[MrGinkgo]

I feel like I've got to read it eventually just so I can be up to speed on all the millions of references to it in other works of art. In a college class recently, we read beowulf, and I was confused what was meant when grendel was described as being from "cain's clan" - I was raised non-religiously by parents who had both been burned pretty bad by institutional religion, so it was pretty much only me and an asian immigrant in that class who needed the reference explained. (Granted, I was one of the few non english majors in that class, which also probably affected my lack of understanding.)

[giraffe_lady]

The main cultural touchstones are disproportionately concentrated in a few books too, you can get a lot of them with just a dozen or two hours of reading.

Genesis specifically is packed with common references, can be read in a few hours, and is fairly engaging and accessible as a coherent piece of literature in its own right.

Ecclesiastes is like five pages and possibly the most quoted thing across european cultures. So many literary references and even common idioms come from there.

After that any one synoptic gospel + john + acts will set you up to catch a lot of christianity-specific cultural references. And then revelation imagery comes up a ton in pop culture, music, film & tv.

All of what I mentioned is about the length of a medium-short novel and would set you up to catch probably the majority of allusions to the bible. You'd be missing some major stuff like moses, david & solomon, plus a bunch of misc but influential stories like jonah & the whale, samson etc. But for bang for your buck it would get you pretty far.

[Perceval]

Going through life without having read through at least some of the KJV Bible and Shakespeare would be like watching The Wizard of Oz in black and white – sure, you'd be able to follow the plot, but you'd be missing out on the color experience. Similarly, without having some foundation in those two foundational works of English language, you'd be missing idiom, metaphor, and allegory that you might not even realize is there. Imagine trying to read President Lincoln's speeches without getting his references to scripture. Imagine trying to read Faulkner's Sound and the Fury without getting the titular reference to Shakespeare and the structural reference to the Gospels (the same story told by four different authors).

[rawgabbit]

https://bible.usccb.org/bible