The Quick & The Dead

The Quick & The Dead. This phrase has been around forever, I mean it is in the Bible:

"Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead."
(Peter 4:5)

These days it is commonly used to refer to gunfighting, but they didn't have guns back in the old days, so what's the deal? Wikipedia has an enlightening blurb. Essentially "quick" meant living, and so we get the line in the Apostle's Creed:

"He shall come again to judge the living and the dead."

Quickness has always been important for survival. It is not important just in gunfights, but any kind of combat, or just in good old prey versus predator situations. So in the old terminology, if you were "quick", you were alive. But likewise, if you were alive, it is more than likely because you were quick enough (in the new terminology) to avoid death. So being alive is synonymous with being quick, however you define it.

The application to gunfighting comes from a book by Louis L'Amour (or maybe an even earlier book by Ellery Queen), which was made into a movie in 1987 with Sam Elliot, and later remade with Sharon Stone, purtiest gunfighter this side of the Mississippi. What's the deal with Sharon Stone anyway? A few (several? many?) years ago she was queen of Hollywood, then she kind of fell off the map.