i recommend everyone read the bible as if you do you will get way more out of reading anything written by a european during the last thousand years. Shakespeare, Camus, Marx, Tolstoy, all those mfs constantly lowkey alluding to bible stuff and expecting u to just get the reference. i mean u could also just avoid reading anything written by a european in the last thousand years but ud be missing out on some buckwild shit
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@Xibanya My introduction to the Bible was in my first college English survey class for majors. We needed to have passing familiarity to understand the allusions in, well, everything else.
one of the best classes i had in college was a class on old testament prophets taught by an atheist archaeologist who focused entirely on what the text had to say about the society it was written for and spent no time on what the text had to say about modern day. turns out that's where the proto-socialist stuff lives, which is probably why these books are almost never explored in actual church sermons! but u can bet all the euro enlightenment dudes were quoting that shit
i also recommend everyone get super familiar with Greek mythology for the same reasons but this recommendation is less likely to get me some angry person in my mentions being like "well ur entire point is invalid because i was abused by priestesses at greek polytheism school!"
camus: im an atheist. im such an atheist that my entire philosophical framework is going to reject christianity by subverting it so deeply that if u arent already deeply familiar with it u will have no idea what im talking about
marx: im a non religious jew/protestant (long story) and i think religion is bullshit anyway here are a bunch of allusions to biblical patriarchs and the book of revelation to keep things spicy
shakespeare: uh yea i do quote the bible a lot
tolstoy: [sobbing]