One Place

One place I think Rowling might use a Biblical image might be that of "the beast" in Revelations. This is a comment on a comment Paul made on the rings of Sauron compared to what Voldemort hands out to his followers (from the Sword and Snake Post) Fr. Roderic over at Catholic Insider.com, in one of his HP podcasts, dropped a few teasers, one implying in his next podcast on book 6 he might find a Christian meaning behind Voldemort wanting 7 horcruxes. This is what I suspect he may be leading too, and either way, it was what sparked this though for me. I don't think it would be out of line to hazard a guess that one of the things Rowling might have drawn on here is the image of the beast with 7 heads. Particularly in this regard (since Pauli mentioned "the dark mark as gift" in his comment) I think the dark mark brand may be built, at least in part (and consciously) on the "mark of the beast." I don't think this is out of line speculation. The marks mean the same thing: a claim on control over the person by an evil force. There may be other image sources combined with it (as Granger points out on his site, the 7 stage alchemical process is definitely a big one) but I suspect it is at least one of them. The hypothesizing on the meaning of Revelations and the meaning of the beast and the mark are fairly well established phenomena in our contemporary world and I could easily see a talented author like Rowling using it.