to every single person who came after them. Or so the theory goes.

This is such a big part of Christian theology that it’s fascinating it wasn’t a thing for the first 400 or so years after Jesus. In fact, many early Christian theologians, including the incredibly influential bishop Saint Irenaeus of Smyrna, argued that if humans ever had original sin, Jesus removed it for everyone when he was crucified, per “Original Sin: Origins, Developments, Contemporary Meanings.” One of the early discussions among church fathers was about the act of infant baptism. Jesus was baptized as an adult, so why would it be important for present-day Christians to be baptized as babies instead? Many theologians tied this back to original sin. They also wrote deep philosophical explanations on how Adam’s soul could have passed on this original sin, arguing over the three possible ways they considered it could have happened.

Finally, Saint Augustine of Hippo (pictured) wrote the defining works on the question of original sin around 400 AD. Working on the incorrect assumption Christians had always agreed infant baptism was required, he retconned original sin to give a reason for this sacrament. From then on, it was a Christian fact.

THE ‘FOUR WOUNDS’ OF ADAM AND EVE’S FALL
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Even once Christians settled on the concept of original sin, they were not done discussing just how much Adam and Even had screwed humanity by eating that one piece of fruit. On his blog, Asbury Theological Seminary President Timothy C. Tennent explains that the idea of four “wounds” that resulted from Adam and Eve’s fall from grace in the Garden of Eden started with the Venerable Bede (pictured) who was writing around 700 AD. But it was Thomas Aquinas who really ran with them in his seminal “Summa Theologica.”

As Aquinas put it, “In so far as reason has lost the way to truth, there is the wound of ignorance. In so far as the will has lost its inclination to good, there is the wound of malice. In so far as the irascible power has lost its aggressiveness towards the difficult, there is the wound of weakness. Finally, in so far as desire is no longer directed to the delectable under the restraint of reason, there is the wound of desire.” In other words, every important thing that makes us human was deeply wounded by that one healthy snack.

All Saints Anglican Church explains what this means for Christians who follow this theology. Basically, they believe the wounds caused “a destructive disharmony in our soul,” meaning you will fail, and eventually die. Various Christian denominations have different ways of fixing this problem, including good works and baptism. (Since they still physically die, of course, the idea is your soul will not.)

THE ADAM AND EVE STORY IS FULL OF PUNS
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According to Biblical Archeology Review, the story of Adam and Eve is absolutely stuffed with what are, effectively, dad jokes. Take a look at this one, from Genesis 2:5, “There was no man to work the earth.” Groan, right? And then the author really brings the punchline home with a callback to the joke in Genesis 3:19, when God tells Adam he’s going to be punished for his disobedience: “By the sweat of your brow, you shall eat your bread, until you return to the earth, from which you were taken.” Hilarious, right?

If you’re confused, don’t worry. Since Genesis was originally written in Hebrew, the jokes don’t work in English (or most other languages). And it seems translators over the centuries didn’t think it was important to keep the puns. But in Hebrew, those puns have real meanings that help interpret the text.

Bible Odyssey explains a close English equivalent would be if Adam’s name was translated as “Earthling.” So when the text mentions Adam and the earth together, it would be saying something along the lines of “one day you’re going back to the earth, but until then you are going to farm the earth, Earthling.” This gives those lines deeper meaning even today, and Bible Odyssey adds that in a sustenance society like the Hebrews faced in their arid region, this would have been a very overt reference to how difficult and finite life is.

MANY PEOPLE TRIED TO NAIL DOWN EXACT DATES FOR ADAM AND EVE
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A 2019 Gallup poll found that 40% of adults in the U.S. believed in the Biblical story of Creation. (On the other hand, a total of 55% believed in human evolution, either with God’s help or without.) This means the Creationists took the Adam and Eve story literally, and thought they were real people who existed, at most, 10,000 years ago. But where does that date come from? And is that really as specific as the timeframe gets?

The Bible, particularly the Old Testament, loves a genealogy (the infamous “so-and-so begat so-and-so, who begat so-and-so” parts). On his blog, theoretical astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet explains that based on the two lists of who begat whom in Genesis, which cover the generations between Adam and Abraham, plus the many other begat lists that ultimately culminate with Jesus, historical theologians settled on about 4,000 BC as the date of the creation of the earth. However, for various reasons, others believe the genealogies are missing some names, and that the date could be as late as 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.

But theologians got even more specific. Around 700 AD, the Venerable Bede wrote that the Creation took place in the spring. In 1642, the scholar John Lightfoot famously determined that “man was created by the Trinity on October 23, 4004 BC at nine o’clock in the morning.” And in 1650, Archbishop James Ussher calculated that Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden on Monday, November 19.

HOW DID ADAM LIVE FOR SO LONG?
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The men covered in Genesis must have been doing plenty of exercise and getting their fiber, because they lived a long, long time. Genesis 5 lists a bunch of their ages when they died, and it says Adam made it to 930 years old, while his son Seth was 912 before he kicked the bucket.

For those people who believe the stories in Genesis are literal, this presents an interesting conundrum. How could Adam and his progeny live almost 1,000 years, when so few people these days even make it 1/10th as long? There have been many theories. BibleAsk states Adam’s elongated life was thanks to “the original vitality given at creation, the effect of the fruit of the tree of life, the superior quality of food, piety, and the divine grace in delaying the judgment of the penalty of sin.” Answers in Genesis blames our shorter lifespans on “mutations and genetic bottlenecks” in our DNA that have emerged since Adam. And Tabletalk Magazine says that humans were supposed to live a long time, but once we became so wicked God had to send a flood, he reduced our lifespans as punishment. (“Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.'” Genesis 6:3.) The Bible then reduced lifespans further and further, until Psalm 90 states, “The days of our years are threescore years and ten,” a.k.a. 70 years.

However, many Christians believe, as BioLogos points out, that Adam’s lifespan is not meant to be literal, but symbolic, and represented something important in ancient Hebrew numerology.

ADAM WAS THE FIRST NATURAL DEATH, WHILE EVE’S DEATH INVENTED THE FUNERAL
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When Cain murdered his brother Abel it was the first death that ever occurred on Earth, at least according to Genesis. But it would not be until hundreds of years later when Adam died at the ripe old age of 930 that the world saw its first death from natural causes. Genesis is light on the details around this momentous event, which means other Jewish writers, as well as some early Christian ones, stepped in to fill in the gaps. One such book that covers this topic is the “Life of Adam and Eve,” also known as the “Apocalypse of Moses.”

In this story, Adam is old and not feeling great. He says God has struck him with 72 different ailments over his lifetime, including eye pain and hearing loss. But now Adam knows he’s dying, and while Eve and Seth try to save him with oil from the Garden of Eden, it’s no use. An angel tells them Adam had just three days to live. The couple ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, so now humans all have to die. But Adam makes sure Eve knows it’s all her fault before he gives up the ghost: “And Adam saith to Eve: ‘Eve, what hast thou wrought in us? Thou hast brought upon us great wrath which is death…'”

After Adam died, Eve asks God to die too, and He obliges. Then the archangel Michael “came and taught Seth how to prepare Eve for burial … and saith: ‘Lay out in this wise every man that dieth till the day of the Resurrection.'”

ADAM AND EVE ARE SAID TO BE BURIED IN THE CAVE OF THE PATRIARCHS
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You would think it would be near impossible to know where the first two people on Earth were buried, even if they did live, as Creationists estimate, less than 10,000 years ago. But tradition is clear on exactly where they are buried, and the Jewish Virtual Library says it’s the second holiest location in Judaism, after the Temple Mount. Called the Cave of Machpelah or the Cave of the Patriarchs, it’s located in Hebron, a city in the occupied West Bank.

As the Kabbalah text the Zohar explains (via Chabad.org), after the fall of man, Adam realized there was a gateway to the Garden of Eden in the ground when he saw light coming from it. He picked that spot as his and Eve’s final resting place, digging a cave for their gravesite. Eventually, Adam’s decedent Abraham accidentally found the cave, so he picked it as his burial site too – as did the other Old Testament headliners Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Leah. That adds up to four major Jewish power couples buried in one place, one that also led to the Garden of Eden. So you can see why it’s special.

The large building which surrounds the graves was built in the 1st century BC by King Herod of baby-killing fame. The location has been under Muslim jurisdiction for about 700 years, and non-Muslims have generally not been allowed into the cave since then, although as Aish records, a few Jews and Christians have managed to sneak in.
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FALSE FACTS ABOUT ANCIENT RELIGIONS YOU ALWAYS THOUGHT WERE TRUE
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BY JOSEPH MURPHY/UPDATED: JUNE 21, 2021 10:56 AM EDT
Religion is our spiritual nourishment serving as a strength to sustain us through the hardest times. Thing is you’ve got to take it on faith. You can’t see, touch, or taste it. There are books, rabbis, imams, and priests to help guide you but ultimately, it’s a personal matter between you and the intangible. The other thing about religion is it’s been handed down through the centuries, across a few different languages, and shared by people that haven’t always agreed on its meaning.

When you sit down to partake in this delicious communal gumbo, keep in mind that there have been a lot of cooks in that kitchen. The recipe you enjoy today may have a little more or less of the proverbial paprika than what was served in times past.

As a little food for thought, here are some facts about religions that haven’t always been true.

PRIESTS COULD NEVER MARRY
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It was Paul McCartney who sang of Father Mackenzie “darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there.” The good priest was alone, no Mrs. Mackenzie to give a darn because Catholic priests can’t marry, of course. They forgo it in devotion to God. At least, that’s how it’s been lately. There was a time when priests were as free as anyone to be husbands.

In the early A.D. days, priests still knew the bliss of endless compromise and physical pleasure with a spouse. That started to change in 306 at the first Council of Elvira when, as explained by former dean of the Notre Dame Graduate School of Christendom College Fr. William Saunders, the subject of clergy marriage was raised. It was still allowed, but the Church began pushing for chastity among the clergy, a white martyrdom in faith as opposed to the red martyrdom of being killed for it.

The last legs of a priest’s wedding march were kicked out in the 11th century as part of the Gregorian reforms. Priests who could not live celibate lives were seen as lacking moral authority. The church was growing and wanted to shore up its authority as a moral leader. According to some scholars, this even helped make the case for the Crusades, which were not exactly a high point in morality.

HELL HAS BEEN THERE FROM THE START
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The fiery pit of eternal torment where Grandma condemned you for sneaking that cookie. The stick to Heaven’s carrot. Do good in life or burn for all time. Hell.

Truth is, faith took a while to heat up. The Old Testament of the Christian Bible, which is also shared by Judaism and Islam, contains the story of creation, the first humans, the first murder, and horrendous acts of violence, but no Hell. Jews and Muslims never quite got on board with flame pits, and not just because they don’t dig swine.

Universalist theologian Thomas B. Thayer explained in 1855 that, in the beginning, there was Sheol, a place for the dead. Its closer to shame or depression but not an afterlife. Sheol was not the least bit metal. The fires of hell were actually lit in Gehenna, where the dead beasts and executed criminals were left to burn. According to Christian author William West’s research, this was “the severest judgment which a Jewish court court could pass upon a criminal.” A place of punishment, neverending fire and the dead burning? Now, that’s metal and much more like what Granny threatened you with.

Centuries later, the New Testament unveiled the idea of a multiple-choice afterlife. Luke 16:24: “For I am in agony in this flame.” Whether God finally got things up to temperature or folks were still misreading an old Jewish dumpster fire is unclear. Best be good, for goodness’ sake.

ALL RELIGIONS BURY THEIR DEAD
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“For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Genesis 3:19. For the symbolism of the Old Testament, the expediency of covering the deceased, or the necessity in putting off wild animals from the scent of rotting flesh, burying the dead has been a custom throughout history. Some, by Time’s reporting, see the Earth as sacred and not meant to be filled with the dead. Others see a quicker path to Heaven.

Buddhists and followers of Zoroastrianism practice sky burial. While it sounds romantic, a sky burial is actually leaving the dead to be devoured by birds of prey. Buddhists want to free the spirit, while Zoroastrians are trying to keep the Earth clean.

The Buddhist tradition, detailed by Tibet Vista, involves praying over the body before bringing it out, cutting it, and smashing it. The body breakers laugh as they work, to help the spirit transcend. The family isn’t present because they would only anchor the spirit. Incense is left burning, letting the vultures know it’s time to eat. Zoroastrianism’s way starts out similarly but ends in a chamber with a layered filtration system. Per Al Jazeera, this breaks the bones down, returning them cleanly to the Earth.

If coffins give you claustrophobia, consider traveling in your old age. It may leave you with an everlasting peace.

BUDDHISM ABHORS VIOLENCE
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The most famous example of a Buddhist is either the Dalai Lama, smiling and serene, or Thich Quan Duc setting himself on fire to protest the Buddhist crisis in Vietnam. Buddhists are pacifists, believing in karmic reincarnation. The first of their five moral precepts is to abstain from taking life. But the wages of karma afford some interpretation on the value of a life.

As historian Peter Harvey explains, there are texts that allow for murder, even stories of the Buddha taking one life to spare others. There is room on the karmic wheel for compassionate violence. “Killing one in order to warn a hundred is not a violation of the precept of non-killing. It is a meritorious action to save the lives of human beings” says one Buddhist sermon. Sometimes the least of all evils is to take on the karmic debt of murder, slowing one’s progress to Nirvana but sparing others that burden.

During World War II, Zen Buddhism was the theological backbone that Japan relied upon to shore up morale, steeling themselves as they prepared for suicide attacks. As reported by the New York Times, Buddhists “conducted fund-raising drives to purchase military aircraft.” Not directly violent but certainly not pacifist. It also keeps with the tradition of ancient warrior monks who have been fighting in Japan for over a thousand years.

There’s no one path to Nirvana, and in some cases even holy men will fight to get there.

HINDUISM IS CALLED HINDUISM
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One of the world’s oldest religions is Hinduism. It’s most closely associated with the Bhagavad Gita, Ghanesh, and Yoga. It’s also associated with the word Hinduism. That’s not its name.

Despite the fact that everyone calls it Hinduism, it’s the Sanata Dharma, though Brahmanism or Vedantism are also acceptable. Religious scholar David Lorenzen blames the Persians for the mixup. They first encountered this faith by the Sindhu river, but in their pronunciation it became “Hindu” because sometimes history is just that voice talking over everyone else.

That being said, why hasn’t anyone made an effort to correct this for the past few thousand years? Well, the nature of Sanata Dharma itself. One way to interpret Sanata Dharma is something forever held, without beginning or end. In other words, who are they to be starting something?

As Merriam-Webster puts it, “truth is of such a nature that it must be multiply sought, not dogmatically claimed.” It really isn’t the way of Dharma to worry about semantics. Just live your best life and approach God in your way. Let faith be faith by any name.

ALL ANCIENT RELIGIONS DISAPPROVE OF HOMOSEXUALITY
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“You must not have sexual intercourse with a male as one has sexual intercourse with a woman; it is a detestable act.” Leviticus 18:22. Being gay and of faith is never easy, particularly when your faith is one of the ancient religions. That quote is from the Old Testament, the bedrock of several religions. And while its teachings are widespread, they aren’t the only ones out there.

Taoism, a Chinese belief system is home to the Rabbit God, Tu’er Shen. The story goes that in the 18th century, a man named Hu Tianbao was beaten to death for loving another man. The lord of the underworld raised Hu Tianbao up as Tu’er Shen, charging him with the watching over men who desired other men. Tu’er Shen prefers offerings of sugar and pork intestines and is said to be a gracious deity.

Additionally, from Ancient Egypt we have an interesting exchange between two gods, as Seth compliments Horus, “How beautiful are thy buttocks.” Here we have two deities, technically beyond gender but depicted as masculine, enjoying one another from head to toe. When most religious canon holds same-gendered love to be a sin, even a single piece of pleasurable papyrus can be gratifying.

RELIGIONS ENJOY IMAGES OF FAITH
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Looking around, there’s no shortage of religious iconography from Renaissance artwork, to stained-glass windows, right up to Yeezy’s Jesus piece. God even does commercials. Maybe that’s what religions were looking to avoid when drawing Yahweh or depicting the face of God were considered sinful and forbidden. The Abrahamic faiths didn’t advertise.

The fear was these images broke the Second Commandment, which prohibited making images to worship. Worse, what if your prayers went to the image and not your god? According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, this was too close to how pagans worshiped. Virtue aside, there was a practical reason: money. As Jeffrey Spier explains in his book Picturing the Bible, “The poverty and status of the Christian community denied it the possibility of commissioning works of art.”

Judaism and many Muslims still keep away from images. Most Muslims refuse to depict the face of Allah or Muhammad. Judaism prefers to write G-d for fear of having to ever erase his name. Catholics were debating even up until 1866, as recorded by Bishop Rev. L. Meurin, who argued that artistic interpretations of the scriptures could help spread the word and deepen understanding.

Meanwhile, the BBC tells of a beautiful mosaic of Jesus’ face in Dorset laid into the floor several hundred years ago. Whichever side you stand on, the image issue stills asks us to tread lightly.

SAINTS ARE THE BEST PEOPLE
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The word “saint” conjures the idea of a good person. One who gives their last dollar to someone less fortunate. There are actual rules to becoming a saint, and it can take a few centuries to be canonized. Those centuries must help because, looking back, saints were into some weird stuff more fitting reality television than reverence. It’s common in the lives of saints to find hardcore fasting, the faithful pushing themselves to the limits of physical endurance in extreme penance. Then there’s Saint Macarius the Younger.

The Lives of The Saints tells us that he mastered starvation: “For seven years together he lived only on raw herbs and pulse.” (Pulses are seeds like lentils.) Then he accidentally killed a gnat and was so mortified that he ran to a swamp, where he lived naked for six months at the mercy of stinging insects until “his whole body [was] disfigured by them.” Nearer my God to thee.

If body horror isn’t your cup of tea, meet Saint Simeon Stylites the elder, a saint because he got high. New Advent has compiled his path to sainthood. He stood on a series of columns, each higher than the last, getting food from his followers, finally dying on the last one after 36 years. Not to discount his good works, but it takes something special to climb into history by just standing there.

ABORTION IS THE ULTIMATE SIN
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When it comes to abortion, religion does not waver. It’s firmly on the side of life, no matter which way you parse history. No means no, not counting those few centuries where it was a maybe before becoming a probably. But it definitely landed on no … depending upon when life starts, according to Christian historian O.M. Bakke.

The abortion debate is not new. Thousands of years of discussion and thought have gone into deciding the church’s official stance. Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas both worked with the idea that from conception to birth, the fetus has a succession of different souls: vegetative, animal, then rational. Along that line of thinking was the debate over whether a baby was made and ensouled with bits of parental soul or just made and left there until God deposited a soul. There was quite a gray area over when to punish and what exactly to punish for.

Also, according to sociology professor Michelle Dillon, there was no church law against abortion until the council of Elvira in the early 300s. Even then, there was back and forth over the developmental stages of the fetus. It wasn’t until 1869 that Pope Pius IX announced excommunication as punishment that the church started to exchange nuance for just saying no.