摘 　要

语言和文化是紧密联系的，语言不仅是文化的一部分，更是文化的载体。英语语言的每一发展阶段都与基督教历史背景息息相关。因此学习英语不能仅仅局限于学习语言知识与技巧，同时也该努力了解英语语言与其文化间的联系。法国作家维克多雨果曾经说到：“英国有两本书，一本是圣经，一本是莎士比亚。英国创造了莎士比亚，而圣经创造了英国。”由此可见，圣经文化对那些英语语言国家而言有着深远的意义。圣经典故经过长期流行后形成了大量用于日常生活中的习语，因而其对英语习语乃至西方社会文化都有着巨大的影响。本文主要分析和探讨圣经典故对英语习语的影响。第一部分介绍与人物和地点有关的英语习语中所包含的圣经典故，第二部分阐述圣经典故对关于动植物的英语习语的影响，第三部分研究从一些圣经典故中所发生的事件衍生而来的英语习语。分析圣经典故对英语习语的影响不仅能帮助我们更好地掌握英语语言，还有助于促进有效的跨文化交流，避免产生误解与尴尬。

关键词：《圣经》；典故；英语习语
 
Abstract

Language and culture are closely related. Language is not only a part of culture, but also a carrier of culture. Each development stage of English is closely related to the historical background of Christianity. Therefore, English learning can’t only be limited to language knowledge and skills. We should attempt to understand its profound cultural connotation. The French writer Victor Hugo once said, “England has two books; the Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare, but the Bible made England.” From this quotation we can learn that biblical culture has the most wide-ranging implications upon those English speaking countries. And after a long-term prevalence, many English idioms from biblical allusions have come into being in everyday life. The influence of biblical allusions on English idioms and western social culture is tremendous. This paper mainly analyzes and discusses the influence of biblical allusions on English idioms. It separately introduces and studies the influence of biblical allusions of people, places, plants, animals and events on English idioms. Analyzing the influence of biblical allusions on English idioms not only helps us have a better command of English but also helps us achieve the goal of effective cross-cultural communication by avoiding possible misunderstanding or embarrassment.

Key words: The Bible; allusions; English idioms

1 Introduction
Christianity is a monotheistic religion, which originated in the Middle East. It began as a Jewish sect in the mid-1st century. The mainstream Christian belief is that Jesus is the Son of God, fully divine and fully human and is the savior of humanity. Christianity is the world’s largest religion. There are three largest groups of Christianity. They are Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the various denominations of Protestantism. It subsequently spread all over the world because of great geographical discovery and western colonial expansion. Up to the early 21st century, Christianity has approximately 2.2 billion adherents. As the world’s largest religion, it represents about a third of the world’s population. That is a window through which we can figure out just how widespread the Christianity is.