DID YOU KNOW?
The answer
Benjamin Franklin popularized it in Poor Richard's Almanack (1736). It's nowhere in the Bible, and it's one of the most common phrases mistaken for scripture. Franklin didn't originate the sentiment — close versions appear in Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government (1698) and, earlier still, in the moral attached to Aesop's "Hercules and the Waggoner."
Why it’s interesting
The phrasing everyone quotes is Franklin's, but the idea is much older than he is. If anything, its self-reliance runs against passages like Proverbs 3:5.
Scholarly consensus
You can know the Bible.
Not just the stories, but the history, authorship, and scholarship behind it.