What's the most influential piece of literature?
The Odyssey? The Mahabharata? The Illiad? The Ramayana?
The Fault In Our Stars
Gilgamesh.
dante's divine comedy. the man was a revolutionary in literature let alone art in its entirety
Ramayana is more influential than Mahbharata. Odyssey than Iliad.
>>7893890
Plato's Republic.
Not just on a literal sense though, the world has been shaped based on it's ideologies.
>>7893901
The Divine Comedy was indeed pretty influential outside of literature.
>codifying how to picture hell, and to a lesser extent purgatory and heaven in the Christian tradition.
>codifying the Italian language and kickstarting the phasing out of Latin in European countries as the language of art and administration.
It's very possible that without Dante, Roman Europe would still write its mainstream literature in Latin and therefore be in a similar state to China or the Arab world when it comes to disconnection between written and spoken language.
>>7893902
>Ramayana is more influential than Mahbharata.
Can you elaborate on this?
>>7893903
>the purpose of the entire canon of global literature was leading up to Chinese cartoons
I wouldn't expect less from a Cambodian architecture forum.
>>7893919
The story of Ramayana is a common epic that's known by everyone, that you've seen on TV, heard retold as a child, or just know by osmosis
>'Once upon a time,' Saleem muses, 'there were Radha and Krishna, and Rama and Sita, and Laila and Majnun; also (because we were not unaffected by the West) Romeo and Juliet, and Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn.
Mahabharata, apart from the Gita, is much more obscure. The Gita is fundamental in some sense to the Independence movement of India and its philosophical traditions but Ramayana is an everyman's epic, in the vein of Odyssey, as the Gita can be aligned with the Iliad, though obviously the Gita is much better.
Can't believe nobody in this thread has said it:
THE HOLY BIBLE
if you're willing to count all the books it's obviously the Bible
"After God, Shakespeare has created most" -Joyce
>>7894599
>>7894738
When it comes to influence outside of literature, the Bible is about as influential as the books of other major religions (Koran, Mahabharata), as well as other "game changing" books such as the Communist Manifesto, Plato's The Republic, Principiae Mathematica, On the origin of the species, etc.
It's hard to decide which of those is more influential than the others.
When it comes to literature, the Bible isn't really particularly influential.
This board.
The Martian
>>7894750
The bible is incredibly influential you hack. It's consistently influencing literature to this day.
Right now? - the Holy Bible
After his coronation as Emperor and Duce for life - The Art of the Deal
>>7894771
I don't think we are talking about the same thing.
I'm talking about how the Bible doesn't bring anything new to the table when it comes to literature.
If you're saying the Bible is "influencing" literature to this day because books about Christianity continue to be written, then The Lord of the Rings is every bit as influential because stories set in tolkienesque fantasy worlds are among the most popular stories nowadays.
In the English language either Hamlet or The King James Bible
>>7894798
You must be retarded.
>in·flu·en·tial
ˌinflo͞oˈen(t)SH(ə)l/
adjective
1.
having great influence on someone or something.
The Bible has influenced more books than Lord of the Rings. The Bible and Biblical stories (Old and New Testament) are referenced more in literature bar none. Closest you get is Shakespeare and the Homeric Epics.
>>7894817
The difference here is what "something" being influenced we're talking about. The author's upbringing? The author's lifeview? The way the story is presented? The setting of the story? The themes explored by the story? The language of the story?
Not to mention that many ideas from Christianity don't come from the Bible, but from other books (such as the Divine Comedy).
Or the fact that the Bible is only really that influential in the West. Though given that both of the other stuff you mention are also particularly western works, it's not so surprising I guess.
The Old Testament and the New Testament
>>7894831
The Bible influenced the Divine Comedy.
Western literature is the only literature worth reading.
Find me a novel that doesnt reference the Bible. It's harder than you think.
>>7894831
You must be a troll, but I'm taking the bait.
Everybody knows about Christianity today. It has successfully been exported to Europe, the Americas, Australia, Africa, and even Asia. The bloodiest civil war in history was fought in China, one side being led by a man who thought he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ. Taiping Rebellion.
Nothing is referenced more than the Bible. Nothing is translated more than the Bible.
The Bible has been the most influential book ever written.
>>7894853
And Greek literature influenced the New Testament.
And Babylonian/Mesopotamian/etc tales influenced the Old Testament.
What do you mean by "referencing the Bible"? Does a character being a Christian count? Or the appearance of a local priest, or the mention of a state religion? What about a random "Oh my God!" or "Jesus Christ!"?
If that stuff counts, I'm confident I won't be able to find any western work fitting your requirement because Christianity completely permeates the Western canon, and even works that deviate from it do so explicitly so it could still be considered a "reference". However, that's not because of this one book alone, nor does it make the Bible (or rather, Christianity) literary influential, but culturally so.
Still, there must be Japanese or Indian or Chinese novels that don't reference the Bible at all, but since they "don't count" for you I'll stop caring.
>>7894866
That's cultural influence. Like I said, when it comes to cultural influence, the Bible is on another level along with other "holy" books and other non-religious but extremely influential books such as Principia Mathematica.
However, I struggle to call those works (except the Mahabharata, which is basically India's Illiad) literary influential outside of their cultural importance, because it's their content and not their literary merit what is doing the influence.
Candide, I Ching, Old Testament, Upanishads, The World as Will and Representation.
>>7894831
There's over 1.5 billion Muslims and the Koran that's the founding document for their religion was influenced by the Hebrew Old Testament. There's over 2 billion Christians - nominal or practicing - who live around the world from Mexico to Mali, and from Manchuria to Melanesia. The Bible and the Catholic Church have influenced world cultures to a degree that we in the West don't recognize because we ourselves take it for granted. The language we speak and the ideas and tastes we have are all an inheritance of our Christian culture even if we don't think it exists. The idea of "secularism" came about in response to religious institutions in the West, where laymen mostly practiced on Sunday, following the precepts of the Church. Muslims worship everyday and multiple times a day: and reference to God and Mohammad 10x more prevalent than in the South or in Mormon land. The idea of secular culture was introduced in Middle-Eastern Muslim cultures because of that religious ethos. It doesn't exist in the West to the same degree that it does in the East; but still our beliefs and ways of life in secular society and the nation-state have a history - and that history had to do with God and the Church, whether you care for them nowadays or not. Go to your local college library and check out some books on the middle ages and the renaissance to start.
If it is discovered that an ancient book like Gilgamesh, Odyssey or anything is a fake, written much more later in Middle Ages or even later, would it lose it's value?
>>7894917
It's pointless to try and figure out which holy book is more influential because the whole system is chaotic.
Take a look at this:
Persian influence (mostly among the lines of administration, but Zoroastrianism influenced Islam and Islamic culture similarly to how Greek culture influenced early Christianity) allowed the Islamic empire(s) to be long lasting and to continue expanding, to the point that the Pope and the Byzantine emperor decided to organize Crusades to liberate previously Christian lands, causing a conflict between Islam and Christian worlds that basically continues to this day. Said conflict was the first time Europe tried to intervene in territory outside of it, which can be said to have been the beginnings of the age of exploration (along with the Fall of Constantinople, a Turk dream ever since the Crusades happened) and the subsequent colonialism. It also united the Western Kingdoms under one banner and ultimately separated Western and Eastern Europe for good (by the time of the 4th crusade). As such, you can say that the Crusades helped shape every single conflict that happened in the 20th century, and you would struggle to decide which holy book was more influential.
You just can't reliably measure cultural influence, since everything comes from culture and becomes culture from then on.
That's why I'm not talking about cultural influence, but only literary influence.
>>7894938
It would be akin to finding gravitational pull but no mass in sight. There would be a scramble to find the true book that would fill the literary hole left by such a classic.
>>7894881
>referencing the bible
>western canon
Here's a video of an Anthropologist I like who lectured about the history of Western culture, science, literature and religion:
https://youtu.be/GFFs31i1T3s?t=20m
>>7894954
Have you even read Homer and Plato or Aristotle? What about the Vedas and Gathas? I'm reading the Iliad and I've read lengthy selections from the others. I can tell you that the bible and the literature of the RCC is 100x more influential on world literature in terms of quantity and quality. That is, more than the works of the ancient Greeks. Yes, the New Testament writers were probably familiar with some Neo-Platonist and gnostic texts but the influence on ideas is subtle and the language of the philosophers-mystics was not used in favor of a biblical Greek language that's influenced Latin and all derived ones like English.
>literary hole
How many lacunas are there in the literary traditional anyways? The question can't be answered.
Infinite Jest
>>7894979
>Have you even read Homer and Plato or Aristotle?
Of course.
>What about the Vedas and Gathas?
Sadly, no.
>I can tell you that the bible and the literature of the RCC is 100x more influential on world literature in terms of quantity and quality.
Sure, you can tell me that, but it's more important that you prove it.
The Old Testament is a series of books that tell us about the (bogus) history, religion and culture of the Jewish people. Many of its tales are folklore, and some are directly lifted from other people (like Moses' birth story, the Great Flood or the Tower of Babel). It can be compared to the Greek Canon, except that the Greeks produced a lot more and had influence in the region before the Jews. I don't see how the Old Testament is in any way comparable in influence to the Greeks outside from how Christianity itself (and therefore the New Testament and Church literature are included, both of which you admit already had varying levels Greek influence anyways) being a pillar of European identity alongside the Greco-Roman influence.
>How many lacunas are there in the literary traditional anyways? The question can't be answered.
Sure, but it's different if a huge work such as the Odyssey turned out to be a fake and all its accepted influence turned out to point towards a non-existent book.
Personally, and in the lives of the individual:
William Congreve's "The Way of the World." It gives youth much more to think clearly on about love and marriage than Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" did, which I've seen described as a great example of why youth simply cannot handle love. They just end up throwing away everything that matters and destroying themselves (i.e.: running away and committing suicide).
>>7894962
>god travels with every Englishman, everywhere he goes
love it
this dick nigga
>>7895015
>(bogus) history, religion of Jewish people
>folklore tales lifted from other people
You're taking the two thousand year old heritage of the West for granted. What's important are the beliefs in action and the values of things that have been influenced by generations of the Church teaching and Bible stories. Jesus Christ fulfilled the covenant of the Jews and that allowed for the idea of progress to occupy the minds of medieval and renaissance men. Without world evangelization and common literature (via the bible) there would be no Western culture and its works. God in his role of providence has been with man all along as the agent of history. Men came to the Americas with God in mind for whatever we think about what actually happened in the colonies and native societies. Read Weber's book Protestant Ethic and some other classics on the role of God and religion in Western societies.
>>7895050
You're not disagreeing with me, Christianity is the second pillar of European identity along Greco-Roman culture.
It's just that the Old Testament is not particularly influential by itself, and that the New Testament and everything that came afterwards was already heavily influenced by Greek thought.
You can pretty much owe the direction Christianity took not to Jesus, but to Paul, who basically injected contemporary Greek ideas to the traditional Jewish lore.
>>7895015
>Sure, you can tell me that [Christian lit. is important] but it's more important that you prove it.
Wow are you basically ignorant of the 18c novel to present; the natural science lit. from the middle ages to Francis Bacon; and the whole of philosophy after 100 AD? The ideas elaborated and methods used by Western writers and foreigner readers of them have historical roots in the words of the Bible and the authority of its interpretation that is the Church. Face it - what I'm saying is true. The Bible is the most influential piece of literature.
>>7895069
>OT not influential by itself
What are you ignorant of the New Testament and Koran and Jewish writers since Josephus? Who am I talking to here a Chinese anti-Semite or something?
>>7893915
There is no disconnect in China. The characters one for one match syllables in speech.
Dante wasn't well received between the renaissance and enlightenment.
I'd go with the Bible. Maybe the Odyssey in 2nd or 3rd. Cicero's writings also had a huge influence on all of Western Europe until the 1600s or so. Virtually all philosophy in the Middle Ages were people commenting on Aristotle's Categories, which is another work with about 1600 years of strong influence on all literate people.
>>7895076
>Sure, you can tell me that [Christian lit. is ["100x"] important [than the Greek canon]] but it's more important that you prove it.
Now it is accurate.
>>7895086
I'm sorry, I was talking exclusively about Europe in that context. The Old Testament (and thus Jewish folklore) is only important to Europe because the Jesus figure is tied to it, and thus there's a layer of Greek influence when looking back at the Old Testament despite not being there originally.
>>7894881
The Bible fundamentally changed and became rooted in all of Western thought during the Middle Ages. Every character in every book to this day exists either in line with or in contrast to Christian morals set out in the Bible. Even a dumbwad like Sam Harris is full of Christian thought (Unmasking fundamental truths as a value, the quest to enlighten everyone, good and bad, and on and on...)
The writings of Confucius are probably it's only peer.
>>7895093
Except different Chinese languages read the characters differently despite retaining the meaning.
The only difference between the status of both 中文 and MSA as written languages are the degree to which both scripts are phonetic (i.e., almost not at all for Chinese)
>>7895127
Except that Europe never really divorced from Ancient Greek thought even as it adopted the Christian one (which itself wasn't solely Jewish/based on the Bible).
And I'd be hard pressed to decide who was more influential in the East between Kong Fu Zi, Lao Zi and Siddhartha Gautama.
>>7895107
>implying the wealth of Christian lit. over the past two millennia is less important than Greek canon
It's like you're not familiar with the ethics of Plato and Aristotle and their followers. Aquinas was a Catholic clergyman who took ideas from the individual Greek philosophers and worked for a compatibility with Christian religious and moral beliefs which was foundational to that synthesis philosophy of Aquinas. He's influenced tons of authors and thinkers since the middle ages and it's in a Christian sociopolitical and cultural context in which he did that. Plato's state and Aristotle's polities did not materialize at any time and their influence on social teaching was only possible in the Muslim and Christian civilizations! Now I'm not going to argue about cosmological and metaphysical ideas of Plato's followers and their possible influence on authors of the bible. The point is we in the West are inheritors of a common Christian culture and not a dead ancient Greek elitist intellectual culture. The proof of this statement is all too obvious if you think about you believe and most appreciate in life. I don't know any Platonist families but as a alumni of a Catholic school I can tell you I know plenty families that live by biblical teachings - and if not, they at least know what the basic ideas and imagery!
>>7895146 >>7895069
So you think that the Hebrew OT and the Jewish culture was not influential by itself but the few Greek specialists in philosophy were more influential by itself on the ideas of Christianity? I think you're wrong and I doubt that you've ever read a book out of the OT and you've probably not read the whole NT either.
Any answer that's not the Bible is wrong
of course in the context of Western literature
>>7895164
Okay, so when any writer references the Bible, or anything influenced by it, in any context, it adds to the Bible's overall influence, but when a writer references the works in the Greek Canon, that does NOT add to the importance of the Greek Canon.
And writing in a Christian culture makes the writing influenced by the Bible, even though the Bible was written in a Greek culture and it somehow doesn't make it influenced by Greek lit.
I think I got it already.
By the way, I'm an alumni of a Catholic school myself.
>>7895176
Greek philosophy is certainly more influential in modern European thinking than the Old Testament. The Old Testament is only influential because it's part of a whole called Christianity, while many books in the Greek canon are influential by themselves and would be so if put in another culture without its context.
And in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if I've read more OT than NT.
>>7895146
Mm Buddhist ideas form a kind of unspoken ideal in the East, but Confucianism hits everyone. From the eastern emphasis on "whole characters" (an eccentric doctor who doesn't behave like a doctor but achieves remarkable results would fail in China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan due to deeply held Confucian ideas.) to familial and teacher relations, senpais and the Korean equivalents... Confucius' influence has proven more lasting than the Buddha's.
>>7895195
I disagree with both of your claims. There have been Christian writers making literary references to the ancient Greeks since the Gnostics, and Augustine the theologian, and the Byzantine codex copiers - all important offices. And there's no doubt that there's been an exchange of ideas and assumptions between the ancient authors and writers since the writing of the books of the bible. All of these are important. But lets not undermine the importance of the Old Testament on the Western academy since the middle ages. After all, the ancient Greek philosophers were not accessible to most clergy or aristocrats or laymen since the philosophic texts were Greek or Arabic. The bible was written in Latin; the ideas expressed therein were for sociopolitical and religious purposes; and the contents and structure of the biblical writings are altogether different from the Greek metaphysical or ethical texts. These latter are not as important as you think over most of the past millennium. In the 16th and 17th centuries the academic study of chronology, historiography, and 'natural philosophy' were based on statements and inferences made from the Old Testament history. Not to mention the influence on statecraft and judicial system of Western states from Byzantium in the dark ages on through to the renaissance until today. That is, when the categories of religion, morality, and law have been separated for different reasons and because of important historical events in the West. The social teachings of the Bible have had more influence on more people than the philosophical ideas found in the politics and poetics of Aristotle. Yes the "greek revivial" periods during the renaissance and during the 18th century influenced fields of study that came into being since that time. But even these are more specialized and not far reaching in influence as say,the sermon on the mount and the book of genesis. Ask a man of letters in the 18th century about the bible and he would tell you what you want to know; - it wouldn't be so with Aristotle or even the Romans whose literature was read more widely. Just read some books from the 18th century and you'll see what I mean. The secondary texts written about these are biased with new historical interest into the classics that was not possible to realize in the 18th century because of the circumstances. Nowadays every old work is on the internet or in a library, translated into ones native language for convenience, etc. I wonder how many years elapsed between the time that the bible was translated into a European language vs the when the ancient Greek canon was...
>>7895255
>the bible was written in Latin
Wat I meant was that the authorized bible that was read, studied, and copied by clergy was the Latin translation of the bible.
>>7895255
>I wonder how many years elapsed between the time that the bible was translated into a European language vs the when the ancient Greek canon was...
The Greek bible was translated into Latin at the end of the 4th century AD.
Aristotle was translated into Latin in the 12th and 13th centuries AD and Plato at the end of the 15th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovery_of_Aristotle
>>7895255
I would argue that the very reason law, religion and morality were kept separate was because of Greek thought. I think you're underestimating the ability of societies to keep old ideas even after losing the originating works. It doesn't matter if the Greek canon wasn't as far-reaching as religion was in the Middle Ages, the ideas of the Greeks survived among the learned people even as the Greek works fell into the obscurity of a foreign language, and it was these learned men who educated the "normal" people on religion while carrying their own biases left behind by centuries of Greek thought within the literate community.
>>7895243 brings up a great point. I doubt the percentage of Chinese or Japanese people today who've read Confucius reaches two digits, but there's no better way of describing their society than through Confucius ideas.
The moral landscape by Sam Harris
>>7895255
Cock is one of my favorite tastes. Not only that, but balls smell amazing. It makes me go a little crazy on it to be honest. Like, I cannot get it far enough down my throat to be satisfied. I’m only satisfied when I feel those intense, powerful, salty, hot pumps of cum down my throat. When I sit back on my heels, look up at you with cum all over my mouth and slobber running down my neck, hair all fucked up and wipe my mouth with the back of my arm and ask you if I did a good job and you cannot even speak because I’ve drained all of your energy out the tip of your dick….. That’s when I’m satisfied.
>>7895282
>law, religion and morality were kept separate was because of Greek thought
These were made separate spheres of practice only in modern times. You'd be right in saying that the relatively recent interest in the Greek philosophers is responsible for democratic and secular trends in intellectual life and social values. But we should recognize our own fairly limited historical circumstances from which we think about this stuff. The "old ideas" about ethics esp. may be new ideas lifted out of context from the Greeks. After all, their society in the 3rd and 4th centuries BC were not anything like those of the middle ages and contemporary times. The institutions and assumptive ideas aren't the same. What's the place of the Platonic phaedo and republic in the modern age, anyways? Who knows about these things, and who knows what he meant, really? We in the West for the past millennia have understood these ancient philosophic writings in terms of our Christian religious assumptions about the cosmos (based in the OT) and the beliefs and social teachings as revealed by Jesus Christ, son of God the Father - a personal God and not some abstraction in Plato. In the history of the West the common people and the learned men were all Christians one way or another. That's because ours is a Christian culture that's shaped our institutions and ideas. That culture is based in both books of the Bible and a fundamental belief in God. Unfortunately the latter is weak or altogether lacking in these times and so people can't appreciate our Western history and heritage. Nor can they recognize their own prejudices that inhibit them from understanding world as our ancestors in the West used to... So just think twice before devaluing the literature in the Bible because you yourself will miss what the Western authors meaning is. I ask myself this: what does the lack of belief and the 'death of God' mean for us in the West anyways? can we know?
In the 20th century it was Sigmund Freud's books 'The Ego and The Id' , 'Intro. to Psychoanalysis' , 'Civilization and its Discontents' , 'Interpretation of Dreams' and so on and so on.
