APAD: Rob Peter to pay Paul

Meaning: To take money from one source to give to another that is virtually

identical.

 

Background: It seems more likely is that the saying derives from the shared

feast day of St Paul and St Peter and thus to rob the feast of St Peter to pay

for the feast of St Paul is pointless.

 

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Nero the wayward Emperor, it was said, played the fiddle while Rome burned. It

was too late to fight the fire, he thought, but time to come up with a fitting

pyromaniac. Two weeks later, one of the dwellers of the ghetto, a fisherman from

Galilee and leader of an obscure cult, was found guilty as the firebug and crucified.

The year was AD 64.

 

No one would've guessed. Two and a half centuries passed and the former humble

sect rose and their God succeeded all the gods in the Pantheon. On the martyr's

burial site a bascilica was erected, and St. Peter, posthumously, became the

first pope of the Roman Catholic Church.