The story of Job is an interesting story. For that period, it's pretty good literature.
That is a good point. Perhaps we should make this "comparative literature".
Genesis, for example, is very much like John Bunyon's
The Pilgrim's Progress. Both are highly allegorical and were obviously constructed to illustrate religious principles. Frankly, I hated Pilgrim's Progress quite a bit, but it is definitely in the "classics" section of the bookstore.
Leviticus can be favorably compared with a grocery list with several items crossed out. There are helpful recipes on the back.
Interestingly,
Exodus of the Bible is in many ways similar to
Exodus by Leon Uris. Both describe a struggle of the Jews against hopeless odds. Both involve at least one "miracle". In the Uris book, it's the UN voting to create Israel.
The story of Job, as kbluesfan points out, is similar to a lot of tales. One might compare it to one of Aesop's fables. It is a fantasy, even containing a dragon, which uses hyperbole to demonstrate a moral. If the stories of Aesop are considered good writing, then so should Job be.
Some of the bible reads like Grimm's Fairy Tales, especially the parts where there is a lot of gore. The story of Elisha in Kings 2 where he curses the forty-two kids and then a bear comes down and eats them, is quite grisly (the story, not the bear) somewhat in the vein of Hansel and Gretel. (The original versions, not the ones where the kids get saved.)
There's some decent poetry in the bible. I like the sexy parts of
Song of Solomon. I'd compare it to some of the racy poems (and there are many) of Robert Burns. Psalms, while it has some decent rhythm and metaphors, it gets a little repetitive. It's like Coleridge's classic
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which drones on and on. Yeah. Water water everywhere. We get it, Sam.
Of course, the meat of the book is
The Gospels. It would be interesting to compare the separate telling of the life of Jesus by
Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John, to the William Faulkner masterpiece,
The Sound and the Fury. In both cases, it is the same story told through four different sets of eyes. I have to say that
TS&TF is far superior though because the tellings are so very different. One is from the point of view of a retarded person.
Insert joke here.
But what can you say about
Revelation? The best thing I can think of to compare it to is the Star Gate scene/chapter from
2001: A Space Odyssey. Both have wild, nearly psychedelic imagery and both are nearly incomprehensible. Neither seems like it belongs with the rest of the book at all.
So yeah, some of the Bible can be reasonably compared to great literature. A lot of it though, is just plain old deadly boring. And yes, I've read the whole thing.
