What's an "Old Text" (at least 100 years old) you like? What additional study would you recommend with it?

Submitted by twovests in just_post

I've been wanting to read "The Bible" some time, just to understand what's going on.

But I understand it as a collection of texts translated and interpreted over time. Reading a "The Bible" on its own would be useless.

  • What texts were excluded and why?

  • What passages have contentious interpretations?

  • I know there are different clans of Christianity, is this passage a big deal to evangelicals?

  • Does this passage appear in the Tanakh? Is this passage referenced by the Prophet Mohammed? What about the Prophet Joseph Smith?

Ideally I'd want to read something by someone who does not buy into the idea that God actually exists.

I find similar questions for any Old Text. Just like Dante needed Virgil to guide him through Dante's Inferno, I need something to guide me through Dante's Inferno. Or Shakespeare. I need someone to explain how "Get thee to a nunnery" is Hamlet being a little piss boy tormenting Ophelia. I need someone to explain why Beowulf gets naked, and I need someone to explain if a particular passage in the Canterbury Tales hits hard in the original Middle English and why.

I really, really, really appreciated my AP English teacher from highschool. I should email him. But I forgot his name :-(

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oneviolence wrote

The Collective Works of Hans Christian Andersen is a lovely collection of fairy tales, many of which i feel are still relevant to this day.

He wrote so much more than just 'The Little Mermaid' and 'The Ugly Duckling'.

'The Nightingale' and 'The Little Girl with The Matchsticks' are two personal favourites of mine.

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Caribou wrote

crime and punishment goes pretty hard

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Ruby wrote (edited )

the original Dracula is like 130 years old now and i found that to be both an enjoyable read and pretty understandable on its own to a modern reader whenever it's not phonetically writing out character accents

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Moonside wrote

I love Tristram Shandy and just went full hog into it without preparation. It's a 18th century novel by Laurence Sterne. Tristram is pretty autistic kinda dude and has a need for being known, thus writing his autobiography.

Just in general there's lots of 18th and 19th century literature that's accessible by reading the notes and footnotes of a Penguin edition. Pick something that looks interesting and don't feel any need to finish it. (That obligation alone makes you read many less books imo.)

George Barret's Objections to Anarchism (1921) is my favorite little polemical piece that deals with many nervous tic type of objections to anarchism such as "but what if it doesn't work?" Well maybe it does, you can't just presuppose it doesn't and use that presupposition as a proof it doesn't because no other ideology either could ever pass the test if presupposing its failure was enough to disqualify it completely.

Barret's written to be accessible but is also clearly of its time, no study needed. It also has this all timer bit:

No. 19 If you abolish government, you will do away with the marriage laws.

We shall.

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