When Harry Potter Quotes the Bible

Warning: This post contains major spoilers for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. 

I was preparing a Bible Study on 1 Corinthians 15, when I came across the following verse:

"The last enemy to be destroyed is death." (1 Cor 15:26)

This verse sounded so familiar to me. A lot of Bible verses sound familiar to me, because I've studied or even memorized them before. But this one is different. This one, I associated with Harry Potter. Specifically, with the Deathly Hallows.

Later, I googled it. And sure enough, it is quoted in Harry Potter. It is the inscription on his parents' tombstone, although it is unattributed to the Bible.

Harry Potter contains a lot of Christian imagery (as well as a lot of mythological allusions), but this is different than just imagery. This is quoting it.

Ironically, I know some people who were forbidden from reading Harry Potter as children by their Christian parents because it was about witchcraft.*

In doing so, they missed something.

They missed a story about a prophesied saviour marked with a scar. They missed a story about a boy who lived because someone died for him---because he was covered by their sacrificial love, the curse of death rebounded off of him and killed the one who would have murdered him. They missed a story about a young man who walked up to evil and allowed himself to be killed, so that evil might be defeated---and about how this same young man came back to life, defeating death itself.

Perhaps it is not so surprising that Harry Potter quotes the Bible, after all.

"...that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." (Hebrews 2:14b-15)

*I'm not going to say much about that decision, except to note that the witchcraft in Harry Potter seems to have no more in common with real witchcraft than the magic in C.S. Lewis' Narnia books or the wizardry in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.


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