Here are a couple of interesting and worth-reading bible background articles from sources you likely would not expect to find such. I think they are both worth the read:
The first is,”The Bible’s Literary Merits,” by Tod Linafelt in The Chronicle Review (April 10, 2009)
Selection:
It is hard to deny that in many respects the Bible is the most unliterary work of literature that we have. Saint Augustine, already in the late fourth century AD, confessed that biblical style exhibits “the lowest of language” and had seemed to him, before his conversion, “unworthy of comparison with the dignity of Cicero.” It is easy to see what he means. Biblical narrative especially (things are different with biblical poetry) tends to work with a very limited vocabulary and consistently avoids metaphors and other sorts of figurative language, evincing a drastically stripped-down manner of storytelling that can seem the very antithesis of style.
Here is the final paragraph:
One does not need to deny the theological and ethical content of the Bible in order to recognize its distinctive and intentional literary style. It is true that the Bible is religious literature, but it is no less true that it is religious literature. As such, it may be read not only as a foil to Flaubert (and other novelists) but also as a precursor. Not all of the Bible’s narratives (or its poetry, which works with a very different set of conventions and techniques) are equally compelling or equally artful; but the best of them both demand and reward the sort of close literary attention that Wood gives to modern novelistic fiction.
The second article is “One Word Under God,” by Robert Wright, in The Atlantic Monthly (April 2009)
Selection:
Clues have been emerging in recent years, but not clues of the usual kind—not long-lost scrolls or other ancient artifacts. The clues come from the modern world, and they’re all around us. It’s increasingly apparent how analogous a globalizing world is to the environment in which Christianity took shape after Jesus’ death. And in this light, it makes sense that early devotees of the crucified Jesus would develop the now-familiar Christian message, which could later be attributed to Jesus himself.
Here is the final paragraph:
If you trust the end-time scenarios laid out in any of the three Abrahamic scriptures, you can rest assured that there will eventually be, in one sense or another, a happy ending. But even for nonbelievers, the scriptures carry a modestly reassuring message, at least when read in light of the social and political circumstances that shaped them: people are capable of expanding tolerance and understanding in response to facts on the ground; and even mandates from heaven can change in response.
