It depends a lot on the translation I suppose, because my experience with the old testament was rather unpleasant - reading it in centuries-old language brought me no joy at all.
AFAIK there's no reason to favor English translations of the Old Testament (or anything else) that use now-archaic English, except maybe for passages which are themselves written, in the original, in a kind of archaic or very formal mode, relative to the rest. It can be accurate enough (for whatever purpose—poetic, literal accuracy, et c.) without being stuffy or outdated.
Another factor in my naming it the probably #2, after Gilgamesh, though, is that everything else is just that bad to a modern reader, so the OT looks pretty damn good compared to all that, even if you're stuck with the King James Version. My favorite story from ancient Egypt[0], I wouldn't recommend to many readers, because damn, it's a slog, and it's still an easier read than some of the others, or than anything I've seen in Sumerian or Akkadian (Gilgamesh excepted). It probably tells better, as a joke (it's a comedic story), than it reads, if you had someone really talented telling it.
That's typical for other Near Eastern literatures, too. Lots and lots of repetition, is the main problem for a modern reader, as far as the prose goes. Much of it also doesn't really relate a story, exactly, and the cultural and religious references are obscure at best. You don't even get mythology, really, for the most part. Prayers or incantations, sure, but there's no Hesiod or Ovid of Sumerian religion. There's a little of that, sure, but it's very fragmentary and you have to bring a lot of context from outside of it to make much sense of what you're reading.
For the millennia(!) of texts we have from Egypt, for instance, there are only a few short (and often fragmentary) works that we'd recognize as stories. You have to settle for reading a variety of non-fiction or semi-fictional genres to get much more out of it—"mirrors for princes" and scribal didactic texts, which are probably the most interesting of the lot, plus endless formulaic and not-especially-illuminating funerary texts, and a good deal of historical propaganda about military victories, mostly from monumental inscriptions, almost all of which are intensely boring even if you're really into military history. And that's probably the richest literature we have from that region in the pre-classical period, at least as far as what's available in English translation.
The Eloquent Peasant is a fascinating little work. For those who aren't familiar with it, it's the story of a peasant who owns a donkey. There's a farmer alongside the road who has allowed his crops to grow right up to the path, knowing that passing draft animals will occasionally eat his crops. This allows him to take the owners of the animals to court, including the peasant in the story.
But when the peasant arrives in court, he speaks with great eloquence. The judge is so impressed that he decides to drag out the trial to hear more of these speeches. He sends off a note to someone important (the pharaoh or the governor or someone), saying, "Hey, you need to hear this guy!"
The peasant, assuming the court is corrupt, gives another speech about the importance of honest courts. And so it continues, with the peasant holding forth on justice and government.
It's a brilliantly subversive little tale. The core of it is political rhetoric. The "framing story" is an amusing tale about a peasant with a donkey. And the officials in the story are secretly delighted by the peasant's eloquent speeches about good government. It's a way to discuss politics without making the pharaoh look bad, basically.
By ancient standards, it's pretty remarkable. The framing tale and the subtle subversion feel more modern than other works from that era. But as the parent post suggested, it would probably work best told as a tale by someone who could switch between the humor and politics.
Thanks, that sounds entertaining. Sounds like a tract a court jester might write.
(I think we have a progressive tendency to overestimate the sophistication of our age relative to those of the past. And not to be pedantic, but I wouldn't call what you described as subversive. Subversion would involve destroying or undermining a just political order. But offering a gentle reminder of the importance of justice is counterrevolutionary because it seeks to restore something good. We must not relativize revolution as merely that which is opposed to some prevailing status quo.
I remember Michael Wood's TV series about the Iliad and he mentioned the repetition in it. He then showed a modern day Armenian troubadour (for lack of a better word) singing a story with instrumental accompaniment to a rapt audience [1].
Is the repetition a clue that maybe these poems were meant to be sung, and not read?
They were meant to be told around a campfire, by people who could not read or write. The repetition was a mnemonic helper, a storytelling device to impress character traits (e.g. instead of saying "Batman" you say "Batman, the Dark Knight"), and a way to take time to think about the next step in the tale (in a way similar to rappers reaching for certain words over and over, as "crutches", because they know they are easy to rhyme).
I guess they were not writing stuff for "readers"? This might be a well-known theory of which I'm just unaware, but could it be that writing fulfilled a different role/need in those epochs?
Oh, that's absolutely a big part of it. There was no "reading public". Very few people could read and write. I assume all the repetition has to do with making the stories better-suited to memorization and oral retelling. I don't mean any of that as some kind of put-down of the ancients, it's just a fact that a modern reader is going to find the material difficult, and, even once acclimated to the difficulty, of limited appeal, with few exceptions (and I'd call out Gilgamesh as the #1 exception)
In a world in which most "literature" was memorized and then performed orally, repetition had a few key functions: 1) making it easier to tell a part of the story (an audience probably wouldn't listen to the whole thing in one go); 2) making it easier to memorize (while also allowing the performer/bard some time to "autopilot" and remember what comes next); 3) making the meter fit (this is why you'll see the same epithets over and over).
This seems analogous to some documentaries and TV shows that restart the story pretty much from the beginning at 15 minute intervals, after each commercial break. Basically allow people latch on that just joined or were not paying attention. It must have been equally tormenting to the ancients.
I think the main issue is simply that most modern readers have a relatively small vocabulary and are markedly acclimatized to shorter, simpler sentences. 21st century readers often struggle with works written for the reading publics of a mere one or two centuries ago. And even 100 years ago, the KJV (for example) was not regarded as a difficult read.
Indeed, it's been my observation that the written register has almost entirely disappeared - there's only the spoken register in text form. But even that has declined in complexity: consider what Presidential addresses use to look like. Go compare Lincoln's Second Inaugural address with Obama's, for example.
What gets me is letters written by normal people, from the 19th and early 20th century US. Not authors, not statesmen, not business tycoons, not military officers—workers, minor bureaucrats, enlisted soldiers. They tend to read as very "high" language, to modern eyes. Working vocabulary, as you note, seems to be larger as well, even though it's easier than ever to remind oneself of the correct word, with modern tools.
> Indeed, it's been my observation that the written register has almost entirely disappeared
I think that's a lot of it. Then again, maybe people in the 19th century US spoke like that, too? I haven't looked into it. Surely there's a book about this....
The public changed a lot as well. You aren't writing for a small(ish) gathering of literate noblemen anymore, but aiming for an entire nation with so-and-so levels of understanding.
I would imagine the repetition benefits the listening audience since there is a chance they may not hear something or may miss the significance of something the first time it is spoken.
It maybe also benefits a setup where the story is told/sung in small chunks over several days, so you don't forget what happened in the previous episode?
I would think that is a good guess. Repetition is irritating to read but works well when something is performed since the audience does not have a readers ability to simply go back and reread a difficult or important passage.
Modern English doesn't have the thou-you singular/plural distinction. My preference is to keep these details in reading translations of religious texts, and I personally prefer to keep "thou" over having to say "you all" for plurals, and especially over collapsing them all to "you". The old stuffy style consideration is not as important to me. Maybe I'm just used to it now
If you want to read the Old Testament as literature, Robert Alter’s translation is really good. I thought his notes (which are not about theology) really help you tap in to what the authors are doing.
