Saturday, October 8, 2005


ROOTS
Echoes from the past

Deepti

In the tradition of all the scriptures and religious texts created by man, the Bible too is a rich source of allusive language, yielding expressions that carry the weight of centuries of meaning in multiple layers. ‘The writing on the wall’ owes its origin to the Bible.

The King of Babylon, Belshazzar, gave a great banquet for a thousand of his lords. During the merrymaking, they all drank from goblets taken from the temple and praised the gods of gold, silver and other materials. Suddenly, the fingers of a hand appeared and wrote on the wall ‘Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin’. Daniel translated the words for the king, explaining to him that the words announced that his reign was over, he had been assessed and found wanting and would soon lose his kingdom. The same happened and since then, the writing on the wall is a herald of doom.

‘A golden calf’ is something unworthy that is excessively esteemed, especially money. It comes from the biblical story in which Moses came down from Mount Sinai carrying the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments only to find the Israelites worshipping a calf made of gold.

An inexhaustible supply of something that appears meagre is ‘a widow’s cruse’, from the biblical story of the widow’s jug of oil that miraculously replenished itself to supply Elijah during a famine. A cruse is a small earthen pot for holding liquids. Reminds one of so many similar stories in the Indian scriptures, driving home the truth that human experience and culture remain the same, only the outer garb changes.

‘Widow’s mite’ refers to a small contribution happily given by one who can hardly afford it. In the story, Jesus observes people casting money into the treasury. While many rich gave much, a widow contributed two mites, all she had. A mite is a coin of very small value.

An onerous burden or affliction that causes a lot of suffering is termed ‘a crown of thorns’. The original crown of thorns was the mock crown made of thorny branches that Roman soldiers placed on Jesus’ head before his crucifixion.

HOME