This specific phrase does not appear in the King James Bible, but a similar sense appears in passages such as 1 John 2:16:įor all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. It was in this sense that the nineteenth century critic Robert Buchanan condemned a Fleshly School of Poetry, accusing Swinburne, Rossetti, and Morris with preoccupation with sex and sensual matters.Ī traditional turn of phrase condemns 'the world, the flesh, and the Devil' as the sources of temptation to sin. In religious language, the 'flesh' took on specific connotations of sexual sins.

However, the (fourth century) Apostles' creed affirms carnis resurrectionem (the resurrection of the flesh), the body being an essential part of a person. Saint Paul makes this connection in Romans 7:18, in which he says:įor I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me but how to perform that which is good I find not.( KJV) Saint Jerome in the Wilderness The saint spent four years in the Syrian desert as a hermit, mortifying his flesh and elevating his spirit through study.

Samuel Butler, by contrast, used The Way of All Flesh as the title of a semi-autobiographical family saga, using the phrase to refer ambiguously to either the religious or to a sexual sense. This phrase does not appear verbatim in the King James Bible either, but is clearly prefigured in that translation:Īnd God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me for the earth is filled with violence through them and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. In the Hebrew Bible, the way of all flesh is a religious phrase that in its original sense meant death, the fate of all living things.

The word flesh (from the Old English flǣsc, of Germanic origin) is translated from the Hebrew lexemes bāśār and šĕēr, and from the Greek σάρξ (sárx), and κρέας (kréas). A related turn of phrase identifies certain sins as 'carnal' sins, from Latin caro, carnis, meaning 'flesh.' Less often it is used as a metaphor for familial or kinship relations, and (particularly in the Christian tradition) as a metaphor to describe sinful tendencies. In the Bible, the word ' flesh' is often used simply as a description of the fleshy parts of an animal, including that of human beings, and typically in reference to dietary laws and sacrifice.

Flesh & bone jonathan maberry