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Biblical sense

Posted by Victoria S Dennis on September 22, 2007

In Reply to: Biblical sense posted by Smokey Stover on September 22, 2007

: : : I just read Optop us from Sunday's comics (9/23). One character talks about top hedge managers who make big bucks for fooling with numbers all day. He then says we should kiss an American hero like that... but not in the Biblical sense... Ous then goes to a classroom and kisses a teacher and says "twerent in the biblical sense". My ques.ion What does "in the Biblical sense" mean?

: : This phrase is usually attached to "know." In the King James translation of the Bible, which was the most common one read by Protestants until a few decades ago, "to know" meant "to have sexual intercourse with." "And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD" (Genesis 4:1). So to know in the biblical sense is to be sexually intimate. This comic writer has extended the phrase to kissing. The character in the strip kissed his teacher, but not romantically. Maybe it was a quick peck on the cheek. ~rb

: I'm inclined to think the cartoonist simply used the phrase incorrectly. I'm unable to imagine how you could kiss someone "in the Biblical sense." That being the case, a kiss NOT in the Biblical sense makes no sense.
: SS

Here, to the right of the pond, "not in the Biblical sense" was rather in vogue among jokers a few years ago. You'd say "do you know X?" and he (it was almost always "he") would say "Yes - but not in the Biblical sense." So it wouldn't surprise me to find this tired old joke stretched to cover kissing. (VSD)

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