Literary Titles Taken From the Bible

I discovered while studying literature as an undergraduate that many of the novels I was reading had titles taken from phrases in the Bible.

A list on goodreads.com of Book Titles Based on Lines from the Bible has several hundred possible titles. Here is some information on just a few.

The Sun Also Rises was a title that took Ernest Hemingway a while to select. The book was published in the UK in 1927 with the title Fiesta. After that, he decided on using a line from Ecclesiastes, which he also used as the novel's epigraph.

“What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.”

Corinthians (13:12) provides the line “For now we see through a glass, darkly,” which has been used by several novelists, but it was also the inspiration for A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, a novel about drug culture which was also made into a film by the same name.

Henry James used a Biblical reference for his novel The Golden Bowl which is also taken from Ecclesiastes (12:6): “…or the golden bowl be broken, …then shall the dust return to the earth as it was.”

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is a 1941 book. The words are by James Agee and the photographs are by Walker Evans. It documents the lives of impoverished tenant farmers during the Great Depression. The title is from a passage in the Wisdom of Sirach (44:1) that begins, "Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us".

The William Faulkner novel Absalom, Absalom! uses the Biblical story of Absalom, a son of David who rebelled against his father (then King of the Kingdom of Israel). Absalom was killed by one of David's generals, Joab, in violation of David's order to deal gently with his son. His death caused much heartbreak to David.

Faulkner also used a Bible reference from the Psalms for his title The Wild Palms. That book was later published under the title If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem and now is usually listed under both titles. Look at some of his other titles and you can see the influence: Light in August, and Go Down, Moses. 

East of Eden by John Steinbeck takes its title from the Bible's Land of Nod. This place mentioned in the Book of Genesis of the Hebrew Bible and is said to be located "on the east of Eden."It is the place where Cain was exiled by God after Cain had murdered his brother Abel.

Flannery O'Connor's novel The Violent Bear It Away  uses a verse from the translation in the Douay-Rheims Bible: "And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away" (Matthew 11:12).

Toni Morrison chose Song of Solomon as a title. Rather than being a verse from the Bible, it is a book of the Old Testament. The Song of Songs, also Song of Solomon or Canticles  is one of the scrolls) found in the last section of the Tanakh, known as the Ketuvim (or "Writings"), and a book of the Old Testament.

The Song of Songs is unique within the Hebrew bible as it shows no interest in Law or Covenant or Yahweh the God of Israel, nor does it teach or explore Wisdom like Proverbs or Ecclesiastes, but it celebrates sexual love, giving "the voices of two lovers, praising each other, yearning for each other, proffering invitations to enjoy."  In modern Judaism the Song is read on the Sabbath during the Passover, which marks the beginning of the grain harvest as well as commemorating the Exodus from Egypt. Jewish tradition reads it as an allegory of the relationship between God and Israel, and Christianity sees it as an allegory of Christ and his "bride", the Church.

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Scientist

There were scientists long before we had the word "scientist" to describe them. The word really doesn't appear until 1834,when it was coined from Latin scientia by the Rev. William Whewell, a Cambridge University historian and philosopher. He wrote it in the same paragraph in which he coined "physicist."

The word "science" was already in use having come from Middle English via Middle French back to Latin scientia meaning "knowledge" as equivalent to scient- (stem of sciēns), present participle of scīre to know + -ia .

A scientist was first seen as a kind of artiste, in the sense of one who cultivates one of the arts presided over by the Muses (history, poetry, comedy, tragedy, music, dancing, astronomy. By the 17th century, it was also used for "one skilled in any art or craft" which would have included professors, surgeons, craftsmen, cooks etc. ). Since mid-18c. especially of "one who practices the arts of design or visual arts."

Aristotle was described as a natural philosopher.
Was he a scientist?

In 1840, Whewell said that Leonardo da Vinci was mentally a seeker after truth and so he was a scientist. Whewell was the master of Trinity College at Cambridge and a fairly good scientist himself in writing about geology, oceanic tides, and mathematics.

At the time, he was friends with scientists of the day such as Faraday and Darwin. Whewell was one of the Cambridge dons whom Charles Darwin met during his education there, and when Darwin returned from the Beagle voyage he was directly influenced by Whewell, who persuaded Darwin to become secretary of the Geological Society of London. The title pages of On the Origin of Species open with a quotation from Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise about science founded on a natural theology of a creator establishing laws:

"But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this—we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws."

Michael Faraday is best known for his study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. He is responsible for discovering the laws of electrolysis, and for popularizing terminology such as anode, cathode, electrode, and ion - all terms proposed in large part by William Whewell.

Whewell was writing a book, The Philosophy of the Inductive Science, which helped lay out basic questions in science like: How do you come up with a hypothesis? How do you prove it? Should it be universal?

Jackknife

One thing that comes to mind - perhaps first for people these days - is when you hear the word "jackknife" is a wrecked big rig on the highway with the tractor wedged against the trailer at a 45-90 degree angle.

This term is a reference to the folding pocket knife (larger than a "pen knife") once known as the jackknife whose blade can be folded back into its handle. Visually, this folding resembles a jackknifed truck and trailer.

The name "jackknife" comes from the heyday of seafaring. Sailors commonly carried these tools and they were associated with sailors. Because of its link to the Mariners who carried them the night became known as the jackknife which etymologists believe is a reference to a sailing vessel's flag or Jack staff.

The use of jackknife as a verb (sometimes jack-knife) goes back to American English in the Revolutionary War days when it took on the meaning "to stab." Around the time of the Civil War, it also had the meaning of "to fold or bend" your body as with the knife.

Starting around 1922, it started being used to describe a kind of swimming dive.

It didn't become something used to describe truck accidents until the second half of the 20th century. 

3 divers, the topmost one doing a jackknife

High Jinks and Jinx

If you start looking into the history of the term "high jinks", high jinks will ensue.

High jinks, also spelled hi-jinks and sometimes as hijinks, is defined as "boisterous or rambunctious carryings-on" or "carefree antics or horseplay."

It is a word I associate more with my parents and grandparents and was in popular usage in the mid-1900s.

'Hey-jinks' was a dice game in which one person would throw dice and have to complete a task—such as drinking all the liquor in a cup. The high in high jinks might have come from the drinking game aspect.

Originally, "jinks" was a dice game and references go all he way back to a 1683 English translation of Erasmus: "And as to all those Shooing-horns of drunkenness, the keeping every one his man, the throwing Hey-jinks, the filling of bumpers, the drinking two in a hand..."

This hey-jinks dice game of chance seems to have involved completing a task - maybe more of a dare or challenge and possibly something for the amusement of the group. It seems that the dice game itself fell away over the years and what remains was the dares that the game had inspired.

The word "jink" may be related to a Scottish verb jink that means "to move quickly or unexpectedly with sudden turns and shifts." This dodging action later meant "to trick or deceive" but by the time of that usage the high jinks usage was also around.

Jinks does not seem to have any connection to "jinx" which appears later in the language. The Online Etymology Dictionary states that 'jynx', meaning a charm or spell, was in usage in English as early as the 1690s. The Americanized spelling of "jinx" appears in 1911.

Jynx/jinx is traced to the 17th-century word jyng, meaning "a spell", and ultimately to the Latin word iynx (also spelled jynx, as in Latin 'j' and 'i' are the same letter). And that Latin word came from the Greek name of the bird iunx. This bird was associated with sorcery and was used in the casting of spells and in divination. The Ancient Romans and Greeks traced the bird's mythological origins to a sorceress named Iynx, who was transformed into this bird to punish her for a spell cast on the god Zeus.

In modern usage, a jinx is a superstition and folklore for a curse or the attribute of attracting bad or negative luck. Someone or something is said to be a jinx or to be jinxed if misfortune is associated with it.

This superstition shows up in sports. If a baseball pitcher is pitching a perfect game, it is considered a jinx to talk about it. Some people believe that pointing out a streak of particularly good fortune will "jinx it" and cause it to end.

Jinx is also a children's game that is initiated when at least two people say any same word or phrase at the same time. One of them then calls "jinx" on the other.

Pseudonyms and Nicknames: Musicians

Many a performer has changed his or her name to benefit their careers. A pseudonym is a fictitious name used by a person, or less often, a group. I have been looking at some pseudonyms here whether they are known as pen names (writers), noms de guerre, (resistance fighters or terrorists) or the stage names, for actors, musicians and other performers.

Why use a pseudonym? Sometimes it is done to mask a person's ethnic backgrounds in order to avoid prejudices, though I would hope that is less the case today than it was a hundred years ago. It can also be to create a personae. It can be simply to differentiate yourself from other performers with the same or similar names.

Just a few musician pseudonyms of popular musicians:




Bob Dylan's real is Robert Zimmerman. Around 1960, Zimmerman began introducing himself as "Bob Dylan," a name influenced by the poet Dylan Thomas. He has certainly built a life story for "Bob Dylan" that is part fact, part fiction. In a 2004 CBS interview, Bob said "You're born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free."




David Bowie was born David Jones and he changed his name to avoid confusion with David (Davy) Jones of the pop band The Monkees. It's hard to believe that anyone would ever have confused Bowie and Davy Jones, but...

Bowie's debut single, "Liza Jane", was credited to Davie Jones and the King Bees. It was flop and after several bands and singles, he decided to use the name David Bowie. The name came from the American soldier Jim Bowie and the "Bowie knife" he popularized.

Wendy Carlos, the American composer and electronic musician, was born as Walter Carlos and first came to notice in the late 1960s with recordings made on the Moog synthesizer, including the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange.

Carlos underwent sex reassignment surgery in 1972 and was first credited as "Wendy" on Switched-On Brandenburgs in 1979.

The popular singer of the 1970s, Cat Stevens, was born as Stephen Demetre Georgiou. But he changed his name for religious reasons and took a long break from performing as Yusuf Islam.

Eminem just took the initials of his real name, Marshall Mathers, and rewrote it phonetically.

Katy

Katy Perry chose to not use her real name, Katy Hudson, to avoid confusion with another famous Hudson she shares a name with - the actress Kate Hudson.

Singer Elvis Costello went for the King's name and a new surname rather than Declan Patrick McManus.

Musicians and singers can use pseudonyms to allow artists to collaborate with artists on other labels while avoiding the need to gain permission from their own labels.
Jerry Samuels made songs under the pseudonym Napoleon XIV and Beatles singer-guitarist George Harrison played guitar on Cream's song "Badge" using a pseudonym.

Pseudonyms are also used as stage names in bands: Tracii Guns in LA Guns, Axl Rose and Slash in Guns N' Roses, Mick Mars in Mötley Crüe, or C.C. Deville in Poison.

Brian Hugh Warner is more commonly known as Marilyn Manson, the incongrunt merging of Marilyn from Marilyn Monroe and Manson from convicted serial killer Charles Manson.

Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. is the creator of Alvin and the Chipmunks, but wrote original songs, arranged, and produced those records under his real name, but when he performed on them he was listed as David Seville. (He also wrote songs using the name Skipper Adams.)

Danish pop pianist Bent Fabric, whose full name is Bent Fabricius-Bjerre, wrote his biggest instrumental hit "Alley Cat" under the name Frank Bjorn.

A rather unique use if by the musician Prince who used an unpronounceable "Love Symbol" as a pseudonym. Interestingly, "Prince" is his actual first name and not a stage name. He wrote the song "Sugar Walls" for Sheena Easton under the alias "Alexander Nevermind" and "Manic Monday" for The Bangles as "Christopher Tracy" and he produced albums early in his career as "Jamie Starr".

The idea of being "too ethnic" hit a number of Italian-American singers have used stage names: Dean Martin (born Dino Paul Crocetti), Connie Francis (born Concetta Franconero), Frankie Valli (born Francesco Castelluccio), Tony Bennett (born Anthony Benedetto), and Lady Gaga (born Stefani Germanotta).

Tupac Shakur used the stage name 2Pac, but was born either Lesane Parish Crooks or Parish Lesane Crooks. He legally changed his name early on to Tupac Amaru Shakur.

Elton John used the name professionally before he legally adopted it in 1972 as a change from his given name of Reginald Kenneth Dwight.

Like jazz musicians earlier, many hip-hop and rap artist prefer to use pseudonyms. Iggy Azalea comes from her dog name, Iggy, and her home street in Mullumbimby, Azalea street.

Confusingly, Diddy was previously known at various times as Puffy, P. Diddy, and Puff Daddy. He announced on Twitter that Sean Combs will no longer be answering to Puff Daddy, Puffy, P. Diddy, Diddy or any other names but "Love a.k.a. Brother Love'." For now...

Punk music singers and band members often replaced their real names with punkier names: Sid Vicious (real name John Simon Ritchie) of the late 1970s band Sex Pistols is a good example.

Punk rock band The Ramones also had every member take the last name of Ramone - though I don't think that is a punkier name, you might have thought they were a family.

Jazz musicians often take on nicknames that are not always true pseudonyms, but names they are known by to the public. Billie Holiday was known as "Lady Day." Charlie Parker was "Bird" for "Yardbird."

Others include: "Fatha" Earl Hines; "High Priest of Bop," Thelonious Monk; "High Priestess of Soul," Nina Simone; "Newk," Sonny Rollins, and many musicians with the nicknames "Red" and "Sonny."