Yes, like Lautreamont would defend, plagiarism is ok. It is only a concern to moderm day busines when you have to pay for it. Traditional literature derivated oral sources, do not care for it.Originally Posted by The Atheist
More, you can not have charge of plagiarism except there is an authoral dispute, the "Non-authors" of Gilgamesh epic can not be charging the "Non-authors" of Noah story, even because there is no author at all. And any judge, would dismiss those vague charges of plagiarism you do. If you have any, please present the case.
Frankly, Shakespeare copied all plot of Romeo and Juliet from other sources and he was superior to it. Modern literary tradition give very little vallue to the original. Some translations are superior also.You could get around this by explaining why the literature of the bible is superior to those it ripped off, so I'll leave that one open for now.
Let me say: a classic is exactly this: a book which merits and vallue are such that they are continuously in print, but not as themselves, but as other works. Homer was lost, gone, forgotten. Then you have Virgil. While Homer was not read, Virgil was keeping it alive. What you it is described is the process of influence, which easily denotes the merits of a book, as no book without merit acts with such strength.
My point was that regardless of the re-writes and changes made to individual prints of the bible, it is still a very poor book and would not make the grade if it were brought to a publisher for the first time.
How ridiculous is to claim to be an atheist and then judge the merit of the writting by its literal significance. Even St.Agustyne was years ahead, saying the truth of the bible is not the same as the truth of history. You are acting like those biblical crazy people who claimed earth is 6000 years old.I was meaning the fantasy of making fact out of fiction. Is Moses' entire life a parable? The fiction that Egypt had Israelite slaves shows Moses to be an unbelievable character. Would you accept an autobiography or biography that made false claims, one of which was the central tenet to the entire story?
And frankly, literature merits do not care if Moses was real or not. It is irrelevant if there is a real troy or not, if there was a real Artur, CharlesMagne, Richard Burton, Napoleon, Da Vinci, Virgil, Dante, Borges and all those pseudo-historical characters. Literature does not care about reality, that is why Gibbon's Rise and Fall is a masterwork of literature, being a book about history. That is why Borges protested that he had no idea which one was true, reality or fantasy.
There is a character in Iliad that dies and latter show up alive again. Tolkien has a similar flaw in his books: he claimed elfs never used the same name again for newborns, and then he had 2 elfs with same names in one of his genealogies. The critery that you mention is good for Dan Brown.Because it would be nice if we dealt with those on a case-by-case basis, there being so many and I thought we do that on chapter examination.
I can give you a starter for 10 on Genesis 1, however. Is there one god or many gods?
Dean Koontz would not write a fragmented history that nobody can understand like Goethe did in Lilly and the green snake, nor in a made up miscelanious of idioms like Joyce did, they would probally not leave novels without end like Kafka did. Wanna bet who will be remembered in 200 years?Would Dean Koontz get away with that as a literary device? Or even try it? Are we supposed to accept that the bible is a mystery story where all of the information given about the central character is revealed at the end? Was it written by Clive Cussler?
To you. Not to the story of literature, obviously.I didn't bother with that, because the compendious nature of the bible is exceedingly obvious and not very relevant.
Congratulations, it is also the truth of 1001 Nights, Homer, Shakespeare... Amazing, you just discovered one of the literary merits of the Bible, the merit that Joyce wanted to surpass (and which had nothing to do with political power, but the capacity of the renewing of the bible) and you try to imply it is a flaw.Given the evidence of the apocrypha alone, it is equally obvious that the bible has been heavily edited since it became the bible and should rightly be viewed as one complete book.
Some bits of War and Peace can be easily forgotten too. Happens when you have 2000 pages.Whether those are the specific parts with value we can look at individually. I haven't disputed that some bits of it are ok.
People love Christ too. He is a well build character. Little can be taken from Moses also. No wonder Carlyle liked him. Samson tale is well round and Salomon is great. Caim and Abel is a milinenar tale. The poetic works like Reveletions of the Song of Songs are very good. However united the bible choose well lots of great characters.Sure. Even the creation sequence is entertaining in a Fantasia kind of way and kids will always love Daniel, just as they love Aesop.
