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Anyone want to recommend books for me to read once I'm done with ranking my finalists for Mythopoeic? Here are the rules.
1. Limit of one recommendation per person.
2. No modern fantasy (which I'm defining, for these purposes only, as anything from the 20th century or later). Fantasy is what I don't screen out. Hard sf, mystery, general fiction, and non-fiction are all fine.
3. I'm not promising to read it all. Just so you know.
1. Limit of one recommendation per person.
2. No modern fantasy (which I'm defining, for these purposes only, as anything from the 20th century or later). Fantasy is what I don't screen out. Hard sf, mystery, general fiction, and non-fiction are all fine.
3. I'm not promising to read it all. Just so you know.
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For English class way back, we read at least part of Genesis and Exodus, Job, the four Gospels, which had me glazing over after the second, and Revelations. There was probably more, but none of it stuck. I read Song of Songs on my own, and I really liked the translation in my father's Bible more than the King James. I don't care for KJ.
I also read the Joseph story on my own, or at least most of it -- I think I missed the Judah and Tamar story. I noticed a couple of things. One was that Joseph wanted Benjamin to stay because this was his only full brother, and the whole set up was not intended to screw his brothers, or at least, not primarily. The other had to do with the brothers' first visit.
When his brothers, sans Benjamin, first visit, he says he's taking a hostage, and takes Simion. Now, I'd just seen Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, so I knew that Simion was the second oldest brother. Rubin was the first oldest.
Why choose the second oldest as a hostage? Well, Joseph overhears, or maybe his spies do, the brothers talking. Rubin says, basically, "All of this happened because you guys sold Joseph into slavery. I told you not to do that." Joseph learns that the oldest brother spoke up for him. He chooses to take the next oldest hostage. No way is that a coincidence.
I've got a very portable Douay Bible that has commentary from an 18th or 19th century priest. Some of it is unintentionally amusing, even when I do get his point. There's a note explaining that no, Samson is not committing suicide, and I do get what he's saying and why it's important that he say it. But, it still gave me the giggles.
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I'm reading the JPS translation of the Tanakh, myself, as that's what I have. So that would be the pentatuch, the prophets and the writings. The ISBN is 0827603665 if you are interested. I'm interested in getting a Chumash at some point with classic commentaries, but that will have to wait for me having a job. I tend to think of the Bible as being the Tanakh, with the NT being a wholely separate thing. I'm not biased at all, you see.
I think it's in the book of Esther that we get the only mention of Jews as being Jews and not Hebrews or the Children of Israel. Noted that during the yearly reading of the Meggillah on Purim.
And on another note, reading the story of David and Bathsheba with someone who knows the references to the way certain things worked and the referenced used makes the story so much clearer and more disturbing. I've always thought of David as a hero, but really, he's not so much.
I'd be interested to see that comment on the non-suicide of Samson.
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You might like _Color: a Natural History of the Palette_ by Victoria Finday--I've only read the first chapter (on ochre) so far, but it's your standard modern non-fiction, lively and full of cool facts.
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