"Diamonds are Forever, and so are the Four Horsemen"

So in honor of the end of days, happening tonight, and the fact that we are all gonna die tonight when the Mayan calendar ends, we have an Apocalypse pop quiz, and it's actually pretty easy, as its only one question: (I dont want to waste too much of the little time we have left on a hard and pointless quiz :P )

Which of these are the Four Horsemen?

A)

B)

C) 

D)

E)

Actually its a trick question, the correct answer is all of them. "A" is one version of the wrestling faction called the Four Horsemen (and also the group responsible for the title of this rant). "B" are the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame, AKA the backfield of their undefeated 1924 football team. "C" is one of the incarnations of the Marvel Comics Horsemen. "D"  is a variation of the drinks that make up the "Four Horsemen" shot. And "E" is an artist's interpretation of the namesakes of all of the above, the biblical Four Horsemen. And I should note the Horsemen name pops up in a lot more places then just those 5. 

So who the heck are these guys anyways? I mean with a name like the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" you gotta be a bad ass motherfucker right? Not really no. In fact we dont really know anything about these guys and they are basically just coasting on the cool group name. There's nothing really to these guys. 

Let's start on the left, the dude on the white horse with the bow. We can't even agree on his name let alone anything else. Like the others the color of his horse and his weapon come from the Book of Revelations. But as to who he is? no idea. All thats said about him is "I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, "Come and see!" I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest."

So lots of people named him Conquest. 

Now I know what your thinking, there is no "Conquest" in the modern Four Horsemen and your right, there isnt. But their is a "War", so that must be "Conquest"....except not, War is someone else, we'll get to him next.

So what happened to Conquest?. Well these days the Horsemen are usually named, War, Death, Famine and Pestilence. And we know War is someone else, and Death should be obvious in that picture. And as it turns out Famine is the 3rd horseman in that picture.......So Conquest became Pestilence. How did that happen exactly? It has to do with a color issue of another horsemen, so I'll explain later. 

But see Conquest/Pestilence may also have a 3rd identity. Jesus Christ. Yea that's right Pestilence is Jesus.

Now how did that one happen? well white is usually the color of righteousness and the Book of Mark suggests the coming of the Gospel may lead the coming of the Apocalypse. And Jesus himself is mentioned as riding a White Horse in Revelations. 

So there you go, our first Horsemen is Conquest/Pestilence/Jesus. Next to him is the man on a red horse. "When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, "Come and see!" Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword."

This is (usually) the aforementioned "War". Now what exactly is different in being the incarnation of "War" as opposed to "Conquest"? I'll tell ya what, when they have an definitive answer for that, I'll update my blog. The generally accepted rule seems to be offensive war to take something would be "Conquests" domain and civil or defensive war are under "War", but thats not a hard rule.

Now of course the attempts to make the distinction are responsible both part of the Conquest/Pestilence/Jesus' identity crisis and War's own identity Crisis. See some people believe that he's not War, he's a Representation of the persecuted Christians. Personally though I hope thats not the case, not for religious reasons, but because  "persecuted Christians" is a mouthful compared to the one word names of the others. Just saying he breaks to short cool name rule.

Next we got the Horseman on the Black Horse next to War....that Famine and he's about the only horseman who's got his head screwed on straight. See Famine is kinda dull. There's no real confusion about him, no other name or anything like that. The Bible says this "When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, "Come and see!" I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, "A quart of wheat for a day's wages, and three quarts of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!"" and that's still the description of Famine to this day. BORING. NEXT!

Finally we reach Death, Death you'd think would be the boring one we could all agree on, like Famine was, but not so much actually. See here's the description for Death "When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, "Come and see!" I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine, and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth."

Note Death is the only one expressly named, instead of being named after a feeling he invoked or a word that would summarize his description. So again he should be the boring one. But he's not, he's the troublemaker. I mean you've got the fact he's usually shown holding a scythe, even though thats not in the biblical description, because we basically want him to be the Grim Reaper. But thats not where he's causing trouble.

Instead it's one word that makes Death a major troublemaker "pale". See in the original greek, the word for Pale could also mean Green or greenish yellow what have you. And somehow down the road BOTH interpretations wound up standing. And since green/yellow tends to look more like a color for Death (given that black in taken), Death tended to wind up on a green horse.

But at the same time you've still got the part of the quote when the rider of the Pale Horse was given  "power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine, and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth."

Now who would that be? well you remember Conquest, over on the White Horse? well when your choices are White/Red/Black/Green, white tends to look fairly pale. So he becomes the Pale Rider. But what do you call him?  Well plague IS a pestilence....and BOOM there you go, Conquest becomes Pestilence.

And honestly thats about all we know (and don't know/agree on) about the Four Horsemen. And that doesnt even get into the fact we cant agree on what the Apocalypse is either.

So there you have it, 4 harbingers of the end times....maybe......who are totally coasting on how cool their name sounds and have been for about 2000 years. Cause I mean really how else do you explain all these tributes to this loosely and undefined and even incorrect interpretations of minor players being the name sake for so much?

So remember next time someone makes an allusion to the Horsemen/Four Horsemen/Horsemen of Apocalypse, it sounds super bad ass....but it doesn't mean anything.

And just because its a Horseman Theme today, another Horseman inspired thing to close this out: