Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Pulp Fiction [NSFW]

Yorick: You will know I am the LORD when I lay my vengeance upon you!
Amazon 1: That's not real Scripture, it's a line from fucking Pulp Fict--
- Y The Last Man #25
by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra


In the Quentin Tarantino movie Pulp Fiction, Samuel Jackson's character has memorized a particular piece of Scripture which he likes to recite. However...it's not really Scripture. From the IMDB trivia page on the movie:
The passage from the Bible that Jules has memorized was mostly made up by Quentin Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson.
It's really a hodge podge of verses and things that sound like they would be in the Old Testament. However, the line at the end, and the line that Yorick quotes here, is very similar to Ezekiel 25:17. The NIV reads:
I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath. Then they will know that I am the LORD, when I take vengeance on them.
See, it's close. But not quite. Yet I'm sure many people who have seen the movie believe that this was really from the Bible. I'm sure I probably thought so too the first time I saw it. In truth, a lot of popular culture throughout the ages has influenced our interpretations and beliefs about the Bible far more than we realize. Our typical concept of Heaven and Hell has a whole lot more to do with Dante than anything that's actually in the Bible.

And I'm not going to even begin talking about how our tendency to over-literalize Revelation severely skews our concept of Heaven...

No comments:

Post a Comment