Godless Wonder

That may be so, that's strictly a matter of opinion, and I won't dispute that. Personally, I find the prose and poetry of the Bible to be not really all that special. It varies, I find some parts are better written than others. Undoubtedly the translators may have made it better and worse in spots as well.

But, the Rubaiyat of Omar Kayyam for instance is also quite beautiful, quite old, and quite widely and well translated. Nobody thinks that it's the work of God though. Sheer beauty of prose isn't enough to conclude a text is divinely authored.

BTW, anybody interested in translation and the strange kind of problems translators run into, esp. perhaps, translating poetry, might be interested in a book by Douglas Hofstadter called "Le Ton Beau de Marot" It's no GEB, but he does talk a lot about the translation of GEB into many languages, and GEB has got to be one of the more difficult books to translate. (though "Le Ton Beau . .." is quite probably impossible to translate. I'm too lazy to make an amazon link tonight though.)

aikido7

ALL translation is betrayal....

Godless Wonder

Traduttore, traditore

Shulammit

I agree with your assessment of the works of Omar, however, poetically, in genre and so forth, he seems quite hedonistic in any translation. The Bible is much more multifocal, hence, I can understand why it has had the more broad appeal that it has enjoyed.