27 works across 28 centuries, back to Hebrew Bible (Genesis, Job, Ecclesiastes, Daniel) and Iliad.
Following one thread, 5 works from No Country for Old Men to Hebrew Bible (Genesis, Job, Ecclesiastes, Daniel). Back to all 27 works
2007
Film by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Contemporary American cinema. United States. In English.
The Coen brothers' 2007 adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel follows a welder who takes drug money from a massacre site in 1980 West Texas, the killer Anton Chigurh who hunts him, and an aging sheriff who cannot stop either. It follows the novel's plot and dialogue closely and stages it with the spare, suspense-driven style the Coens developed in their earlier crime films.
2005
Cormac McCarthy
Contemporary American. United States. Written in English.
McCarthy's crime novel set in 1980 West Texas, alternating the chase between Llewelyn Moss and Anton Chigurh with first-person monologues by Sheriff Ed Tom Bell.
Direct source, well documented.
The film adapts McCarthy's novel closely, keeping its plot, its title, much of its dialogue (including Chigurh's coin-toss scene at the gas station) and Bell's closing account of his dreams. The Coens cut most of Bell's interior monologues and Moss's encounter with the teenage hitchhiker but preserve the novel's decision to have Moss die offscreen.
1611
Anonymous (translation committee)
Jacobean. England. Written in English.
The Authorized Version English translation of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, whose cadences shaped later English and American prose.
Thematic kinship, probable.
Bell's monologues take on a prophetic, lamenting voice close to Ecclesiastes and the prophets in the King James text. His final dream of his father riding ahead carrying fire in a horn into the dark draws on biblical imagery of light in darkness.
Stylistic influence, well documented.
Blood Meridian's long sentences linked by 'and,' its archaic diction and its apocalyptic tone come from the King James Bible. The novel's epigraphs and imagery repeatedly invoke biblical judgment.
Thematic kinship, probable.
The final section culminates in the Easter Sunday sermon at Dilsey's church. The novel sets the Compsons' decline against the biblical Passion week, with its sections dated to Holy Saturday, Good Friday and Easter.
Direct source, well documented.
Moby-Dick takes its characters' names (Ahab, Ishmael, Elijah) and Father Mapple's sermon on Jonah from the King James Bible. Job's Leviathan is a recurring reference for the whale.
c. 95
John of Patmos
Early Christian. Roman Asia Minor. Written in Koine Greek.
Apocalyptic vision of the end of the world, including the opening of the seven seals and the pale horse whose rider is Death.
Direct source, well documented.
Bergman's title and opening narration quote Revelation 8:1, 'And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven.' Revelation's apocalypse supplies the film's frame, and the squire's wife reads from it as Death arrives.
Direct source, well documented.
The New Testament of the King James Bible translates Revelation from Greek, fixing English phrases such as 'the seventh seal' and 'a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death.'
c. 500 BCE (compiled)
Anonymous
Ancient Israel. Ancient Israel and Babylonian exile. Written in Hebrew.
The scriptures of ancient Israel, including the creation and fall narratives, the wisdom books and the apocalyptic visions of Daniel.
Direct source, well documented.
Milton's plot is the creation and fall narrative of Genesis, expanded with material from the rest of scripture, which he read in Hebrew. The war in heaven and Satan's fall are built from scattered biblical passages.
Direct source, well documented.
The translators rendered the Hebrew scriptures, including Genesis, Job and Ecclesiastes, into English as the Old Testament of the Authorized Version. Much of their wording came through Tyndale's earlier translations.
Direct source, well documented.
John's apocalypse draws its beasts, sealed books and visions of judgment from Daniel and Ezekiel. Nearly every chapter alludes to the Hebrew scriptures.
This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.
