It was weird to read through it and think about exactly how I came to know the various items.

The quiz punked out for me after question #5, but I was thinking how everything I know about Judaism I learned from the All of a Kind Family books I read as a kid. I knew much more about Purim and the Sabbath than I did about what being Presbyterian was supposed to mean, in fact.

I knew about the Reformation in high school, also about transubstantiation, but mostly through my voracious reading of historical fiction.

In college, I definitely had classes that went into the Ref in depth (studying the Reformation introduced me to the concept of defenestration, a word and concept that tickles me to no end, that we have a specific word that refers to death by tossing one out a window) and then studying medieval lit and history...

Well, I know an awful lot about Catholicism, but my views are pretty damned...uh, medieval. I know tons from Roman times to the 19th century, and then it's all "many nuns took off their habits and no one uses Latin anymore, dammit."

I can thank fiction for my broad general knowledge of world religions, for the most part.

I somehow completely blocked that part out from my memory of the series.

What's funny about that is that it's an amnesia storyline! Good times.

Hrm. Most of what I know of Judaism goes from the OT to the Rennaissance, too, actually.

Are the words "tear" in "I'm gonna tear him a new one" and "A tear slid down his face" pronounced differently?

Yes - the first is "tare" and the second is "teer".

eta: Unless the second sentence is from a horror novel, in which case it may in fact be a "tare" tear.

Is that an American thing, or do I speak funny inside my head?

I can't remember when/where I learned about transubstantiation. My dad was lapsed & atheist long before I was born, and I can't remember ever asking my Catholic grandparents about it. It's just one of those things I picked up somewhere.

Oaxacan mudslide.

I learned about transubstantiation in our Lutheran grade school, of course. I remember being confused by it. I was thinking that if the bread and while really turned into the body and blood of Jesus, then couldn't scientists pump someone's stomach after receiving communion and see if bits of Jesus were in there? That way, one could either prove or disprove transubstantiation, which didn't seem right as you were supposed to accept this on faith alone. Or maybe the bits o' Jesus would turn back into bread and wine if one's stomach were pumped, but that just seemed silly to me.