Harris Poll - America's Favourite book...

[Child of the 7th Age]

Thanks, Davem. Kind of interesting that I match up fairly well with the "post grad" crowd, since LotR and Mockingbird are two books that do mean a lot to me.

the Jewish voter certainly would only choose the Torah (without, of course, any mention of the New Testament)

Hmm... Not the Torah only (the first five books), but perhaps the entire Tanakh (equivalent to the OT)

It's also interesting and not surprising how many of the authors in this list are "Americans".

To me, the critical question is this. How many of the people who cited the Bible as their first choice actually read and/or studied it in any depth? Or did they list it because they "feel" it should be their first choice, even if their particular exposure to the scriptures (whatever version they prefer) is more limited? Undoubtedly, some respondents fall in the first group and some in the latter, and I would hesitate to put numbers or percentages on either subset.

Perhaps a more interesting angle is how JRRT would have responded to a question of this type. Most likely, he would have growled at the asker and asked him to take a hike, pointing out that any query framed in such vague terms was clearly of dubious value.

First, exactly what is a "book"? Would JRRT's beloved medieval texts be excluded or included in such a framework? Would the author have listed the Bible as his first choice, given the fact that he was a devout Catholic? Then again, as a Catholic, he surely would want to consider the Bible not as an isolated piece but in the context of other important Catholic works and annals of church history. Or would JRRT have made a neat list of favorite novels that were relatively current and just left it at that? Somehow, I do not think that these particular titles would have been on his list.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

Actually, Moses was not horned. This comes from a mistranslation by Jerome in the Latin Vulgate Bible.

I was not saying if the text said whether he was or was not horned, but I was making a remark that interestingly, there can be people found who stand behind the opinion that he was horned. This is not the topic of this thread anyway.

Originally Posted by Child of the 7th Age

First, exactly what is a "book"? Would JRRT's beloved medieval texts be excluded or included in such a framework?

I actually think that these responses differ from each other as much as individuals differ, I think there will be people who would like to nominate some medieval text or something - if they really liked the text, they would simply write it. If I liked something, I would write it there not caring what it is - as long as it is a written text. That of course also depends on what exactly was the question of the poll, whether f.ex. there was some closer determination like "a text of 50-1500 pages" or "a text which was issued in one book" (still, using the already named example, one could for example write just Psalms or something as part of Bible). I'll leave this to your imagination, but you see the lines along which I am thinking.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

I was not saying if the text said whether he was or was not horned, but I was making a remark that interestingly, there can be people found who stand behind the opinion that he was horned. This is not the topic of this thread anyway.

So, you are saying your comment regarding a horned Moses was in context, whilst mine was not? *shrugs*

Actually, my post hearkens back to earlier comments by myself and others regarding the mistranslation and misinterpretation of the bible (which I guess could be construed as out-of-context as well, strictly speaking).

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

I actually think that these responses differ from each other as much as individuals differ, I think there will be people who would like to nominate some medieval text or something - if they really liked the text, they would simply write it. If I liked something, I would write it there not caring what it is - as long as it is a written text. That of course also depends on what exactly was the question of the poll, whether f.ex. there was some closer determination like "a text of 50-1500 pages" or "a text which was issued in one book" (still, using the already named example, one could for example write just Psalms or something as part of Bible). I'll leave this to your imagination, but you see the lines along which I am thinking.

In any event, I see we can all agree (whether wholly or in part) that the Harris Poll survey question was vague, and the results left something to be desired.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

So, you are saying your comment regarding a horned Moses was in context, whilst mine was not? *shrugs*

I was not saying anything like that. I merely intended to make a point reminding that the topic is not the main topic of this thread, so we should be aware of continuing on that (and I also hope this is the last reply I do to this one).