Have you heard of the Mandela Effect? It’s named after Nelson Mandela, or better, it’s named after a cultural phenomenon related to Nelson Mandela. Apparently, several people believed that Mandela died in the 1980s, though he actually died in 2013. This phrase is used to speak of any situation where a mass amount of people have the same false memory.
- Does the Monopoly man have a monocle?
- Curious George has a tail, right?
- Do you remember that line from Star Wars, where Darth Vader says, “Luke, I am your father…”?
- Did you watch the movie Shazaam starring Sinbad?
- Mickey Mouse wears suspenders, doesn’t he?
- Do you remember how the Fruit of the Loom logo once had a cornucopia?
All of these are examples of the Mandela Effect. The Monopoly man never had a monocle (though I’ll fight to the death arguing that he did). Curious George never had a tail, and Mickey never wore suspenders (I don’t believe this!). There was never a movie called Shazaam starring Sinbad, and Darth Vader never uttered those lines. And even though I absolutely remember there being a cornucopia behind the Fruit of the Loom logo—they tell me it never existed. These are all examples of the Mandela Effect.
There’s a biblical one too. Ready for it?
Have you read that verse about the Lion laying down with the lamb? In the KJV, I think it goes something like this, “And the lion shall lay down with the lamb.” Where is that verse found?
Where Do We Think That Verse Is Found?
I had an elderly lady ask me about this verse a few weeks ago. She said she remembered reading that as a child but couldn’t find the verse. Looked it up in her concordance and everything and couldn’t find it anywhere. Me, being the great biblical scholar I am, assured her that I had also read the verse and that I thought it was somewhere in Isaiah.
I thumbed through my Bible (rocking the Bible drill skills I never learned) and found it in Isaiah 11:6.
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. (ESV)
“There it is,” I said. “I’m sure that your KJV has “lion” there for some reason, I’ll research why it’s now wolf.”
“No,” she informed me, “my Bible also says “the wolf.”
I scanned the room, asking for the various translations, and discovered that no translation had a lion laying down with the lamb. I was baffled. Maybe it’s somewhere else. I found another similar-sounding passage in Isaiah 65—but it too had the “wolf and the lamb” grazing together.
We had to move on, but I promised I would do some further research. I never found the verse. Because it doesn’t exist. Even though almost everyone in that room had sworn they had read or heard the verse “the lion shall lie down with the lamb,” it never occurs in Holy Writ.
How Did This Happen?
If this verse never appeared in Scripture, why did I have a room of widows—who have faithfully studied Scripture for years—believing that this was a verse they had read several times? It was the Mandela Effect right before my eyes. We had the same recollection. What happened?
First, I want to know if there are verses in Scripture where lions and lambs are together. The first place actually is Isaiah 11:6. Wolves live with lambs, leopards lay down with goats, and the calf, the lion, and the fattened calf are together. There are several animals listed here, why would we pick out only the lion and the lamb for our collective memories?
The number of animals narrows down a bit in Isaiah 65:25,
“The wolf and the lamb shall graze together;
the lion shall eat straw like the ox,
and dust shall be the serpent’s food.
They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain,”
says the LORD.
Here the wolf and the lamb make another appearance together, and now the lion is right there on their heels, this time eating straw like an ox. Wolf, lamb, lion, ox, serpent. Knock off the edges, and we’ve got the lion and the lamb together.
In Revelation 5:5-6 we read of Jesus as both a lamb and lion. He is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah and the Lamb of God. These pictures merge into the one Christ. Christ being both the lion and the lamb give us powerful imagery. The wild and ferocious united in the person of Christ with the meek and mild slaughtered lamb.
The metaphor of the lion and the lamb won out, and implanted itself in our collective memories. The idea emerged of a future millennial kingdom where wild animals would peaceably lie down with tame animals. The lion and the lamb dominated that motif. And this was further linked in 1939 when Mahalia Jackson belted out “There’ll Be Peace in the Valley for Me.” When there is peace in the valley, this is the image:
Well the bear will be gentle
And the wolves will be tame
And the lion shall lay down
By the lamb, oh yes
And when Elvis Presley sang this song on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1957, the lion seems to have permanently and peacefully laid down beside the lamb in our cultural conscious. Preachers picked up this metaphor and preached it as biblical imagery. Paintings, songs, book covers, and other memorabilia had the lion and the lamb together. And just like that, “the lion shall lay down with the lamb” becomes a Bible verse in our memory.
Back to the Mandela Effect for a moment. There are some who believe that this is part of a vast conspiracy where the CERN started messing with the multiverse, and it changed Bible verses and jumbled our memories. (Something like that). In this view, Isaiah 11:6 really once said, “lion and the lamb,” your memory is reality, but we now live in a false or alternative timeline—apparently one in which Curious George lost his tail and the Monopoly guy dropped his monocle. I suppose that could be, if you watch enough of The Flash on CW, you can start to believe anything. But it’s more likely that we preachers grab onto metaphors, we jumble up passages of Scripture, it enters into our music, and before you know it, we become convinced of a reality that isn’t actually real.
Conclusion
Things like this serve as reminders for us to be diligent in studying our Scripture. There are many things that we simply assume to be true, to be in the Bible, and we settle for “it’s in there somewhere” as an answer to our theological beliefs.
It’s important to know this about ourselves. Our brains are lazy. Our memories, sometimes, aren’t that trustworthy. We can tend to grab ahold of images and metaphors that are powerful—but not necessarily biblical. What is dangerous is that we ascribe the authority of Scriptural proclamation not to what God actually said, but to our false memory—or the false implications we’ve tied together—when, in reality, God never said what we are claiming He said.
Yes, the Mandela Effect (not the weird conspiracy aspects of it) can even impact your Bible reading.
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/KristiLinton