avianwing

Hi All

A silly request. I had once read an article refuting the claim of monotheists that the Bible is one of the most beautiful literature in English and other languages.

One of the key items highlighted was the low quality of prose used to describe the David Goliath battle. If any of you have this article or similar articles , could you post the link here.

I tried googling it out with all combinations but I cud not find the article.

A similar essay on whether the Bible is worth reading:

http://www.infidels.org/library/hist...h_reading.html

cheers.

premjan

The bible is more of philosophy than literature.

Amedeo

Your question raises another question, "What is GREAT literature?"

More fundamentally, we have to ask whether the Bible is literature. And for this question to be answered, we have to answer this question, What is literature?

If literature is anything that is written [namely, scripture], then the only question left is, What is great literature?

I myself do not equate LITERATURE and SCRIPTURE, even though some people may use these words synonymously. Why? I have in mind these written works: The Iliad, Macbeth, Euclid's Elements, The Divine Comedy, Galileo's Discouses on Two New Sciences, the Bible, The Critique of Pure Reason, The Brothers Karamazov.

Any such a scripture has a subject (or more or less related subjects, which may be presented in one continuous discourse or in topics or chapters or acts and the like. (A book with mathematical propositions and verses to Venus is not ONE work. A collection of jokes is many and diverse written things, not one work.) Unity, clarity, and some other characteristic are prerequisites for the speaking of a scriptural opus. It does not matter whether the writing is poetry or prose, or whether it is narrative or dramatic.

Now, in the above list of works, I have one which are about numbers or mathematics, another which is about investigations and the science of nature, and another which is about the human mind relatively to reality. The others may be about various things but, centrally, they are about PERSONS. And, for reasons I have not expressed, I would define literature as any scriptural work that presents or deals with people as people, as persons (speaking, relating to others, making things, thinking, suffering, and so forth). It does not matter whether they people in the army, veterinarians, subject of a king, contractors with a god, or ferocious brigands in a nightmare.

The Bible is a collection of diverse works: Lessons or sermons, poems and prayers, and, above all, chronicles or theological histories of a people. So, to begin with, it is a collection of scriptures, but they are all literature as they tell of persons. (A poem expresses the feelings and belies of a man. So, the subject-matter is different from what a man states in a mathematics book: the numbers and theorems are not expressions of what the mathematician is.)

That literature is great to the degree that it articulates whatevers a person is and does in the world. So, here we may distinguish literary works which are "lyrical" (doing what I just said but in abstraction from any relationship with other people), or "dramatic," where a protagonist is presented amongst others, in action, and so forth.

A dramatic work may be in poetry or in prose, in the form of a drama or in the form of a narrative (which describes a drama). For a dramatic work to be great there are formal requirements, which concern the invention and/or construction of the drama.

Here I leave it up to some people in the literary world to repeat or excogitate what specifically makes lyrical and dramatic literary works great, and whether there is any great literature in the Bible.

avianwing

You must be God. You are omnipresent.:Cheeky:

avianwing

Ok! I would rephrase my question as : Is the Bible a collection of great literary work? I cannot define what a great literature is to me. But when I see it , I know one. For example Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is good litearture. I am not fond of many of his other plays. The Iliad, Odyssey etc too constitute great literature.

So in popular opinion among the intellectual elite , or English literature connoiseurs, would parts of the Bible be considered as great literature.
If so, which parts of the bible?

premjan

A bit indeed, mostly through boredom.:blush:

HeretiKc

I would definitely disagree with this. Sure, there are mild "philosophical" themes hinted at (the morality of God in Job; the nature of suffering in select Psalms; musings on God and metaphysics in Pauline [and pseudo-Pauline] epistles, etc.)--but I'd say the majority of it reads much like pure mythology/pseudo-historical record, especially of a nationalistic nature. Of course, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, the Chronicles, Kings, and others preserve a lot of genuine historical data about the Hebrew people... which has nothing to do with philosophy.

But a good majority of the Hebrew Bible is merely outlining the relationship of Israel to its invisible guiding warrior deity.

avianwing

Are philosophy and literature mutually exclusive. This sounds like one of those cliched quotes-- Hinduism is not a religion, it is a way of life.

I would say the Geeta is a philosophy and also a great literature, even if you disagree with its philosophy. It takes a max of 4 hours to read and is full of colourful adages like "Among the mammals, I am the lion"

As far as I see, only the Book of Proverbs and selected Psalms count as pure philosophy. The Gospels are akin to Puranic lore/mythical lore about a Hero.

premjan

Well, the intention of the Bible is rarely artistic is it (maybe the Song of Solomon)? I would say that the intent may be philosophical (in some parts), historical (in some parts), myth (in some parts, if we are sure those parts are not historical).

Nationalistic themes apparently do not discount something as literature - the Mahabharata is nationalistic in this sense.

Strawb

According to most encyclopedias(at least the one's I checked), literature is defined as something in writing. So basically, all texts, books etc. are literature, the Bible included.

From a personal view, I would qualify the Bible as great literature aka. fiction, since I have trouble finding any real facts in it, which is required in a non-fiction book.