If you say so. Besides, what do you know of an ignorant shepherd's peotic knowledge? It is a modern concept that poetry is an intellectual pursuit.

I was speaking of the story of Genesis, which is in the Torah. It may also be in The Bible, but obviously they did not have the same writers.

Torah = old testament. Obviously since the Jews don't consider the new testament holy they don't call their own book the 'old testament'.

Lol, 'ignorant shepherds' wouldn't have been literate. There's really no basis for your statement about the authors knowledge of metaphor and considering the countless examples of metaphor and other literary devices in the Tanakh it becomes ridiculous.


Bible and Torah are interchangeable terms, generally speaking. It's not really relevant though.

Revelations reads like John stumbled on an early form of LSD.

The Torah is only the first five books of the Old Testament.

I was referring to the Old Testament only. It's habit, I'm Jewish.

They didn't have to be literate. The stories in the Bible were an oral tradition and were only written down years later.

Perhaps, but even so the people who transcribed the traditions into the form of sacred texts were certainly educated.

Well, maybe the original text itself wasn't poet, but the King James English translation was (or the Latin translation)? I do know that several monks started to translate the Bible into English so the people (even though most of them were illiterate) could read it and the (sometimes corrupt) priests wouldn't have to read it to them from the Latin translation. Because the priests were able to read Latin, they could manipulate the text's meaning to take advantage of the unknowing worshipers.

Considering the fact that just about every society has had poetry, regardless of their level of education, I think my statement does have basis. Just off the top of my head, the vikings are famous for creating poetry even though there society was almost entirely illiterate and uneducated. It would seem that Wikipedia even has an opinion on the matter. So, just because the Bible may or may not be poetic (and I honestly don't know or care either way), is meaningless.


No, they're not. Not only does the Bible contain extra books (obviously), but the Bible was also a translation of the Torah and contains many mistranslations.

Really? Nomadic herders were educated? News to me.

Ok, my mistake, the 'ignorant shepherds' were perfectly capable of understanding the concept of a metaphor, which just proves my point anyway.

People use the word 'bible' all the time to refer to all sorts of things, you know what I meant, this discussion is irrelevant.

The nomadic herders obviously didn't transcribe the texts, Jewish civilization had evolved quite a bit by the time the Tanakh/Torah was written down.