Tradescantia is a genus of “flowering herbaceous” viney things that include a number of popular houseplants. Because they creep around your room if you let them, and probably some medieval nonsense, it was called “wandering jew” for a very long time. But have you heard the new hotness? People are calling it “wandering dude,” and it’s taking over! You can see the new name all over tha plant web now. That’s progress, babes.
–
Medieval nonsense: There’s a line in the Bible that I’m too lazy to look up, where Jesus says that the time of the second coming would be in the lifetime of at least some of the people he was speaking to. As time went on, this line became increasingly problematic for anyone trying to believe the Bible literal and inerrant. So, a fix was invented! See, there was this Jew (standard bad guy!) who had done something wrong (stories vary wildly on this point) and was cursed by Jesus to be immortal until the second coming). See, what makes more sense, that bible is wrong about something, or that there’s an immortal Jewish guy wandering around just to keep a line reading accurate? No, the other one! Weren’t you listening to me? How could you pick the wrong answer?
In any event, this story gets referenced in a LOT of literature (probably most famously being an inspiration for the Rime of the Ancient Mariner) and science fiction!
i do not recall that aspect of RotAM. been a long time since i listened to maiden lol.
Strange they would come up with that when there’s a much easier rationalization: that “some of the people he was speaking to” includes everyone who would, someday, read those words in the Bible, and therefore the line isn’t wrong so long as the Second Coming happens before the Bible is lost and forgotten. (And if it ever does become lost and forgotten first, though the line will be wrong, under those circumstances no-one will notice. Convenient!)
You can also cook up a sci-fi explanation that doesn’t involve immortality by instead using time travel. The meeting at which the words were spoken took place in the future. In which case the line is trivially true, since it took place, or rather will take place, during the Second Coming.
Or, you know, it could be a failed prediction by a supposed prophet in the Iron Age who was just a random human with no special abilities nor inside baseball on divine happenings. 🙂
no way, it simply had to be a scary immortality curse. realistically.