Whether its central character exists or not is beside the point - the Christian scriptures are a barely readable mess.
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The literary quality of the Bible is an issue that I think is worth addressing. Firstly, there's the simple point that if the Bible really were the word of God, you'd think that He would be able to make it more interesting. Secondly, there's a war being waged against reason at the moment and it's gone time that reason started landing a few punches of its own. Why not freely state the obvious, but hitherto rarely mentioned, truth? The Good Book is not, as is so often suggested, a damn good read. It's crap. If the two Testaments tell the greatest story ever told, I am a monkey (and not just the distant descendant of one).
Now, I'm aware that saying the Bible is crap rather a crude statement. So, let me introduce a few points to qualify my basic assertion.
Read more.
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The literary quality of the Bible is an issue that I think is worth addressing. Firstly, there's the simple point that if the Bible really were the word of God, you'd think that He would be able to make it more interesting. Secondly, there's a war being waged against reason at the moment and it's gone time that reason started landing a few punches of its own. Why not freely state the obvious, but hitherto rarely mentioned, truth? The Good Book is not, as is so often suggested, a damn good read. It's crap. If the two Testaments tell the greatest story ever told, I am a monkey (and not just the distant descendant of one).
Now, I'm aware that saying the Bible is crap rather a crude statement. So, let me introduce a few points to qualify my basic assertion.
Read more.
1 comment:
Usually I get baited by these articles because I'm so overwhelmed by the foolishness, with regards to religion, portrayed by the authors. This time, I have to set religion aside and say that I'm commenting because I'm overwhelmed by the foolishness of the author from the perspective of someone who knows how to read. Let me walk thru this article and illustrate the intellect we're dealing with.
I'll disregard the first paragraph, mostly because it's just a bit of good time bashing and there's no need to go into it. We'll start in the second paragraph, where he defines his thesis: "The literary quality of the Bible is an issue that I think is worth addressing". Sounds good to me, being semi-literate and interested in literary commentaries, I thought I'd be in for, at the very least, an interesting read. He provides two statements in this paragraph to define his opinion of the literary worthiness of the Bible:
a) The Bible is boring
b) The Bible (as a literary work) is crap
Not exactly the kind of thesis that would score you a high score on a school paper, but he does deign to provide us with four supporting arguments.
I. The Bible may contain a useful, if not flawed, compilation of historical events
II. The Bible should be read by non-Christians so that they could "know and understand what they are up against". Additionally, Christians should read it to "spot a few of its internal contradictions" among other things. In defining this second point he also makes the effort to state his opinions that Christians should keep kosher, which believe me, is something I've had to fight hard not to go off on a tangent about.
III. The King James translation is ok language-wise, but the Greek is not up to par.
IV. There are some good parts in the Bible, but they are few and far between.
And that's the literary review. The literary review. Remember when he said he was addressing the "literary quality of the Bible"? Yep, that was the evaluation.
The first "supporting argument" argument is about the historical usefulness of the Bible and not about the literary merit. So it doesn't really matter what he has to say here.
The second one is about the political merit of reading the Bible and not about its literary merit, so again it doesn't really matter what he has to say here.
The third argument finally starts some sort of literary discussion. Apparently, he's not a big fan of the original Greek. I have to admit that he has me at a disadvantage, because I, not knowing Greek, have not read it in its original. I have, however, studied the translation process from Greek to English, and I do know enough to say that given the subtleties required in the translation process (given that Greek is a far richer language than English), I find it doubtful that reading the original, with all of its subtleties, would be a lesser experience.
He does, however, seem to be a big fan of language used in the King James translation. Unfortunately, while the language used may be pretty, that particular translation is pretty bad as far as translations go. He does bring up an interesting point when he says, "I also wouldn't dream of suggesting that this translation hasn't been profound influence on English literature". I would be very interested to read a study regarding the actual impact of the KJ translation on English literature, as opposed to say the Douay-Rheims (which, contrary to popular belief, was technically the first English translation of the Bible) version, or the Latin Vulgate.
His fourth point is that the "good parts" are few and far between. He asks, "Can anyone honestly tell me that they enjoy reading all those lists of endless genealogies that take up such huge portions of the Old and such hefty chunks of the New Testaments?" Maybe he's never read the Iliad, which some consider to be a pretty good little book... which is also filled of "endless genealogies". If he hasn't, I would suggest it, especially since it appears that he could read it in the original. Plus it has a ton more action, so it should be able to keep his attention.
Then again, maybe he shouldn't read it... we might be subjected to another "literary review".
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