What are the best / most interesting books of the bible from a literary standpoint?

what are the best / most interesting books of the bible from a literary standpoint?

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>literary

or in terms of impact on literature / culture if you want.

Job, Lamentations.

thanks, was interested in job for sure.

is genesis any good, or is it just iconic because it's the creation story? also curious about revelations.

Genesis is good because of Adam and Eve. Illuminates how the Church conceptualized the nature of man and woman.

There's too many books that are important for different reasons. The Pentateuch is the greatest story ever told, the Books of Kings includes the archtypical king David if you want to get all Jungian about it, and I'm sure a lot could said of others like Maccabees that makes for a damn good war story. It's probably easier to think of books that aren't so interesting or important from a literary standpoint than it is the other way around. I don't think the prophets are all that important with some exceptions like Daniel which includes one of the first detective stories written or Job which is an important evolution in how Jewish people thought of sin and suffering but I suppose that's more theological than literary. Everyone should read Jonah.

cool.

interesting! thanks a bunch.

Genesis is one of the best book

The creation is only one or two chapters. Genesis is so much more than that. Even the more popular short stories like Noah's ark, the Tower of Babel, or the Binding of Isaac pale in comparison to the drama of Joseph reuniting with his family.

>genesis
>exodus
>job
>psalms
>ecclesiastes

Job, Psalms, I and II Samuel, Genesis, Exodus, Luke, Acts, John's Gospel, Hosea, Micah.

Revelations is fucking siiiiick dude

user you're better off reading the whole thing cover to cover than cherrypicking the most "literary" books/chapters. the whole damn thing has high literary quality - the parts that don't are the exceptions

The entire Pentateuch, the histories of Saul and David, Isaiah, the Gospels, and Revelation are some of the greatest literature you will ever read. All absolute must-reads.

It’s just Revelation buddy

Most of it is lit worthy. You really should read all of it. But the best are probably...
>Genesis
>Exodus, minus building the tabernacle sections
>1 & 2 Samuel
>1 & 2 Kings
>1 & 2 Chronicles
>Esther
>Job
>Psalms
>Proverbs
>Ecclesiastes
>Song of Songs
>Isaiah
>Jeremiah
>Lamentations
>Ezekiel
>Jonah
>Matthew
>Mark
>Luke
>John
>Acts
>1 & 2 Corinthians
>James
>Revelation

it really is sick. as in, the ramblings of a mentally ill person

I would add that the bible was written for a very different people, in a very different time, with their own literary and cultural ideas, who understood the world very differently. If one reads the bible without understanding any of what I just said you will have an extremely warped understanding of the work. I would highly recommend that one augments their reading of the bible with secondary literature.

what were some of the main differences that a reader should know?

This

The best book in the bible is Matthew. It has some very good proof of its claims and for some reason even religious people tend to disagree with this book. Idk why it does not nearly get the praise it deserves, it was rumored to have been written by Matthew along with the help of an angel.

and it has the sermon on the mount, and the best ending of the gospels ' Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. '

This in and of itself is a complex question. I would suggest getting into a couple of different approaches to get a good understanding. I'll only give one example because the differences are too many. It would be like asking what are the differences between the way I understand the world and someone from an undiscovered Amazonian forest tribe.

Revelation according to John. Apocalypticism is actually a genre of writing. It has it's own stylistic conventions as well as tools used to decipher them. Someone living in the time that Revelation was written would know that this genre was more about talking about the past and present through metaphor than about the future. They would understand what a lot of the semiotics meant. They knew it didn't mean some many headed beasts with a lot of crowns was going to turn up. If one learns about apocalypticism as a literary genre you get two extremely different ways to understand the same text. One as a mad prophetic dream of the future, and the other as an amazingly powerful damnation of the Roman empire.

Since there are multiple ways of approaching biblical study I would recommend Yale's free lecture series on youtube, one about the Old and the other the New Testament. They give an historical reading of the texts.
>philipharland.com
He is a PhD that offers mostly historical underpinnings of the bible. The Great Courses over numerous courses about the bible. Some treat it as literature, some try to put it in the context of the people who believed it, some try to show the historical evolution of ideas, some show the adoption of other religious ideas in Judaism etc. I mentioned these in particular because they are free (except for the Great Courses ones but they are so easy to pirate they might as well be).