rob117

Genesis- yes.
Leviticus- no.

avianwing

Some criterion for literature

1. Fiction and Non fiction excluding textbooks. So I guess semi fiction is also included. Autobiographies and Biographies are also included. But I don't know whether a book like Carl Sagan's Cosmos would fit the bill. But that was something 'good to read'
2. Choice of worlds used to describe story, event, phenomenon. Here Shakespeare would beat all others. There are numerous words he has inevnted.
3. Readability- This is very subjective but the plot should not drag even if it be non fiction. Cosmos would be boring if there were three chapters about the texture of Martian soil.
4. Dramatic dialogues --like the mourning of Achilees, Anthony's speech

Will add few more criterion when i think of it.

Chili

But the HS is nothing compared to Mary who is the seat of wisdom and is in charge of all the angels ecxept Gabriel, Raphael and Lucifer. This sin is equal to the fornication of Mary that will make a virgin rebirth impossible.

Chris Weimer

Non est disputandum, certe, amice. Genesis autem inferior quam Catullus mihi in hoc modo est; prior aridus, posterior arida pumice expolitus, arida causae. Siqua recordanti? Odi et amo? Obdura et Perfer?

Psalmi autem obscuri altissimique sunt, quorum unus amata me XXII est.

gstafleu

All surface? Like Genesis, Ovid has a flood myth, where a "civilization gone bad" is swept away by the waters of Chaos. One of the things myth does is explain why one has to follow the morals of the society in question. So Ovid and Genesis have the same subtext here: if you don't follow the rules of society things will dissolve into chaos. Ovid precedes this with the story of Lycaon, as an example of what went wrong. Lycaon serves a dish of fried human at a banquet, a pretty good paradigm for man's inhumanity to man, I'd say. Lycaon then gets changed into a wolf (these are after all the metamorphoses), which brings his vicious nature unmistakably to the fore. So all surface...?

Plus, I would suggest, form can give depth to contents, as shown by the following description of bad things happening in the bronze age:
(I provided the translation, as I'm sure I'm not the only one to who can only translate Ovid if someone else first does it for me. ) In addition to the form, a pretty telling comment on Roman values of the day, isn't it?

Gerard Stafleu

exile

The King James Bible is one of the two or three greatest collections of English Literature (along with Milton and Shakespeare). That owes more to the translators of the time, who turned the bible into majestic and poetic English, than to the original material.

Nevertheless the Old Testament is a monumental achievement as the saga of a Near Eastern people over many centuries of a struggle to survive.

The New Testament is less satisfactory, the epistles are fascinating as illustrating the beginnings of Christian belief and the early Church, the gospels are contradictory and in the case of John, overly mystical, while Revelation is a piece of satire so heavily disguised as a fantasy that religious cranks have had a field day with it ever since.

aa5874

Especially when some of these 'begats' appear to false. When the authors of the Bible cannot determine the genealogy, the date of birth or even where their main character lived as a child, then the Bible is probably the 'greatest' literature of errors .

GenesisNemesis

The Bible is just a work of Theology.

EarlOfLade

Great? ROFLMAO!

No, it's a horrible piece if literature and I'm not talking about the religion, but about the book in a literary sense.

Chili

I agree and that goes for religion as well because it removed the poetic aspect of religion.