I'm thinking about maybe reading the Bible.
In my first year of university, one of my English Lit profs -- an stodgy old fart who claimed that English literature went downhill after Alexander Pope -- gave the class a list of all the works that we needed to read if we wanted to consider ourselves true literature academics. The Bible was at the top of that list. (There were also many Greek and Roman philosophers/poets there.)
To be honest, I don't think I did much of the reading for that class (Aristotle, Virgil, Cicero, Homer -- are you kidding me?), let alone the rest of the classics he recommended. I've been a pretty poor student of literature in that way; I've lost track of the Dickens I've abandoned partway through. It occurs to me that that paper I wrote in grad school on Paradise Lost may have been easier to accomplish if I've been more familiar with the reference text...
But ever since I visited Israel (years and years ago), and used the New Testament as a tour guide through Nazareth, Galilee, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem, I've been pretty interested in the historical context of both the event described in the Bible, and the writing of it (the events and the writing being separated by hundreds of years, of course). I figure if I want to learn more about the context (partly so I can argue my case for my agnosticism), I should be familiar with the text itself. Also, it does figure pretty huge in much English literature old and contemporary, so it feeds the geek in me.
So, I've replaced Jack Newman's Guide to Breastfeeding with the New Jerusalem Bible beside the toilet upstairs. I figure that since I managed to scour Dr. Newman's book cover to cover over the past six months just by keeping it by the toilet (and I didn't even have any breastfeeding issues that needed attending to; it was just there), it's a good place to put the Bible to ensure I actually delve into it.
(We also now have a copy of the Tao Te Ching there, for when spiritual needs are more pressing than literary geekiness.)
I'll try to remember to post my progress in this endeavour. If I make any.
2 comments:
I have had the same idea, thinking the Bible references are so commonplace and feed into our cultural schema (?) that I need to know more than just some of the stories. I need to read the whole thing. But I was never so radical as to leave it in the toilet. Keep us posted. I, for one, am curious.
How is Bible study going?
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