Bible vs. Homer

[Anonymous No.16517754]

Do the best books of the (Hebrew) Bible compare in literary quality with the Homeric epics? Do books like Job perhaps even surpass Homer?

A comparable metaphoric image to anchor the discussion in could be - what do you like best as an image of dawn?:
Homer: rhododáktulos Ēṓs/rosy-fingered Dawn
the Joban poet: bə‘ap̄‘appê šāḥar/eyelids of dawn

Discuss.

[Anonymous No.16517756]

No.

[Anonymous No.16517766]

No.

[Anonymous No.16517768]

No

[Anonymous No.16517789]

Game of Thrones is better than the bible and all the greek classics combined.

[Anonymous No.16517792]

>>16517756
>>16517766
>>16517768
'No' as an answer to the first question, or 'No' as a refusal to participate?

[Anonymous No.16517814]

>>16517754
f

[Anonymous No.16517824]

>>16517792
You'll figure it out big boy, but you should first learn the aesthetic and cultural context of Homeric epithets.

[Anonymous No.16517841]

>>16517792
>>16517754
>Do the best books of the (Hebrew) Bible compare in literary quality with the Homeric epics? Do books like Job perhaps even surpass Homer?
No and no.

[Anonymous No.16517863]

>>16517824
>you should first learn the aesthetic and cultural context of Homeric epithets.
Although your recommendation sounds promising, this doesn't change the fact that the metaphoric images are similar. The question can and I expect to be answered purely on the grounds of personal taste - this is an imageboard, not a scholarly forum.

[Anonymous No.16517868]

>>16517841
Why not?

[Anonymous No.16517879]

Bible had more effect on Europe than any other book.Nobody cares about some stone age Greek homosexual pederast

[Anonymous No.16517887]

>>16517879
Your baiting aside, why should effect = literary quality?

[Anonymous No.16517904]

>>16517863
>not a scholarly forum.
When you make a classics thread, it becomes one, faglord.

[Anonymous No.16517910]

>>16517868
STYLE: Short, inarticulate clauses, at best connected in coordinates, with no musicality whatsoever v. hexameter poem with long, winding, complex, musical sentences.
THEMES: moralizing truths from made-up all encompassing world view v. account of tragedy of war to glorify human empathy in the end.
STRUCTURE: chronological order of facts v. complex structure with flashbacks contained in speeches and narration, gives you a perspective on a 9 years war through the in-depth narration of about 50 days.

There is no comparison whatsoever. Greek literature shows that literature is better than religion in any possible case. Literature survives time much better because of its aesthetic qualities. Nobody believes in the Greek gods, people still read Homer and Hesiod.
Sacred books are ill-written works jotted down by desert tribes as glorified, allegorical codes of law. If you ever engage with the original language, you'll be astonished at how poor and aesthetically unpleasing most sacred books are.

[Anonymous No.16517917]

>>16517904
Whensoever men doth meet, they fight in battle with their feet, their rhymes do play upon the ground, paid aesthete sex workers judge their pound, not classics doth the scholar proove, critique does sunder every groove, whenever good men meet with cheer, THEY FUCK YOUSE CUNTS UP OVER BEERS

[Anonymous No.16517918]

>>16517879
I think you mean the Church, which is an institution, since almost nobody read the bible before the 1400s. And the Church as an institution is highly indebted to many, many other books than just the bible

[Anonymous No.16517926]

>>16517918
>And the Church as an institution is highly indebted to many, many other books than just the bible
Interesting, go on

[Anonymous No.16517931]

>>16517754
The Homerian epics are themselves of uneven quality so you'd have to be a bit more specific here.

[Anonymous No.16517974]

>>16517910
>If you ever engage with the original language, you'll be astonished at how poor and aesthetically unpleasing most sacred books are.

look, I won't argue about your opinion, but hebrew is my mother's language, and reading the Bible is one of the most satisfying things (prose-wise) about the language.
I haven't read Job but I read Samson's story and it's beautiful:

הוּא-בָא עַד-לֶחִי, וּפְלִשְׁתִּים הֵרִיעוּ לִקְרָאתוֹ; וַתִּצְלַח עָלָיו רוּחַ יְהוָה, וַתִּהְיֶינָה הָעֲבֹתִים אֲשֶׁר עַל-זְרוֹעוֹתָיו כַּפִּשְׁתִּים אֲשֶׁר בָּעֲרוּ בָאֵשׁ, וַיִּמַּסּוּ אֱסוּרָיו, מֵעַל יָדָיו.

When he came unto Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him; and the spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him, and the ropes that were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands dropped from off his hands.

[Anonymous No.16518025]

>>16517910
You seem mistaken about several things here. The mythological parts of the Bible are not "allegorical codes of law" anymore than the Iliad is a disguised treaty of warfare. They are, like Homer's work, dramatic pieces about mythological characters, with a strong moral and allegorical component but who stand on their own as stories. It's nonsense to pretend the book of the Bible are all morals and not characters, no tragedy, and no drama, just like it's nonsense to pretend that morality is not central to Homer's work. And it's nonsense to apply to the Book of Job of the Book of Samuel a criticism that should be levied Leviticus instead. And what about the Psalms? Are they just "inarticulate clauses" of "moralizing truths" or does the fact that they are religious songs written to be sung factors at all in your analysis? Likewise I doubt 'glorifying human empathy' is really the distinguishing factor here. Like the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Bible is full of betrayed friends, regretful kings, unexpectedly kind strangers and grieving relatives.

Now it's possible to compare more in-depth the dramatic structure and quality of those respective book, but that's not quite the same as saying one is just a disguised morality tale and the other a literary work with no encompassing worldview (especially since the worldview is not entirely unified in the Bible, as it was written over centuries by different authors).

Your comment about chronology is also odd. The Iliad is mostly chronological, that characters sometimes recall stories from earlier times doesn't mean there are "flashback" or that the narration is "complex", at best you can say there are "stories-within-the-stories", although none of them take up more than a few dozen verses. But even that doesn't cut it, the truth is that the Iliad (like the Odyssey) is composed of a succession of small episodes within which the recitating poet was free to add or retract details, he could also add or substract entire episodes depending on his memory and the attention of his audience. Those stories-within-the-stories are just classic episodes that most audience were expecting, it was a way to pad the stories and give it more depth, but it isn't in essence more complex than character in the bible mentioning old covenant and ancestry (and in both cases they rely on formulaic turns of phrases and epithets).

[Anonymous No.16518028]

>>16518025
cont'd and concl'd

The composition of the Odyssey is notoriously patchy, to such an extent that various scholar have speculated that it is actually three poems cobbled together with interpolations to smooth the transitions. The quality of the poetry is also very variable through the whole poem, there are many repetitions not only of entire verses but sometimes entire passages, often at great distance from one another. Many feel like this betrays the hand of a less skilled imitator adding his own stuff on Homer's original work, but whatever you feel about the controversies you can hardly say that a work that has his most dedicated specialists wonder whether it was a single work or a tentative collection of three is a model of good composition. The same could of course be said about many books in the Bible (and the same has been argued for the Iliad, but there is less evidence on that case), which makes your criticism even stranger.

Now of course there's something to be said about the greater unity of Homer's works because the Bible is made of a great variety of works written over several centuries (which also makes the comparison difficult). And it's true that most of the Bible is not in verse although without elaboration it's a pretty inane argument, mediocre verses are not better than good prose and a lot of the Bible has a rythmic quality even outside the psalms. But all in all I find it hard to believe that you've actually "engage[d] with the original language". Especially since you say "most sacred books" as if you could have read most of the sacred books in human history. Your argument seems to rest more on an ideological dislike of religious works and a very strongly drawn line between religious and ancient literary works, when the distinction wasn't all so strong for the ancients themselves.

[Anonymous No.16518177]

>>16517904
Your contributions certainly don't convince me of that.

[Anonymous No.16518182]

>>16517754
>books like Job
lol no, the book of job is a mishmash with no literary merit that closet masochists like Dosto and Kierke wank it to and everyone else rolls their eyes at

[Anonymous No.16518190]

>>16517926
Learntohistory

[Anonymous No.16518224]

The Iliad and the Odyssey are two oral poems composed by the same man for an audience that was already familiar with the story. The OT is several books that have been repeatedly retconned and outright altered by later authors, to say nothing of the NT, which is several works that have heavily altered to fit specific dogma and doctrines. Comparing the two isn't fair, they're not trying to do the same thing.

And the answer is no, they don't surpass Homer.

[Anonymous No.16518225]

>>16517754
Fundamentally, no. Homer is designed to be a grand story on a grand scale. The Bible is designed to be about the world and its place with God, it does not stray far from that. The way both are written cannot be compared. This is also due in part to the Bible being a compilation of religious works, and while the question of Homer's existence as a single or multiple people is up for debate, the style is more consistent than the Bible.
>>16517789
Begone.
>>16517910
This

[Anonymous No.16518253]

>>16517754
>Do the best books of the (Hebrew) Bible compare in literary quality with the Homeric epics?

You much read Auerbach's essay, Odysseus' Scar, in his seminal work, Mimesis.

It is a brilliant, accessible analysis. Everyone should read it; perhaps especially those who advise people to start with the Greeks.

>http://sites.nd.edu/knownworld/files/2012/08/Auerbach_Scar.pdf

[Anonymous No.16518259]

Homer’s works are thousands of times better than schizo Jewish myths

[Anonymous No.16518260]

>>16518025
>who stand on their own as stories
Except they don't unless you buy into the religion
Adam and Even and sin and the Fall? Silly.
Cain and Able? Nonsense.
Job? Pointless.
Read the Crucifixionor any point of the Bible without the Christian metanarrative of redemption through suffering, and it is again pointless, it has no universally human appeal

[Anonymous No.16519039]

>>16517910
None of this is applicable to Job, though - it literally is on the poetic level of Homer.

[Anonymous No.16519053]

>>16518260
>Job? Pointless.
How is the problem of evil pointless if you do not believe in monotheism?

[Anonymous No.16519072]

>>16518182
>sections like:
My whole being loathes my life.
Let me give vent to my lament.
Let me speak when my being is bitter.
I shall say to God: Do not convict me.
Inform me why You accuse me.
Is it good for You to oppress,
to spurn Your own palms’ labor,
and on the council of the wicked to shine?
Do You have the eyes of mortal flesh,
do You see as man would see?
Are Your days like a mortal’s days,
Your years like the years of a man,
that You should search out my crime
and inquire for my offense?
You surely know I am not guilty,
but there is none who saves from Your hand.
Your hands fashioned me and made me,
and then You turn round and destroy me!
Recall, pray, that like clay You worked me,
and to the dust You will make me return.
Why, You poured me out like milk
and like cheese You curdled me.
With skin and flesh You clothed me,
with bones and sinews entwined me.
Life and kindness you gave me,
and Your precept my spirit kept.
Yet these did You hide in Your heart;
I knew that this was with You:
If I offended, You kept watch upon me
and of my crime would not acquit me.
If I was guilty, alas for me,
and though innocent, I could not raise my head,
sated with shame and surfeited with disgrace.
Like a triumphant lion You hunt me,
over again wondrously smite me.
You summon new witnesses against me
and swell up Your anger toward me—
vanishings and hard service are mine.
And why from the womb did You take me?
I’d breathe my last, no eye would have seen me.
As though I had not been, I would be.
From belly to grave I’d be carried.
My days are but few—let me be.
Turn away that I may have some gladness
before I go, never more to return,
to the land of dark and death’s shadow,
the land of gloom, thickest murk,
death’s shadow and disorder,
where it shines thickest murk.
>mishmash with no literary merit
lmao

[Anonymous No.16519286]

>>16517910
Homer and Hesiod were religious writers tho

[Anonymous No.16519343]

>>16519053
It "solves" the problem by dissolving it, as there is no longer a fixed reference point that is explicitly telling you what is good and bad and defining good as "what I will reward you for" and bad as "what I will punish you for". It also dissolves the idea that the universe is "supposed" to be good.

The Problem of Evil wasn't a problem for the Greeks, as the world was not made to be good, so the fact that there was suffering is totally in line with what the Gods wanted. So, why does suffering happen? The Gods, of course, and the conflicts between them.

You can, of course, achieve this while still having just one God, but you're only doing n-theism with n=1 if you do that.

[Anonymous No.16519405]

>>16519343
>explicitly telling you what is good and bad
Yes there is - the commandments of God.
>defining good as "what I will reward you for" and bad as "what I will punish you for".
How did you get this from Job?
>It also dissolves the idea that the universe is "supposed" to be good.
Not necessarily - the minds of men not being able to grasp the workings of it does not mean that it isn't ultimately good.
>The Problem of Evil wasn't a problem for the Greeks, as the world was not made to be good, so the fact that there was suffering is totally in line with what the Gods wanted. So, why does suffering happen? The Gods, of course, and the conflicts between them.
Suffering has no bearing on the goodness of the world in Job - that is what i take from God's speech, anyway.

[Anonymous No.16519444]

>>16519405
>Yes there is - the commandments of God.
If we're rejecting the existence of Yahweh, then the commandments of Yahweh are meaningless. As per anon's post, anyone who does not believe in monotheism is rejecting fundamental principles that are held by the author of Job.

[Anonymous No.16519463]

>>16519444
Analogous works of literature were produced in Mesopotamia where the religious view was polytheistic. The God(s) that decreed the commands is arbitrary.

[Anonymous No.16519474]

>>16517754
There is a significant difference between the two.
The Bible is religion, is literary-archea, while the Iliad and the Odyssey are fiction, literature.

[Anonymous No.16519495]

>>16519463
No it isnt. THere may be analogous works, but it comes from the same core idea of an ultimate authority (monadic). Its like when jupiter is often invoked for supreme authority in a nearly monadic sense. Its simply the jump from practical and allusionary omnipotence to actual and complete omnipotence.

And besides, if you are using cross religious texts, we might as well take apart all religions historically and do away with likely historical developments in historical thought. Take out the gods completely and revert to animism or something.

[Anonymous No.16519496]

>>16519474
The Iliad and the Odyssey were once considered sacred.

[Anonymous No.16519498]

>>16519463
Again
>anyone who does not believe in monotheism is rejecting fundamental principles that are held by the author of Job.

[Anonymous No.16519538]

>>16518260
>Except they don't unless you buy into the religion
Nigga do you even have read the Bible? You seriously think you have to believe in the abrahamic god to understand the point of the story of Samson or that of Judith? Or even King David for that matter.

That's like saying you need to believe Heracles really existed to enjoy Nestor's stories.

The rest of your post is simply a string of buzzwords, and the past 300 years of literary and philosophical commentary in all the West and the Middle East abundantly prove you wrong.

[Anonymous No.16519548]

>>16518182
We're reaching obvious bait level now. Time to abandon the thread.

[Anonymous No.16519554]

>>16517754
The Gospels is the greatest literature and then Homer. Borges thought so as well

[Anonymous No.16519566]

>>16519495
>but it comes from the same core idea of an ultimate authority (monadic).
This ultimate authority is not limited to one God. Ergo polytheism. Marduk is of course the ruling god par excellence, but this does not equal polytheism.
>>16519498
Which tenets here are exclusive to monotheism that cannot be translated into a polytheistic thought (besides ONE ineffable God)?

[Anonymous No.16519622]

The Upanishads and the Mahabharata are greater than both, and are from the same time period.

[Anonymous No.16519640]

>>16519566
>This ultimate authority is not limited to one God.
idk man. im not religious, but how things orogressed in greco-roman religion over the years seems to somewhat parallel the patron deity angle that seems to define the Bible. ither gods are mentioned, but they have absolutely no agency, and its not even certian that they are real or simply false idols. Like Dagon does shit and only YWH is said to create calamities and active occurrences. this implies a sole power in the extra-normal. This somewhat mirrors the increasing monadic tradition in later greco-rome, where jupiter, or sol-invictus, or the Platonic god (the first two originally being particular gods, the later always being an overgod) would take on a similar form of overpatron/ultimate authority withought therecognition of other gods having any agency at all. so in affect monadic.

[Anonymous No.16519689]

>>16517754
Anybody claiming to understand the literary quality of these ancients work is lying. It’s impossible. There aren’t enough contemporaneous works to compare Homer or Job to. We can’t actually know whether the quality is good. It’s speculation.

The question is which possesses more truth. The answer is obviously that the Christian tradition is greater than the Greek tradition, as it possesses timeless truth. Job is a story of man confronting the Will of God. We can understand all of the metaphors used in Job thanks to Christian tradition. Homer wrote about le meme warriors, using metaphors now inaccessible to us.

[Anonymous No.16519710]

>>16519640
- but Greco-Roman theology here is not the same as Mesopotamian - Marduk WAS the supreme god when the texts were written, but it is never implied that the other gods as well could not exist.

[Anonymous No.16519745]

>>16519689
The concept of the Christian God is basically just a temporary fashion, people in the Near East had the great idea to take a figure like Zeus and instaid of having him been the creation of a blind process of metaphysical evolution, they took this figure, placed his outside of the world and pretended he was allknowing, allpowerful, eternal. etc. This worldview will not last and neither will the Christian religion.

[Anonymous No.16519768]

>>16519745
>The concept of the Christian God is basically just a temporary fashion.
every concept is basically just a temporary fashion if you warp your persepctive in a cetain way faggot.

Anyways, thats a description of not just the Christian god, but also the pythagorian/platonic one as well (as well as a few other cultures).

[Anonymous No.16519774]

>>16517754
Impossible to tell since we don't have the original Hebrew the Bible was written in

[Anonymous No.16519776]

>>16519554
Borges was wrong

[Anonymous No.16519790]

>>16519768
Yeah, the concept of God will most likely disappear, it wont be replaced by atheism, but not doubt you will have people returning back to the concept of a primordial state of being from which gods or spirits emanate.

Which is basically the worldview that people had for most of the worlds history.

[Anonymous No.16519795]

>>16519745
That’s wrong. By defining God as “being” and “omnipresence” and so on they have created an eternal anchor for their ideas. God will last forever because “being” will last forever.

[Anonymous No.16519803]

>>16519689
The story of job is the story of a man happily being cucked by god. The Iliad is the story of men contending with and sometimes overcoming god/gods.

[Anonymous No.16519820]

>>16519790
>the concept of a primordial state of being from which spirits emanate.
You fucking retard, that is literally the definition of the Christian God, holy fuck you are retarded. Please brush up on basic Christian theology before shitposting. Read the Nicene Creed, flip through the Summa, at the very least. The Christian God is even called the “.God of gods”

[Anonymous No.16519826]

>>16519776
Borges was right.

[Anonymous No.16519840]

>>16519795
No, thats just a pre-industrial need, for someones tribal God to be seen as outside the universe and more powerful then the laws of destiny.

With a broader and more modern world that will simply disappear.

>>16519820
>You fucking retard, that is literally the definition of the Christian God, holy fuck you are retarded.
Christian theology seperates God from the universe, it also gives God a personality.

[Anonymous No.16519858]

>no one mentions the Song of Songs
Poetry on par with Homer, surely.

[Anonymous No.16519897]

>>16519710
Yes, but in the bible it was implied that other gods, as far as they were gods, had absolutely no agency in the world. Dagon does not harden peoples hearts, unlike in the illiad when other gods, lower in ranking then supremem patriarch zues, go out and do their own thing, helping warriors and such. there is a qualitative difference from being the highest authority, with outher gods possibly doing their own thing, and being the SOLE authority, where other spirits are both in name and spirit subservient to the overdiety, not doing things outside his will.

[Anonymous No.16519928]

>>16519897
>there is a qualitative difference from being the highest authority, with outher gods possibly doing their own thing, and being the SOLE authority, where other spirits are both in name and spirit subservient to the overdiety, not doing things outside his will.
I agree - but my point is that this does not change the nature of the problem posited in Job. The world of the Babylonian gods is just as remote as YHWH with his ''sons of God'', and the ostensible evil they permit is just as mysterious. I'm unsure what you are arguing, as we seem to agree on the poly-monotheism distinction.

[Anonymous No.16519993]

>>16519928
Well, I guess we do agree then. I guess my point was that If Marduk was a supreme deity in the line of earlier zues (Im not particularly familiars with all the different currents of Mesopotamian religion, although I know a little) where other deities under himm can do their own shit outside his will, Than that system is essentially polythiestic. Which I think is qualitatively different from some of the latter Jewish and Greco-roman trends that I would consider more monadic such as in the bible where extra-normal activities all seem to eminate from YWHW and no other god. Even when those other gods are mentioned they do not have any agency, so its an implied monadic trend (though not yet explicit as in the New testament, later jewish writings or Plato).

So I guess there is a relation between the older mesopotamian religions which influenced Jewdism, but I think there is a noticable polythiestic/monthiestic split that can actively be seen in the bible.

[Anonymous No.16520015]

>>16519993
>I guess my point was that If Marduk was a supreme deity in the line of earlier zues (Im not particularly familiars with all the different currents of Mesopotamian religion, although I know a little) where other deities under himm can do their own shit outside his will, Than that system is essentially polythiestic.
This was certainly the case, as far as i know. Marduk was even equated with Zeus during Hellenistic times in Babylonia.

>rest of your post
I agree. Job and the Mesopotamian ''theodicy'' texts are only analogous in theme, not ''theology'' so to speak.

[Anonymous No.16520032]

>>16517754
Maybe the very best ones, like Samuel and parts of Genesis and Job. And individual passages. But as a whole, no.

Job in no way surpasses Homer, though the poem is a masterpiece.

[Anonymous No.16520127]

>>16520015
sounds like we agree! damn i really need to look into earlier meso stuff though. you have any book recommendations? I had a class where we went over it generally, but nothing in depth.

also i guess i thought you starting off on that polemic trend some pagans/anti-abahamists go on saying that somehow that whole line of religions is invalid because we can see the seeds of it in earlier meso-religions. but im glade i found someone who is actually trying to understand how religions relate rather than just trying to find ammo to break it down instead of honest inquiry.

[Anonymous No.16520146]

>>16517910
how can someone like this browse a literature board? this can only come from someone who is absolutely oblivous of literature and above all religion, philosophy and spirituality.

[Anonymous No.16520194]

>>16520127
>you have any book recommendations?
The Treasures of Darkness by Thorkild Jacobsen is a great chronological overview of Mesopotamian religion. For translations of concrete works, Benjamin Foster's anthology of Akkadian literature is worth looking into.
>also i guess i thought you starting off on that polemic trend some pagans/anti-abahamists go on saying that somehow that whole line of religions is invalid because we can see the seeds of it in earlier meso-religions. also i guess i thought you starting off on that polemic trend some pagans/anti-abahamists go on saying that somehow that whole line of religions is invalid because we can see the seeds of it in earlier meso-religions. also i guess i thought you starting off on that polemic trend some pagans/anti-abahamists go on saying that somehow that whole line of religions is invalid because we can see the seeds of it in earlier meso-religions.
That was in no way my intention, hah. I want to chalk it up to me being ESL, but I'm probably just unclear.

[Anonymous No.16520493]

>>16520194
thanks for the recommendation guy!

and also, i cant even tell you are esl.

[Anonymous No.16521135]

>>16520493
No problem.

[Anonymous No.16521359]

Homer is the Ossian of the South.

[Anonymous No.16522009]

>>16519286
Yes, but they didn't write sacret text in the sense of Talmud, Bible, and Koran. The content of their religion were not content there, but was an a expression of their religiousness, a manifestation if you may.

[Anonymous No.16522888]

>>16517754
I have only read about half of the odyssey, but I assume the greek classics would be better literary works in terms of skill and consistency I assume that works of philosophy and some good fiction is better than a collection of things made by various unknown or obscure authors.

[Anonymous No.16523270]

>>16519790
So you mean animism or pantheism? the later aften having a loose connection with monism.

[Anonymous No.16524944]

bump

[Anonymous No.16525091]

>>16517789
Based.>>16517792

[Anonymous No.16525097]

>>16522009
The Bible is a collection of texts that was assembled over time, not all the texts in it were canonical since the beginning, especially since a lot of the older ones are compilation/retelling of myths that circulated among all Semitic people in the area. It's not much different from Homer in that sense (of course talking only about the mythological parts of the bible).

Homer didn't write a sacred text but by the time of Plato it was a cliché to say that Homer and Hesiod had been the instructors of the Greeks in matters of religion.

[Anonymous No.16525957]

bump

[Anonymous No.16526952]

bumpin

[Anonymous No.16526968]

>>16518253
This guy gets it. Auerbach is mandatory reading here; Biblical and Homeric styles are equally great in their own ways and you pseuds should learn to appreciate that