There’s a lot of room, I think, for rationalist analysis of the concept of “genre” and what automatic assumptions it leads us to make about both fiction and reality.
If the Bible had been written in the style of a Japanese monster movie, would people still think of God as the good guy?
I always thought that the heroic literature (Kings and Judges, largely) of the Tanakh gets a lot better when you realize you’re reading the Bronze Age Hebrew equivalent of Pacific Rim or Gurren Lagann:
He knew he’d been beaten, but NO, Samson was WAY too badass to let the Philistines win just because they cut his hair. So he prayed to God, got his powers back and PULLED THE WHOLE FALSE TEMPLE DOWN! How awesome is that?
I don’t think the Bible could be written in any worse style than it is already. The only thing it could do to further sabotage itself would be to visibly not take itself seriously.
I think the bible could just as well have been written this way, and people would take for granted that that’s how sacred texts are supposed to sound. Fanatics would fight bloody wars over the theololgical signifance of Ceiling Cat’s abstention from eating the earth, while more subdued scholars pointed out parallels between this and the Greek myth about Cronos.
There’s a lot of room, I think, for rationalist analysis of the concept of “genre” and what automatic assumptions it leads us to make about both fiction and reality.
If the Bible had been written in the style of a Japanese monster movie, would people still think of God as the good guy?
I always thought that the heroic literature (Kings and Judges, largely) of the Tanakh gets a lot better when you realize you’re reading the Bronze Age Hebrew equivalent of Pacific Rim or Gurren Lagann:
He knew he’d been beaten, but NO, Samson was WAY too badass to let the Philistines win just because they cut his hair. So he prayed to God, got his powers back and PULLED THE WHOLE FALSE TEMPLE DOWN! How awesome is that?
I don’t think the Bible could be written in any worse style than it is already. The only thing it could do to further sabotage itself would be to visibly not take itself seriously.
In case anyone is having trouble picturing what EY is talking about, link
I think the bible could just as well have been written this way, and people would take for granted that that’s how sacred texts are supposed to sound. Fanatics would fight bloody wars over the theololgical signifance of Ceiling Cat’s abstention from eating the earth, while more subdued scholars pointed out parallels between this and the Greek myth about Cronos.