The bible is a hugely influential book. It is probably the most referenced book in western literature, art, and history.

Reading a book is not the same as agreeing with its premises.

One must also judge a book by their historical context.

My AP Lit teacher in high school encouraged us to read the bible - not for any type of religious reason - but because it is so frequently referenced by western literature, especially in older texts. If you don't pick up on the biblical allegories when reading something like Shakespeare then you'll miss critical details.

Every page of the KJB seems to have a phrase that has entered the language (e.g. give up the ghost) - though I can't be sure that those phrases weren't already popular and merely recorded.

If they were popular before, chanches are they were popular because of influence from older versions of the Bible.

Umm, no. There is a huge selection bias at work here. Most people, when they read the bible, read Genesis and Exodus, the Gospels, Psalms, Ecclesiastes and a couple of other books. It is true that lots of phrases, images, stories, quotations and so on from those heavy-hitting parts of the Bible have made their way into the general culture.

The vast majority of the Bible is not at all influential on either our religious understanding or on general culture. Partly because most of it just isn't that commonly read. The popular parts are read thousands of times more commonly than the least popular parts, and many of the readers of the least popular parts (in our era) are people who have a deep religious commitment to reading the Bible, but who aren't necessarily prolific writers or influential thinkers.

The other fact at play here is that most of the unread parts are unread for a reason. There is a lot of material which is, of course, of historical or theological interest to experts, and which had undeniable spiritual significance to many people who lived long ago, but which is very hard for most modern readers to extract any real meaning or value from.

Some examples - each of these is taken not from the really obscure books, but from 'second-tier books', in order to demonstrate how quickly the long tail of Bible literature descends to filler.

The book of Numbers (part of the Pentateuch/Torah) mainly consists of pages and pages listing how many animals of different types should be sacrificed in various ways for different festivals. This is extremely repetitive stuff, pretty much beyond satire. There is no justification given for any of this doctrine, and once you have extracted a minimal amount of historical content ("it seems like cattle were more valuable than sheep!") it's on a par with reading the telephone book.

The book of Proverbs sounds fun, but do you know any of the proverbs it contains? Probably not many, because they consist of dozens of very small variations on the same message to embrace wisdom, as though there were some doubt about the advantages of wisdom. Sample: "Blessings are on the head of the righteous, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence." The catchy phrasing and apt metaphors which you would hope for simply aren't here (barring a very small number, which stand out as being slightly less banal: "iron sharpens iron").

A couple of the Epistles of St Paul are deeply uplifting and moving pronouncements of the essence of belief in Christ. The rest (circa 20 books) are probably fascinating political history, if you have the background knowledge about the different early Christian thinkers and communities and the evolution of their doctrine. If you don't, they are hard to make much sense of - for example, thirty pages of careful analytic debate about circumcision, responding to someone else's letter which itself breaks down a third person's arguments, neither of which we have available to us.

The awkward truth about the notion of the 'Bible as literature' or the supposed cultural importance of the Bible, is that in modern secular times, it is a myth passed on from otherwise educated people who have read less than 5% of the Bible, to other educated people who are going to read even less of it.

You clearly are more informed than me, but my experience was from randomly reading pages. Maybe I got lucky. Though I recall one page with long lists of ancestry, x begat y - similar to a telephone book as you mention.

Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, [...]

You do not need the whole bible for that. The bible contain way more then cultural references and a lot of that more is mindnumbing boring.

That was the first thing I noticed when I attempted to read my KJV bible and also what eventually led me to stop reading it. The monotonous repetition of lineage. Perhaps I will give it another chance later in life.

The premise of the Bible is salvation from human’s fallen state through love, compassion and self sacrifice.

Many people can read the same book and get different things from it, which is an interesting point to consider wrt the lindy effect. Some books are read differently over time, or by different groups/nations. The lindy effect can include books that are read for different reasons; undoubtedly people still read mein kampf, but for wholly different reasons (one hopes!)

He who drinks the old wine is probably more interested in history than he who drinks the new.

I definitely would stock the Bible, yes -- with the argument that Western societies and cultures are riddled with biblical metaphors and everyday customs, so it does make sense for the kids to be familiar with them.

Not sure about stocking e.g. Mein Kampf, though. This one I would probably pass, due to disgust towards what the Nazis did. From another angle, I might be "brainwashed" here -- by the cultural meme that this is a Dangerous Book. I don't really know. In the end, it is still just a book. Can a book be dangerous in itself? Not sure that possessing it would turn somebody into a Nazi; a youngster's appreciation of those ideas is surely more complicated a mechanism than just reading a book.

Tangentially related: in my (post-soviet) country, there has been discussion whether former Soviet military buildings are a part of cultural heritage, or should they all be demolished. As a regular person, I'm definitely siding with keeping some of those buildings -- the Soviet occupation was a sad, devastating part of our past, and younger generations should have physical examples of what it was like. Whether those buildings will be used as some kind of cult objects etc -- this is a matter of values education at school or at home.

So I fully agree with @j7ake's comment in this thread that reading (or -- my addition -- possessing) a book is not the same as agreeing with its premises. Hiding the past won't work, I think.

Great angle @kjellsbells, though. Interesting to think about. Thanks for bringing this up.

Better to read Evola

How so?

Mein Kampf is worth at least a skim, because it demonstrates that Hitler was a human being.

History positions him as an inhuman monster, and rightly so metaphorically. We are conditioned to think that he was uniquely evil in an otherworldly sense, totally unlike us, and someone like him could never arise again because we don’t have monsters these days.

But he wasn’t a unique demon. He was a human, with human emotions and motivations and failings. It’s important to recognize him (and all the rest of the Nazis) as human, because the humans of today absolutely do have the capacity to become him again.

"Mein Kampf is worth at least a skim, because it demonstrates that Hitler was a human being."

Excellent phrasing. I think you would love "The Kindly Ones" by Jonathan Littell [1]. What an incredible book -- oh, and, being released in 2009, it also fits my interpretation of "Lindy".

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kindly_Ones_(Littell_novel...

No and this is also a thing only people do not know what is in it say. Or people who want to be edgy say. And I am saying that as someone who attempted to read it, so have passing idea about content.

If you want to know who Hitler was as a human, read either "Hitler, by Kershaw Ian" or "Third Reich Trilogy by Richard Evans".

If you want someone to realize Hitler was not unique, make them read about other genocides, about Italy at the same time, about Stalin, about Japan, about slavery, about genocide of native americans and so on.

Also, I would highly NOT recommend it for someone who does not know actual German history, because that book contains ... well quite a few untrue claims. If you are in general interested in that period and read a lot, nothing wrong with reading it. But if you are not and this is the one historical book you decided to pick and recommend over all the others, then I have hard time to believe you are neutral in your pick.

Yes definitely. Currently in four languages, for the record.

Yes. I'd stock Koran too. Satanic Verses by Rushdie would also be included. If I can have access to Mein Kampf, to the library it goes.

> Mein Kampf

While the author was very influential, I'm not sure if the book itself relevant.

Historically speaking, it is very relevant. Because it clearly shows Hitler's intent for Germany, the war and the jews way before he got into power. Other than that, it is a crappy book, the content sucks and the writing is abysmally bad. The latter fact was also something people thought back then, and most people who had the book at home didn't necessarily read it.

Another reason the book is relevant, it clearly shows the power of propaganda and how books can be used to that end.

> Because it clearly shows Hitler's intent for Germany, the war and the jews way before he got into power.

It's interesting from the perspective of historiography. But it's not relevant in the way the Bible, Quran or the Gita are.

> Other than that, it is a crappy book, the content sucks and the writing is abysmally bad. The latter fact was also something people thought back then, and most people who had the book at home didn't necessarily read it.

This was my point. And in the context of TFA, it's not Lindy.

> clearly shows the power of propaganda

It wasn't an effective instrument for propaganda. The book became popular because of Hitler, not the other way round.

"Mein Kampf" is actually a good example of the "negative" Lindy effect because it was only relevant in a single country for a very short time, and even in Nazi Germany it was only popular (in the sense that there was a copy in every household) because it was given out as wedding gift by the state (pretty much nobody could be arsed to actually buy and read that drivel when it came out).

This is historical revisionism. Mein Kampf was a decently well selling book even before the Nazis came to power, with an estimated number of 241000 copies sold.

This is of course dwarfed by the number of copies distributed after the Nazis came to power.

Unless you are specifically interested in the history of the response to the Satanic Verses and what it means about world society, I would recommend 'Midnight's Children' as a better book, and a better example of what is interesting about Salman Rushdie's work.

What someone says is the justification for their actions, and what actually is the reason for their actions are often different things.

TBF that's less because of the actual content of the bible, but what people in various eras read into it (except for some of the Old Testament "eye for an eye" stuff of course).

PS: ...and even though I'm agnostic, of course I have the bible in my book shelf and occasionally read it, if only for the entertainment value (not the King James version though, but the Luther version).

> its also the source of bigotry, suffering and death for thousands of people

But are you afraid reading it will turn you into a murderous bigot?

Really? The bible is the source of bigotry and death for thousands? A vit dramatic no? The bible does not implore anyone to violence. But it is a convenient scapegoat for those with ill will