1971: Misunderstood Biblical Quotes May 8, 2020

There are a lot of biblical phrases that have made it into the modern English lexicon, including "there is nothing new beneath the Sun", "eye for an eye" and "salt of the earth", though these are often used in totally different ways. "Salt of the earth", mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew (5:13) is today often used to describe people who are base or simplistic, and as mentioned one, it is often and perhaps increasingly used as an insult, but biblically and up until recently it refers to people who are moral.

Moreover, people often attribute the quote "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" to Gandhi, but given the full quote from (שמות) Exodus 22:23-26:

"But if other damage ensues the penalty shall be life for life, eye for eye...when the man strikes the eye of his servant...and destroys it, he shall let him go free on account of his eye". This is therefore not literally one eye as punishment for one eye, but an metaphor for punishment that is equivalent to the crime.

"There is nothing new beneath the Sun" is basically used as pessimistically as it it used in Ecclesiastes (קהלת), which paints a fairly bleak picture of life anyway.

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