UKH

I've heard people refer to certain important aspects of something as eg. the "4 pillars of biology" etc. (I made that up as an example), but I'd like to know the origin of the phrase "x pillars of y". It seems to me it might be copied from the "Five pillars of Islam", or the "pillars of Wisdom" in the Old Testament bible, but my Googling skills let me down to find out if this is true. Since everyone on UKC knows everything, does anyone have any ideas on where the phrase might have originated?

Thanks.

4 pillars of covid testing.

Does that count? 

The planet Krikkit?

From Iraq during the Abbasid Caliphate, the seven pilaus of rice. Through a series of scribal mistranscriptions we've got to where we are today. 

It certainly counts as an example! Doesn't get us any closer to knowing the origins of the phrase though.

I'm sure my Naan used to talk about that!

The 80 pillocks of Westminster.

I think it's the Bible's "pillars of wisdom" - specifically "Wisdom has built her house, She has set up her seven pillars." (Proverbs 9:1).  Famously used as the title of T.E. Lawrence's autobiography "Seven Pillars of Wisdom".

The four pillars at the end of the universe.....

youtube.com/watch?v=4DRpYOHxEzA&

Thanks, that's what I was kind of thinking, but was hoping someone might have some "Dictionary of phrases" or similar wich pointed definitively to an origin.

You already mention the Five Pillars of Islam. These are quite likely to pre-date the English language translation of the pillars of Wisdom in the Bible; I imagine Bible translators thought that “pillars” would be a more popular word than “tenets”. I’d go with “Five Pillars of Islam” being a reasonable origin.

Unless there is something somewhere in ancient mythology about Atlas or something, but these and the Pillars of Hercules don’t relate to wisdom or other concepts really, so probably not 

Thanks

Pillars date back to at least neolithic prehistory, and it seems like a pretty clear metaphor so I suspect its origins are lost to the sands of time.

I'd be very surprised if the phrase doesn't pre-date Christianity and Islam, perhaps an example survives in ancient Greek or Roman literature...? 

As you say, it’s an obvious metaphor - wisdom is represented as a house (or temple) so the pillars are needed to hold the roof up. My RSV gives “hewn” as an alternative translation of the Hebrew to “set up” suggesting that the pillars are trunks of wood. The Book of Proverbs probably dates to sometime in the first half of the first millennium BC (long before either Christianity or Islam, though both regarded the Hebrew bible as a holy book and so extensively borrow its imagery). But it probably incorporates themes and sayings older than that and widespread in the ancient Near East.