The world of the arts is profoundly interconnected; authors, screenwriters, poets, and playwrights have been alluding to other works for as long as they have been producing works of their own. Perhaps nothing is more rewarding than coming across an allusion in a work and actually understanding what it is referring to and why. While some of these references are results of the artist’s own saturation in another work, most allusions are constructed with an intended purpose. The Bible is the most-widely read book in history, and as such, it has been alluded to more than any other piece of literature ever penned. Nearly every movie you watch, book you read, or song you listen to will be interspersed with allusions to the Bible. With this in mind, I want to spotlight a few significant allusions to the Bible found in Quentin Tarantino’s film, Inglourious Basterds.
Quentin Tarantino has been hailed as one of the greatest directors and screenwriters of our time. He operates under his own extraordinarily unique style and has written and directed some of the most recognizable films in recent memory: Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Django Unchained, Kill Bill, and Inglourious Basterds, to name a few. To me, it is no coincidence that this highly-decorated director and screenwriter is able to connect his movies to important works in history.
Inglorious Basterds depicts an alternate version of events surrounding World War II. Being a work of historical fiction focusing on the events surrounding the most recognizable act of genocide ever committed, the Holocaust, many questions surrounding religion beg to be asked and answered. The first allusion I want to focus on addresses the question that has been asked for centuries about Adolf Hitler’s genocide of the Jewish people: where was God while all of this happened? That being said, the movie does not explain where God was or what he was doing, but Tarantino does offer an alternative form of retribution and justice. The Basterds, a group of Jewish-American special forces soldiers, dish out justice in the place of God. They never take prisoners. When the group encounters Nazi soldiers, those soldiers either die or are allowed to live to spread the legend of the Basterds. If a Nazi soldier is allowed to live, he is always given something to remember the occasion by. The Basterds cut a Swastika into the forehead of every Nazi soldier they set free, a la the mark of Cain in Genesis 4. Like Cain, the Nazis have committed an unforgivable act, and an act such as this deserves punishment. The Basterds take the place of Yahweh in the film, and the mark they cut into foreheads of Nazi soldiers is their form of justice. The mark of Cain was meant to deter other people from killing him; this way, he can experience the full extent of the curse placed on him by Yahweh. Likewise, the Swastika carved into the flesh of a Nazi soldier was meant to forever label him as a Nazi. So, when the soldier went back home after the war and put his uniform up, everyone would be able to recognize him for what he was. The leader of the Jewish-American militant group puts it this way: “We like our Nazis in uniform. That way we can spot 'em just like that. We're gonna give you a little something you can’t take off.” Thus, this mark serves a very similar purpose to the mark placed on Cain in Genesis; both serve to identify the bearer and are given to ensure that justice is served for the remainder of the bearer’s time on Earth. 
Heroes come in all manner of different packages, and every heroic story carries with it a unique set of circumstances and motivation. The other noteworthy allusion to the Bible present in this movie deals with a heroic event straight from the book of Judges. Shosanna Dreyfus is a Jewish girl who manages to escape the red hands that so easily subdued so many like her. She fled to Paris, France and became the owner of a cinema under an alias. With the image of her family’s blood-spattered bodies still fresh in her mind, she jumps at the first opportunity for revenge on the Nazi party. The Third Reich throws a grandiose movie premiere that sees the most high-ranking Nazi officials in attendance. The venue? None other than Shosanna Dreyfus’ cinema. Feeling the grasp of enemy suspicions slowly tightening around her, her carefully laid out plan to end the lives of the people attending the premiere soon becomes a plunge into martyrdom. Like Samson, who kills his captors in Judges by toppling the building from the inside out (Judges 16:30), Shosanna sets her beloved cinema on fire while still in the building with those whom she intends to kill. Therefore, she does more for her fellow Jews in death than she could ever accomplish in life. Among those who were in the cinema as it burned to the ground? Adolph Hitler himself. Shosanna sacrificed her own life in order to take the life of the man responsible for her people’s persecution. This event obviously echoes the story of Samson.
These allusions were not made by accident, and I do not think it is a small matter that they were made to the book upon which the Jewish people base their beliefs. While Inglourious Basterds is not a foray into religion, it does retrospectively provide justice in a way that echoes Old Testament values. These allusions help probe into the age-old questions surrounding the God of the Jewish people and his apparent absence when they needed him most.
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