Anonymous & the OED

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

legion
• noun 1 a division of 3,000-6,000 men in the ancient Roman army. 2 (a legion/legions of) a vast number of people or things.
• adjective great in number: her fans are legion.
— ORIGIN Latin, from legere ‘choose, levy (an army)’.

OK, this has been bugging me & I'd just like to point this out because not only have I encountered this gross linguistic misinterpretation in the Tubes, but have also fielded similar comments IRL regarding Anonymous' use of the phrase "We are legion". A typical comment (from YouTube):

"Your quote in caps is interesting...and disturbing. Two lines are from the Bible. "The Truth shall set you free" speaks of the Gospel of Christ saving sinners. That's good so far. Then "We are Legion" speaks of the account of when Christ was exorcising demons out of a possessed man. When Christ asked who the demon was inside the man, the demon replied, "I (We) are Legion" because he was possessed by 1,000s of demons. We are legion? Not me."

I can only assume that this is due to most people's early christian indoctrination, something I mercifully escaped. Webster's Unabridged was my bible. But there seems to be a common association with the word 'legion' - especially in the context of the phrase 'we are legion' - with demons or satan. Since I'm too lazy on this Easter Sunday to drag out the bible, I'll trust Wikipedia to this one:

The most commonly quoted version is found in Mark 5:9:
And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, Our name is Legion: for we are many. (KJV) [it is argued that the phrasing is, "we are legion, for we are many"]
Another version of the quotation is in Luke 8:30:
And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him. (KJV)
In some versions of the Bible, the quotation is different: We are mob, for there are so many of us


Or maybe most folks simply associate the phrase with The Exorcist, an admittedly really scary movie, especially if you saw it when you were a little kid. The book was scarier, though.

But let's just break this down: isn't all the possessed dude really saying here is "Call me whatever you want. Hey, just call me BunchOfUs because, well, there's a bunch of us in here." Y'know, if you subscribe to that sort of thing. Would that make the phrase "a bunch of us" somehow inherently demonic?

Just wondering. Isn't it all about the vernacular?

We Like Big Words,

P.