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5 Superpowers From the Bible That Put Marvel and DC to Shame

By Levi Ritchie June 23, 2008 578,486 views
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If we could ask God for just one thing, it'd be this: We want superpowers like people in the Bible had.

Is that too much to ask? We could do a lot with our powers, some of it good. So why not? It used to happen quite a bit, the Bible is full of people who God infused with powers that would put most of the Marvel and DC lineup to shame. Such as:

#5.
Ezekiel and His Zombie Army

Ezekiel was a prophet. For most Biblical prophets, this meant having freaky visions, telling them to people, being mocked and most likely being executed for heresy. But it was all worth it, when things like this happened:

That's Ezekiel 37: 1-14, and that's him raising a freaking army of the undead.

If we could do that ...
An army of the undead, right at our fingertips? Imagine the bank-robbers running when suddenly rotting arms reach up from the ground, grab that sack of cash, steal his car and beat him with his own intestines. But crime fighting is just the beginning, we're thinking there's really an incredible number of uses for your legions of undead henchman.

Also, it's not too far-fetched to assume that this would work on animals as well, so zombie horsemen could give us some serious mobility.

The Downside:
This special ability seems to require having a lot of exposed skeletons laying around, a resource we probably won't find while fighting crime with Spider-Man in New York (unless there are some neighborhoods that are way worse than we initially thought).

Secondly, some people might get a bit uneasy about the whole walking around town followed by an army of terrifying zombies. It's one of the tenets of being a superhero that your presence doesn't prompt horrified shrieks from children. So we would have to move somewhere where freakishly impossible and ethically questionable things won't seem out of place. Maybe the Netherlands.

#4.
Moses, Aaron and Their Magic Staff

In a part of the Bible some of you know from the movie The Ten Commandments, Moses and sidekick Aaron were about to lead the Jews out of Egypt when God told them to show the Pharaoh a new trick with his staff. So in Exodus 7:10-12:

Sure the magicians were able to pull off the snake trick with slightly less hungry snakes. But based on our experience with Egyptian magic, we bet those guys just threw down rubber snakes their magicians assistants wiggled around the floor with a wire.

Also, the above example is only one of many times those staffs come in handy. Before long, Moses and Aaron were using their magic staffs to turn rivers into blood, spread disease through the land and even summon armies of locusts. It was basically like God declared their staffs to be wild cards in a hand of terrifying superpower poker.

If we could do that ...
Crime does not want to see us out on the streets with one of these. Point a gun at us, buddy? Watch as it turns into a swarm of killer bees that sting your face off.

We'd be like a combination of Batman and Harry Potter, only instead of tiny wands we'd have huge freaking staffs that would also serve as clubs, or giant legs of fried chicken if we got hungry, or wanted to make a beating particularly humiliating. Though despite their ability to do anything, we suspect we'd still use the "turn into a snake" feature the most.

The Downside:
Like wizards, they seemed to become very weak without their staffs, so there are some serious problems there, particularly when you've got it in snake mode and it goes slithering under a car.

#3.
Samson and His Lion-Crushing Strength

Samson is well known as one of the all-time badasses, and he got started early. From Judges 14: 5-6:

The writer points out that Samson tore apart a lion as easily as one would tear apart a young goat, which says something about the era they lived in since we're not sure we could tear apart a goat with the aid of a machine designed for the purpose.

He then made sure that his parents, who were with him, didn't know anything about it, probably using the old "Hey, look over there, and continue to do so while ignoring the grotesque sounds and spray of blood coming from this general direction." Most intriguing about this might be the fact that the Lion came "roaring" toward Samson, and yet he still killed it so quickly that his folks didn't find out. Big points for efficiency, right there.

After this, the legacy of Samson began, in which he killed enough people to populate a small city.

If we could do that ...
Biblical scholars have bitterly debated whether or not Samson could have stood up to modern weaponry. He clearly could not be killed with swords or spears, but was later killed when a building fell on him. We're actually not sure how much crime we'd want to be fighting if we could still be brought down with a bullet to the head.

No, we'd probably wind up with a lucrative career on the Mixed Martial Arts circuit instead. As for the lion-wrestling thing, it's hard to imagine that ever coming up unless we were drunk at the zoo.

The Downside:
Worth noting that Samson really only uses his super strength at times when danger is imminent, or (more often) when he was pissed off about something. We do believe we've got ourselves an Incredible Hulk on our hands.

But unlike the Hulk, Samson's weakness was that all his powers came from his long hair, so should it ever be shaved, he would lose his strength. That weakness seems pretty easy for the bad guys to exploit should they find out about it.

In Samson's case, his bitchy girlfriend, Delilah, nagged him until he revealed this fact at which point she shaved him and handed him over to his enemies. So we guess you could say Samson had two weaknesses, the other being boobs.

Actually, the last mention of Elisha was actually of his bones, when a dead man was thrown on top of them. The man then returned to life. Downside: Elisha was a pile of bones. It wasn't the first time he raised the dead, though.

5/3/2009 9:49:09 AM
l3ailin

Way to be a douchebag scribe.

2/25/2009 7:15:46 PM
CrawlingChaos

nicro, tell me you aren't seriously trying to justify a bronze-age fairy tale. A few points: 1. It says nothing about a caravan. 2. Its doubtful that a lion would suddenly rush roaring towards a caravan 3. Sampson didn't tell anyone about said event...so how do we know what happened? Its as dumb as some B movie when a character gets done describing some horrible event and says "there were no survivors".

2/11/2009 10:45:43 PM
scribe

Samson and his parents were probably in separate parts of a caravan and they didn't see the whole lion thing.

2/7/2009 6:12:26 PM
nicromancer

Caspian and Rignerd:
Yey, someone actually knows the history of the Bible, and a pretty accurate one at that. It is theorized that historically, King David after uniting the 12 tribes of Israel was the one who commissioned scribes to write the stories pertaining to Jewish faith. On the other hand, it was more difficult to include many New Testament books especially the Gospels as canon since many books; some of which were referenced by Dan Brown, do not have any significance whatsoever with the Christian faith. Apart from this the reason the 4 gospels were chosen was because of the fact that of the many "gospels" written, these were the ones written closest to the timeline of Jesus, The Gospel of Mark being the earliest, probably was written by an actual witness to Jesus, as early as 70AD and John being the last was at least 100++AD almost 200AD i think. Lastly, the reason the Gospels were attributed to certain apostles was to give credibility to the writings. On a side note, please do not readily believe many rumors abounding about the Church hiding books since they deem it "forbidden". Many of these were actually written long after the time of Jesus, and have many far-fetched stories or accounts which have been considered as insignificant by the Church.

11/14/2008 7:22:35 AM
Teban

This leaves out the four superpowers that Jesus had after rising from the tomb. These being, of course: Subtlety, Agility, Impassibility, and Clarity. Yep, these are all supernatural, in the Jesus context. (Google 'em.) The only reason they might be worth knowing is that James Joyce references them in "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man."

8/25/2008 4:09:25 PM
Throbert

http://www.ihateyoujulia.com/?id=4eedf9a0d5e2034a6d5ae5d6290a7a1e

8/15/2008 9:48:24 AM
malimar

lol aquaman is useless.

8/14/2008 11:59:39 PM
Isshiah

Yeah, but you'd still have an army of people to do your bidding. And even if they didn't obey your commands, you'd still be able to...you know...RAISE THE DEAD!!! That on its own is cool enough, without them being your servants. God rules.

8/14/2008 7:38:44 AM
TehJoker

Well, with the zombies it did say that they had flesh and skin, and were even breathing. I doubt anyone would have really known they were zombies. Unless of course they came across their great (dead) aunt lumbering down the street. That might freak anyone out a tad.

8/13/2008 11:24:26 AM
Kovitlac

Funny you should mention Ol' Greenskin with Samson. There's actually a Marvel hero named Doc Samson with powers of the biblical Samson(if he had green hair) who acts as a psychiatrist(don't know if I spelled that correctly) for the Hulk.

7/23/2008 10:21:38 PM
Samehada

I love the bears and the dirty laundry :) Nice way of putting it

7/2/2008 8:08:05 AM
rosie

I have viewed many hot videos and photos about interracial dating at a club---------- ++++++ u k i n t e r r a c i a l m a t c h . c o m +++++++ --------- where many fans and stars can chat together. And there are many black and white singles who are seeking for ideal match seriously...

7/1/2008 2:05:51 AM
blacksally

Re: Danky420 I read all 10 volumes of L. Ron Hubbards battelfield earth series, he was lucky to get out of hig school much less do anything worth noting besides tricking people into reading his drivel. As to the accuracy of the Bible, the dead sea scrolls were lost about 400 years BC, and when compared to a modern bible there are about 14 words that are different, and only 7 of those would give a different meaning to to verse. The jewish scribes who copied the texts were under penalty of death for making changes, even accidental ones.

6/30/2008 11:11:18 AM
rignerd

Im pretty sure summoning bears is the most badass power... ever. And what makes it even better is bears are dicks. If you ever summoned one, after it completed its ass-kicking task, it might steal candy from an unsuspecting baby or small child perhaps... and then rip it to shreds

6/29/2008 7:59:59 PM
rayjuncanayjun

danky420:

Modern bibles aren't translated from old bibles. There are numerous old scrolls and texts that have been found. By using multiple sources and identifying the differences, scholars are able to tell which sources are the original. Additionally, the different Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were written at different times by people so they can be fact checked against each other. Thus, our translations of the New Testament are relatively accurate. As for the Old Testament, only Jews re-copied it for several thousand years. They spent years of their life writing it down word for word. When they were finished, someone checked it over for them. If there was so much as a punctuation mark missing, the ENTIRE set of scrolls was tossed into a fire, meaning another 3 years or so of work for the guy who was doing the copying.

6/28/2008 8:40:29 AM
Caspian

if i had the power to summon bears,my brother and sister would stop bugging me.

6/26/2008 10:30:05 AM
omgukilledkenny

The Bible WAS a pretty cool cartoon show. Hanna-Barbera's Heroes of the Bible was one of the only American kids' cartoons in which you ever got to see some blood when people got killed. I think it would make an even cooler anime, though.

6/26/2008 7:45:36 AM
Inyarear

Considering how many hands the bible changed, how much of it is still true? These fantasy's seem nothing more then a bunch of fantasy. L. Ron Could have done just as good a job. Before the bible was translated from latin, it was changed by popes, monks, printers, and so on.

6/25/2008 2:35:44 PM
danky420

If only I could summon bears...

6/25/2008 1:35:16 PM
BearMan