The mayor of the Slovenian community of Dravograd, which was particularly hard hit by the storm, spoke of an “apocalypse of truly biblical proportions”; international news agencies picked it up immediately. Apocalypse and the Bible – that always pulls. It was also possible at the Heavy Metal Festival in Wacken (for example, if you followed the magazine star) last “torrential” too. The theologically experienced reader knew immediately: The flood is described in the Bible, namely in the first book of Moses, as a divine punishment for sinful people. With dark-clad rockers on stage with foam cannons or flickers of fire, it might even make sense.
If the biblical catastrophes described continue like this, we are definitely threatened with a “climate Armageddon” (according to the world on Sunday recently in relation to the final decisive battle called Armageddon in Revelation, chapter 16, verse 16). The activists of the “Last Generation” have often warned us about this. It’s just incomprehensible that they recently did an action in Dresden a member of parliament from the Greens “read the riot act” (the Picturenewspaper refers to the third book of Moses).
One should not be irritated by the current numbers leaving the church. What the Pope has just called for (Christians should by no means become functionaries or “state clerics” but rather be “passionate evangelizers”) is apparently being lived. And so froze, for example in a text of New Zurich newspaper recently the soccer players of Borussia Dortmund after the final whistle against Mainz to the “pillar of salt” (Just like Mrs. Lot in the Book of Genesis, 19, 26, when she turned back towards Sodom and Gomorrah against the divine prohibition). Prince Harry, in turn, feels (loud Mirror) was sacrificed by his stepmother Camilla on the “PR altar” (cf. First Corinthians, Chapter 10). And the former toll minister Andreas Scheuer is, at least one believes, from Mainz General Newspaperprobably only the “scapegoat” of the CSU (Book of Leviticus, Chapter 16).
Could the Barbie universe become just as influential linguistically?
Yes, the world is not just a “Garden of Eden” (as the German pensioners Manfred and Karin recently called it in the Picture-Zeitung her lovely retirement home in Greece. See Genesis 2:4-9), sometimes it also burns like the thornbush in Exodus chapter 3.
One could now, of course, like a recent one from the German business journal capital quoted Saxon solar entrepreneur running “from pillar to post” (Luke 23), just to have someone explain to him why of all times when nobody really knows anymore why, for example, the Assumption of Mary was celebrated on August 15th or what Corpus Christi is, biblical quotations are still “trumpeted” so frequently (Matthew 6:2). But why the effort? Apparently, the “mark of Cain” (which the ousted Archbishop Georg Gänswein claims to have discovered in his latest book – compare Genesis 4:8-15) is still much more fascinating than any birthmark posted on Instagram.
And of course, for example, someone who laments the death of a popular actor from the ORF TV series “Tohuwabohu” on this famous X-thing on the Internet these days does not have to know that this wonderful loan word from Hebrew originally came from Genesis 1:2 and Jeremiah 4:23 occurs. The mere feeling conveyed by the word is enough.
However, sometimes one wonders how one could express it in the future, for example when one means “Pharisee”. So that everyone can understand. (A moderator of the Russian state broadcaster Rossija 1 called German politicians a few months ago. That was not meant in a nice way, but at the same time it was a clear reference to the Pharisees in the 18th chapter of Luke the Evangelist.)
How about something completely new?
Maybe the Barbie universe will have something to offer in terms of language in the future: with the not unoriginal headline “Yes, you Ken” recently used by the German media, an interesting direction has already been taken. The “Star Wars” complex (“May the force be with us” is one of the Bavarian Prime Minister’s favorite phrases) also offers all sorts of things here. As is the Harry Potter cosmos! (“Not Slytherin, please not Slytherin” was frequently quoted on some social media in connection with the coronation of King Charles III.)
And yet there is some evidence that even in the future it will still be possible to understand what, for example Focus online could have meant in a figurative sense when it was reported there that A woman in Arizona suddenly had her “hair standing on end” due to a rare weather phenomenon (Job 4:15). Or when once again the “wolf in sheep’s clothing” is looked for somewhere but not found (Matthew 7:15).
In any case, the most important thing for a society that lives together as peacefully as possible is not just to spit “poison and gall” (Deuteronomy 32:33). Because that’s how you get “no green branch” (Job 15:32). It’s more about doing, for example, what the Pope meant with this sentence here: “Let’s roll up our sleeves and bend our knees!” We did not find the origin of this quote in the Bible, nor in Barbie, nor anywhere in Georg Gänswein, but what speaks against something completely new?