Does Cracked.com Know More About the Bible than You (and Dan Brown)?

Cracked.com is a humor website that prints ridiculous stories about pop culture.  Even though it's irreverent and crude, their recent article called 5 Things You Won't Believe Aren't in the Bible was quite impressive (considering they spend most of their time trying to make dirty jokes out of normal things). It's remarkable how many people think they know the bible when they're really just remember Saturday morning cartoons.

On the issue of angels, Cracked points out that nothing about their flying feather appearance on Hallmark cards is correct and mentions examples of the truly frightening angels that are described in the Bible.  The Devil is a popular figure in mythology, but he is hardly mentioned in the Bible and Cracked explains that the Bible doesn't really tell us much about him (the same goes for Hell, which is glossed over in Scripture).  More tricky, however, is the anti-Christ who is mentioned in the Bible, but not really explained.  In fact, that term anti-Christ is  a complicated one that doesn't necessarily refer to a Biblical villain in each use.  Kudos to Cracked.com for understanding these issues.

But my favorite is the Holy Grail.  There's no Holy Grail.  It never existed, and it's most certainly not mentioned in the Bible.  It is never brought up by anyone until the late middle ages.  It. Isn't. Real.

 Bigfoot: more probable than the Holy Grail.

I hope Dan Brown reads that website.  Anyway, thanks to Cracked.com, some Biblical literacy has found its way into pop-culture.  Sadly, if some of my grad school colleagues read that article they would probably learn something...