Enlighten Yourselves

[abaris]

You can be an atheist and still admit that the Bible, as a collection, is a literary masterpiece. You don't have to be a theist to appreciate it as a piece of art and monument of culture.

It's interesting to get a glimpse of an otherwise not very literate society, as far as the old testament goes. But I certainly wouldn't call it a piece of art. Compared to what was written in other regions at the same time, it's a pretty poor collection with hardly any artsy value. The Iliad for example was written at approximately the same time as the OT and if you compare the prose, it's actually not a competition. Same goes for the epic of Gilgamesh, which is older by a few centuries.