After Some Time a Self Portrait Appears

funeral-wreaths:

I feel I ought to explain a few things. If I ever quote from the Bible it is from a purely literary standpoint, and not for religious reasons. While I don’t really believe in God any more (or, rather, not a Christian or monotheistic god), I don’t think anyone, atheist or otherwise, can deny that the King James Version is one of the most beautiful, lyrical books in all of English literature, right up there with Shakespeare. It is intensely poetic, if you can get past all the ‘ye’s and ‘thou’s, the long lists of who begat who, and the stern, weighty religiosity of it all. I mean, the very opening lines - ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep’ - are, when taken at face value, pure poetry. Other examples, such as the Psalms and the Song of Solomon, are breathtaking to read, and surely contain some of the loveliest phrases ever written.

And I think a lot of haters try to sly dig the Bible by calling it a ‘book of fairy tales’. While this may be true I don’t think it should be a derogative term, and might even pass as a compliment. For the stories told in the Bible are dazzlingly imaginative, timeless, simultaneously dark and violent and magical and surreal, and have provided the basis for so much great art and literature over the centuries (we wouldn’t have had Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Caravaggio, Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy, etc.). The tales are, if nothing else, a lasting testament to and reminder of Man’s very human affinity for storytelling - we tell stories because we are human - and long may they last, in my opinion. I think that even if you aren’t religious, even in the Christian sense of the word, the Bible holds much beauty.