Seeing as the Trope Namer is about how religion and myths are misrepresented, it's unsurprising that this has its own page.
The Bible, Judaism, and Christianity
General:
- Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy is the Trope Namer, and the most famous example. Anything you think you know about Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory was probably popularized by Dante, though very little of it is supported by Biblical canonicity. Considerable portions were also based on contemporary Church positions and local superstitions, both of which were still dominated by leftover bits of Middle-Eastern, Roman and Greek mythology at the time. His famous depiction of the three-faced Satan chewing on Judas, Brutus, and Cassius may be based on a mosaic on the Florence Baptistery. There are also some Real Life people (such as Francesca da Rimini and Count Ugolino) that we only know of through Dante's work and the early commentaries explaining it. Many of them, especially the souls found in the Inferno, could probably have gone without being mentioned. Many among that group had wronged Dante in some way, and the general consensus among modern critics of Inferno is that Dante included them for personal reasons — or political ones, since Dante was very active in Florentine politics (until he was exiled, at which point many of his political beefs became personal too). There are so many of these people that some say Inferno is 40-50% political satire and requires extensive knowledge of contemporary Italian politics to understand.
- This trope is older than the actual Bible we know today, with various other religious texts not included in canonicity but occasionally influential, known as Apocrypha. First, there are the various deuterocanonical books which you might find after Revelation in your Bible (in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, however, they'll simply be in the Old Testament- there are seven, not counting the codicils of Esther and Daniel and the appendix to Daniel). These are considered by Biblical scholars (in varying degrees) to be not canonical, but not heretical. Why? A Serious Business but often some of it is as simple as obvious errors. Generally not found in modern Protestant Bibles but still available in common versions.
- Beyond this there are Apocrypha not found in any widely available version of the Bible. One of the oldest and most referenced is the Book of Enoch, which is possibly the Ur-Example of Word Of Dante for The Bible. It notably has a lot of info dumping about angels and fallen angels and either started various beliefs or at least shows they go back into ancient times. The Book of Enoch was lost to Western scholars for a time but turned up in archeological finds and is considered canon by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
- Other texts called Apocrypha were consciously discarded as Christianity took shape, some for being considered total fiction and others for being outright heretical. This category includes the Gnostic Gospels which get into very divergent beliefs compared to what Christianity became. Incidentally, they contain no revelations as shocking as certain disreputable modern authors may claim to sell books.
- Some people have said that Mary Magdalene wrote a gospel, though this is generally considered non-canonical by the church. A book of it was put out a few years ago, however.
- Paradise Lost is like this for the entire Bible, especially Satan. Satan only gets a few lines in the Bible and not much that you could use to establish a sympathetic character. Paradise Lost also establishes the idea of angels playing harps.
- In regards of the Devil, the popular image of a red-skinned, horned, goat-legged devil with a pitchfork is neither biblical nor has it ever been mainstream Christian teaching. The picture is a steady amalgamation of pagan symbols attached to Satan over the years in order to discredit them. In fact, in many early paintings, he's represented as a goat that walks on his hind legs.
- Much like the Devil, the popular image of God as an elderly, bearded man is based more off of Zeus and other pre-Christian chief deities and (depending on who you ask) violates the Second Commandment ("thou shalt have no graven images of Me"). YHWH's actual appearance in The Bible is less Physical God and more Angelic Abomination. In fact, Moses was the only prophet He allowed to see Him in person and specifically said not to look at His face because it would be too much for Moses to withstand.
- Naturally, Cracked has an entire list of this trope for Christianity
. Along with those already mentioned is the entire concept of any of the fallen angels ruling Hell, as Hell is just as much a prison for them as it is for the sinners.
Hebrew Bible/Tanakh/Old Testament:
- Nowhere in the Garden of Eden story does the Bible mention the name of the forbidden fruit, commonly accepted as an apple by people who aren't Biblical scholars. In fact, Jewish sources debate five or six possibilities, which include everything from fig to grapes to wheat, but no apple. The belief that the fruit was an apple was due to an unintentional pun found in the Latin Vulgate translations of the Bible: Malum (apple) vs. Malus (evil). For all we know that tree could've been a Single Specimen Species.
- The only Biblical mention of "Lilith" is in Isaiah 34:14, where it's not even clear that it refers to a person; it's a plural noun and has variously been translated as "owls" or "demons." It's used a few times in the Talmud, but never as a mysterious "first wife of Adam" — that actually comes from a medieval book called the Alphabet of ben Sirach, which is generally interpreted as some kind of vulgar parody (the whole "who's on top?" issue is only one of its lewd topics).
- There's nothing in the original Old Testament account of the destruction of Sodom which says the sins of its inhabitants included homosexuality. It's not until the Epistle of Jude in the New Testament that references to the sins of Sodom take on an explicitly sexual aspect, but still not an explicitly homosexual one. While a few Christian and Jewish philosophers had occasionally implied links between the two, it wasn't until Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I explicitly defined 'sodomy' as same-sex sexual activity in his law code in the 6th Century CE that the idea that homosexuality in and of itself (as opposed to male-on-male rape) was Sodom's sin became widespread. In the real Talmud, it is actually explained in great detail that Sodom was wicked specifically for corruption, mostly robbing visitors blind and not caring what happened to them. Given that the same text approvingly describes what would be called war crimes now, this may be an ur-example of morality as a relative thing or even a forgotten moral system, or at least a very old case of Jews growing up with modernity. With a dash of Too Stupid To Live since Sodom was warned that God hated legal corruption.
- The Book of Exodus doesn't name the Pharaoh who Moses went up against, but pop culture has completely identified him with Ramesses II. note The Ten Commandments didn't invent the idea, but it probably codified it and later The Prince of Egypt codified it again for a new generation. It's reached the point where any screen adaptation of the story which doesn't call him "Ramesses" will simply not mention his name. This results from confusion due to the mention of a couple of cities (either contemporary version of slums, or a huge collection of barns, scholars differ in opinion) built by the Hebrew slaves, one of which is called רעמסס ("Ra?amses" where /?/ is some kind of pharyngeal/epiglottal consonantnote ).
- In the Bible, Moses' birth mother Yocheved was his nursemaid and Moses probably knew he was Hebrew since childhood. Virtually all modern adaptations of the story have him not find out until he is an adult, which is useful in that it adds another layer of angst to the story.
- Queen Jezebel is often associated with The Oldest Profession, despite never having actually engaged in it in the text. Rather, she was a Phoenician princess given in marriage to King Ahab to seal a political alliance (specifically, an alliance of Canaanite states against the invading Assyrians), who assumed the role of High Priestess in the name of her Pagan gods. The idea of her as a prostitute likely comes from the fact that she appeared in front of a palace window in all her makeup and finery before Jehu, and the fact that the religion she was trying to promote sometimes did involve ritual prostitution with certain designated priests and priestesses in the name of certain fertility gods, such as Ba'al and Asherah.note Her encounter with Jehu, however, was not one of trying to seduce or entice him, but rather because she wanted to Face Death with Dignity. Additionally, she shares the name with another wannabe Pagan high-priestess from the Book of Revelation, who herself may be getting confused with the Whore of Babylon. (Who is not a real person, but rather a personification of a culture of corruption and idolatry, to be contrasted with the Church, described as the Bride of Christ.)
- In the Book of Esther, Xerxes' first queen, Vashti, whose refusal to appear naked before her husband's party guests sets the plot into motion. According to some Midrashic interpretations, she was a terrible person who abused her (mostly Jewish) servant girls and forced them to do things like work on the Sabbath and eat unkosher food. According to these interpretations, she was arrogant, vain, and haughty, and the real reason she refused her husband's summons was not because she didn't want to parade naked before a bunch of drunk guys, but rather because as punishment for her mistreatment of her servant girls, she had been punished by an angel with some kind of embarrassing disfigurement. (Most commonly said to be the sudden and unexplained growth of a penis.) The text itself, however, supports none of this. The only "bad" thing she did in the text was refusing her husband's summons, which was viewed as treason by her patriarchal society.
- One exceptionally notorious example of this trope is the idea that Cain was cursed to become the first black person and that all black people are his descendants. This was a racist myth that was historically used to justify the enslavement of Africans during the colonial era. Fortunately, mainstream Christianity rejects this idea and most modern Christians agree that the mark of Cain was symbolic and was intended to make sure that nobody could kill him so that he could live out his full punishment. It is also worth mentioning that it is generally agreed on that none of Cain's survived the Flood, meaning that all post-Flood humans are descended from Seth.
- This myth was historically used by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to justify banning of black men from priesthood until 1978.
- A similar myth uses Ham in place of Cain. Not only did Christians use it to justify the enslavement of Africans, but Jews and Muslims did as well. While the idea that Ham was the ancestor of Africans has Biblical basis, it was actually his son Canaan that was cursed and even then the curse had absolutely nothing to do with him being cursed to become the first black person.
New Testament (and Christianity more broadly):
- December 25 is not mentioned as the date of the nativity. Most scholars believe it was in September. Christmas is based on the Norse holiday Yule and the Roman festival Saturnalia. Also, Jesus was not born in 1 AD, but rather circa 6-4 BC. This is because Dionysius Exiguus miscalculated Jesus's birth year when creating the BC/AD year system.
- The names and number of Wise Men who visited Jesus were not mentioned in the Bible; they come from 6th to 8th-century sources. In Western Europe, they were assumed to be 3 because 3 were the gifts they gave to Jesus, but in Armenia, for example, they were 12. What's more, they likely did not visit Jesus on the day of His birth or twelve days after. It could have been up to two years.
- The Gospel of Luke says the infant Jesus was laid in a manger because there was no room in the inn, but it's never said that he was born in the inn's stable: houses often had an area where the household animals lived. Nor is there canonical list of friendly beasts — specifically the ox and ass — watching it happen. The specific animals come from the first live enactment of the Nativity scene in 13th-century Italy, where these two might have been added just because they were there.
- The Bible also never specifically singles out the Seven Deadly Sins. The concept comes from fourth-century Christian writers (and before Pope Gregory, there were eight sins).
- Mary Magdalene is often identified with other females from the Gospels, including Mary the sister of Martha, the woman who washes Jesus' feet with her tears, and the woman caught in adultery. That is, she is considered to be one or more of them. However, there is no support in the Gospels themselves for these. Some of them are Church tradition, though. The originator of this idea is the sixth-century Pope Gregory the Great, also the man responsible for the standard list of Seven Deadly Sins. All that's said about Mary Magdalene is that she was a "sinner." It's never specified what it was that she did wrong, or felt guilty for. Later scholars (being mostly men) assumed that it meant she was a prostitute, or had engaged in some other type of illicit sex.
- This is why the line "Qui Mariam absolvisti" from the Dies Irae plainchant was changed to "Peccatricem qui solvisti" during the 1969-1971 Catholic liturgical reforms.
- The Antichrist, who is mentioned only in the first epistle of John in the context of "many antichrists" (who are more likely general oppressors and heretics rather than specific apocalyptic enemies; basically, anyone who isn't pro-Christ), is often identified with various apocalyptic figures, such as the Beast from the Sea from Revelation, the Man of Sin/Lawlessness from Second Thessalonians, and the Little Horn from Daniel. The only time "antichrist" is used is in the Johannine Epistles, and it refers to the proto-Gnostics in/around Ephesus that claimed that Jesus was a purely spiritual being (thus not really human in any meaningful sense). This was one of the major conflicts of the early church since early Christian thought involved a mixture of sometimes-conflicting Jewish and Gentile ideas regarding the nature of the spirit, God, and humanity.
- After Saul's conversion, he didn't deliberately change his name to Paul. His birth name was Sha'ul (Saul is the closest the Greek alphabet can come to rendering that name) and he never abandoned it. However, like many Romanized Jews, he had a Latin name that he used when dealing with Gentiles — Paulus or "Paul." So the author of Acts called him "Saul" so long as that's what his main associates (the Pharisees) called him; he got referred to as "Paul" once he began moving mainly in Gentile circles.
- Christian tradition teaches that of Jesus's 12 apostles, all but two (Judas and John) were martyred. The Bible accounts only for the fate of two of them: Judas (suicide/divinely ordained accident, the Bible gives conflicting accounts) and James (killed by order of Herod). Stories for the rest come from apocryphal and medieval sources.
- Quite a few tenets affirmed of the Catholic and Orthodox Church are not actually found in the Bible. Examples include immaculate conception (not to be confused with the virgin birth), the bodily assumption of Mary, and transubstantiation. They could be considered universally believed Words of Dante that were upgraded to Words of God via Papal fiat. However, the Catholics and Orthodox accept both the validity of Scripture and Tradition, with Tradition being the results of a continuous deepening of understanding of theology. The Protestants generally do not accept these due to their belief in Sola Scriptura (Scripture only): all tenets of faith must be directly extrapolated from the text.
- Virtually all (Western) artworks, from The Last Supper to The Passion of the Christ, have depicted all prophets and common people in The Bible as of white European stock, including a very blue-eyed and blond Jesus Christ, despite the fact that most people in the Holy Land were of Jewish or Middle Eastern descent. Jesus is also usually portrayed as a man with long hair, a beard and a white dress to emphasize his Incorruptible Pure Pureness, again something that isn't specifically described as such in the Bible. (The beard is historically likely, given that Jesus was Jewish and Jewish men of the era generally did have beards; the rest is just conjecture.) This is a common pattern in many depictions of Jesus, making him resemble the local people: here's an Ethiopian Jesus◊ and a Chinese Jesus for reference.
- Many people have argued that the real Jesus probably had short hair. Long hair on men was not common among 1st century Jews, and certain Gospel stories (such as Judas identifying him with a kiss) imply that Jesus did not look noticeably different from other normal men of his time. Also, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that it is "disgraceful" for a man to have long hair. Paul knew other apostles who had known Jesus during his life, and they probably would have described Jesus's appearance to Paul, so he would have been unlikely to say that had Jesus himself had long hair.
- According to some extrabiblical traditions (as well as Islam), the Virgin Mary was born to her mother Anne (who had her at a relatively old age after struggling with infertility for many years), and while she was still a toddler, was dedicated by Anne to work in the Temple as something not unlike a Miko until she was old enough for marriage, at which point the High Priest would arrange a marriage for her in place of her father. According to this school of thought, she was fed and cared for by angels during her time of Temple service, and (at an improbably young age, like elementary-school-age-child young age), she made a vow before God to remain a virgin her whole life. The Biblical text says none of this, and more likely, this account was an amalgam of Samuel (who really was dedicated to work in the Temple by his mother, who had also struggled with infertility), and accounts of Pagan priestesses, such as the Vestal Virgins of Ancient Rome. It would have been rather unlikely, as only men from the Tribe of Levi served in the Temple. What's more, they probably would have been rather leery about letting a girl or woman serve in the Temple (in any capacity), because many of the Pagan nations around them practiced ritual prostitution in their temples and shrines, which was (and still is) a huge no-no in Judaism. They wanted to avoid even the appearance of or potential for that kind of impropriety. (The prevailing view was that All Women Are Lustful.)
- Anything about Virgin Mary other than her being the mother of Jesus would fall into the category of this trope, as not much is said about her in the Biblical text. She is often said to be the World's Most Beautiful Woman (on the grounds that, according to Catholics and Orthodox, she was the epitome of the perfect woman, so she'd be fit to be the mother of Jesus, which was her divinely-determined destiny.) But her looks aren't even commented on casually at any of her appearances in The Four Gospels. (Considering her rather low station in life, she was probably fairly ordinary-looking for the time and place in which she lived.) And she probably did not wear blue robes during her earthly life, either, again because she was poor. Blue dye would have been way out of her price range, and was reserved almost exclusively for royalty and nobility. (Which, at least during her earthly life, she was not.)
- If you have ever heard someone say that Mary was married at 12 or 14, that's yet another apocryphal rumor. It came from a book called the Protoevangelum of James, written in the mid-to-late 2nd Century AD. This story made the headlines when an Alabama state official cited it to defend Roy Moore. In truth, the Bible says nothing about Mary's age whatsoever.
- If you have ever heard someone say that Mary was married at 12 or 14, that's yet another apocryphal rumor. It came from a book called the Protoevangelum of James
- While it's true that the Bible condemns homosexual sex between two men many presume this is true for lesbians. In reality only one passage in the entire Bible could potentially be seen as condemning sex between two women, and that passage is unclear. All it really does is say that women were guilty of "unnatural" behavior, without defining what it was. The subsequent passage does condemn men for "unnatural" attraction to other men, causing some to presume the unnatural behavior of women from the previous passage was a similar relationship with women, but since a long list of sins are being included in this section there is no way to know if the "unnatural" nature of women was at all related to the subsequent passage, or if these are just two unrelated sins within the larger list.
- It's rather common, when discussing whether the Bible teaches Fire and Brimstone Hell, to hear someone say that Gehennanote was a burning garbage dump outside Jerusalem. The only true statement there is that Gehenna is outside Jerusalem — it wasn't a garbage dump, but rather a place considered Unholy Ground due to its past with pagan rituals.
- Some Christians who oppose the celebration of Halloween will claim that it is the Devil's birthday. However, this is false as Halloween was based on Samhain which was created by the Celts, and the Bible actually says that all of the angels, including Lucifer, were created at the same time some time before the universe was created.
- The hierarchy of angels commonly found in certain Christian traditions never actually appears in the Bible. It actually originated from De Coelesti Hierarchia, a 5th-century work that modeled the supposed hierarchy of angels after the Roman government.
- Although this hierarchy considers cherubim the second-highest rank of angels, traditional Jewish hierarchies consider cherubim to be the second-lowest rank. This hierarchy also considers seraphim to be the highest rank, while traditional Jewish hierarchies only consider seraphim to be the fifth-highest. The Four Living Creatures (Chayot Ha Kodesh in Hebrew), which are considered cherubim in Christianity and are even referred to as cherubim in the Bible, belong to a separate class in Judaism and they are considered to be the highest rank.
- There are differing interpretations among Christians regarding what the "dominions", "virtues" "powers", and "principalities" refer to in said Bible verses that this hierarchy interprets as different ranks of angels.
- Some Christians do not consider the wheels (known as thrones or ophanim) seen in Ezekiel 1 and Ezekiel 10 to be angels, but rather they consider them to be part of the Four Living Creatures (Ezekiel 1:20-21 says that their spirits are in the wheels) that allow for them to move without turning.
- The idea that the Jews killed Jesus is especially notorious, but never appears in the Bible. While Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin did plot against Jesus, they never actually killed him. They only turned him in to the Romans, who actually killed Jesus. This myth is especially dangerous because it has historically been used to justify antisemitic violence.
Classical Mythology
- Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses are like this for Greco-Roman myths. Ovid cobbled together different Greek sources and added his own imaginative touches to create the definitive versions of most of the Greco-Roman myths we have today. The Aeneid standardized the story of Aeneas, which had previously existed in a bunch of variations and hadn't been as popular as, say, Romulus and Remus.
- Metamorphoses is the origin of Medusa's tragic backstory - namely, how Poseidon slept with her in Athena's temple, causing Athena to turn her into a monster. Depiste how much this sounds like something Greek gods would do, it's surprisingly not part of Greek mythology. So that means Lighter and Softer adaptations of Greek mythology that leave it out are, ironically, more fathful in this specific regard.
- Everyone knows that Medea poisoned her children after Jason left her. However, older sources state it was either an accident, or the citizens of Corinth were the murderers. Medea didn't become the murderer until Euripides started writing the play, and the Corinthians convinced him to change it (with a large bribe, that is). In other words, a case of Not His Sled that was Lost in Imitation.
- Likewise, the idea that Achilles was invulnerable to injury everywhere except for one heel is so ingrained in common knowledge that it's a byword for a very specific concept that everyone understands. Some people assume it was always that way, but in fact in the earliest-known stories (including The Iliad itself) he is just as vulnerable to harm everywhere on his body as anyone else. The concept seems not to have come about until centuries later — possibly as late as the 1st century AD, with The Achilleid being the earliest-known source to explicitly mention it.
Other
- The popular image of Santa Claus is taken from A Visit from St. Nicholas ("'Twas the night before Christmas..."). Before the poem was published in the 1820s, everyone had their own idea of what he looked like and how he traveled around. The popular modern image also owes a lot to Thomas Nast's cartoons of Santa in the 1860s.
- The modern perception of Norse Mythology and religious practices is mainly based on Christian or Muslim sources, such as the chronicle of Adam of Bremen from the 11th century, Ibn Fadlan's brief depiction of life among the Norse in Russia, or various texts by Icelandic skalds in the 13th century (such as Snorri Sturluson's manuals on how to write poetry).
- Arthurian Legend has been told and retold to the point where this happens. T. H. White's The Once and Future King is probably the best known these days, although most people are at least aware it's based on an older set of legends. Malory's Le Morte D Arthur (or his Complete Works) is usually the main "canon" but Malory makes no secret of drawing from other books... some of which scholars today can't identify for sure. Even then, these books are following mostly off of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae and the romances of Chrétien de Troyes and others, and not the often forgotten (and often missing) Welsh folktales... which may or may not predate the accounts of Roman historians from not long after the time that mention Arthur (confusing especially since Gaius, who was present for this part of history, is the one person who never mentions Arthur).
- Neither The Qur'an nor Muhammad ever said anything about martyrs receiving the company of 72 virgins in paradise. The idea was first written down by a commentator 200 years after the death of Muhammad. And some scholars now think the word he used meant "grapes" or "raisins," not virgins.
- The Hadiths of Islam can be seen as an example of this trope: a huge body of phrases attributed to the Prophet but not actually part of the Qur'an, a sort of Ascended Fanon.
