Well hang on, I assume you (like me) have only ever read a translation of the Bible. You might have a wholly different view of its “fun-ness” were you a native speaker of ancient Hebrew, etc.
But more to the point (and note that I’m not religious), I find the Bible, meaning the King James Authorised Translation, an awesome book to read. The language is sublime and compelling, and the origin of so many of the phrases in our language that have passed into everyday use. But then, I love Shakespeare for many of the same reasons, and I’ve heard it remarked several times around here how Shakespeare isn’t fun to read, so I guess there’s no accounting for taste.
You find the Bible boring. I tried HPMOR, and found it insufferable and incredibly boring. These are facts about ourselves, not about the books.
These are facts about ourselves, not about the books.
No, when I say the Bible is boring then I’m referring to the fact that there are a lot of self professed Christian who can read but who still haven’t read it.
I’m not referring to the fact that my personal experience of reading the bible was boring. I never had any interest in reading the bible cover to cover.
Whether or not the original version of the bible is interesting when you are a native speaker of ancient Hebrew is irrelevant for considerations of which movements win in the battle over followers in the modern Western sphere of ideas.
No, when I say the Bible is boring then I’m referring to the fact that there are a lot of self professed Christian who can read but who still haven’t read it.
Yes, but you have to set that against all the non-religious/non-Christian people who find the Bible beautiful and fascinating. The King James Bible is generally regarded as one of the greatest literary works ever produced in the English language. There is no book that everyone likes.
I’m not sure we can trust general critical consensus in this case, if there is such a thing as objective literary quality that we can attribute to a work. There’s a massive halo effect with its finger on the scale here, no pun intended. Not even just for Christians; the Bible and particularly the King James Version is so basal to English-speaking culture that the two are hard to disentangle. Note also that literary quality and significance are often confounded in e.g. reading lists, and the KJV’s unquestionably a hugely significant part of the English canon.
That said, there are parts of the King James Bible that I find fascinating and beautiful and generally of high literary quality. I’m just not sure we can say the same for the work as a whole, which I find frequently turgid or repetitive or painfully clunky—particularly in the Mosaic books past Exodus, and in the Pauline epistles of the New Testament.
Well hang on, I assume you (like me) have only ever read a translation of the Bible. You might have a wholly different view of its “fun-ness” were you a native speaker of ancient Hebrew, etc.
But more to the point (and note that I’m not religious), I find the Bible, meaning the King James Authorised Translation, an awesome book to read. The language is sublime and compelling, and the origin of so many of the phrases in our language that have passed into everyday use. But then, I love Shakespeare for many of the same reasons, and I’ve heard it remarked several times around here how Shakespeare isn’t fun to read, so I guess there’s no accounting for taste.
You find the Bible boring. I tried HPMOR, and found it insufferable and incredibly boring. These are facts about ourselves, not about the books.
No, when I say the Bible is boring then I’m referring to the fact that there are a lot of self professed Christian who can read but who still haven’t read it.
I’m not referring to the fact that my personal experience of reading the bible was boring. I never had any interest in reading the bible cover to cover.
Whether or not the original version of the bible is interesting when you are a native speaker of ancient Hebrew is irrelevant for considerations of which movements win in the battle over followers in the modern Western sphere of ideas.
Yes, but you have to set that against all the non-religious/non-Christian people who find the Bible beautiful and fascinating. The King James Bible is generally regarded as one of the greatest literary works ever produced in the English language. There is no book that everyone likes.
I’m not sure we can trust general critical consensus in this case, if there is such a thing as objective literary quality that we can attribute to a work. There’s a massive halo effect with its finger on the scale here, no pun intended. Not even just for Christians; the Bible and particularly the King James Version is so basal to English-speaking culture that the two are hard to disentangle. Note also that literary quality and significance are often confounded in e.g. reading lists, and the KJV’s unquestionably a hugely significant part of the English canon.
That said, there are parts of the King James Bible that I find fascinating and beautiful and generally of high literary quality. I’m just not sure we can say the same for the work as a whole, which I find frequently turgid or repetitive or painfully clunky—particularly in the Mosaic books past Exodus, and in the Pauline epistles of the New Testament.