Jesus Christ, The Beatles Really Did Beat Him!

John Lennon’s famous words proved prophetic after all. This September, The Beatles really got bigger than Jesus.

This September, The Beatles really got bigger than Jesus. Back in March 1966, when John Lennon had declared that The Beatles were bigger than Jesus, the air was thick with the smell of many a burnt Beatles record. This is what he had said: “I do not know what will go first, rock’n’roll or Christianity … we’re more popular than Jesus now.” Lennon had to apologise then. But they proved prophetic words after all. According to an analysis of searches on Google, more people looked up The Beatles in the past four weeks than they did Jesus. Aiding The Beatles were releases of the digitally remastered versions of their albums and the launch of the video game The Beatles Rock Band, which allows players to be John, Paul, George and Ringo. Agreed, there was reason for some of the renewed interest, but then Jesus, too, got some lift with the release of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. For the uninitiated, Brown’s last book, The Da Vinci Code, had sparked Jesus mania by suggesting that Christ had fathered Mary Magdalene’s child.

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