Best written Scripture

[The Mikado]

See above.  The Old Testament is not anything I'd base my life on, but I love it so much as a book and every week or so I'll suddenly be struck with the desire to reread Kings or Esther or Daniel (though if it were meant for literary merit they'd have axed Chronicles).  Greek mythology comes in a close second, followed by the New Testament.  The Epistles are bite-sized and I have several times just read a Pauline epistle over lunch due to the appealing brevity.

The Book of Mormon might just be the worst book ever written, and the Koran does not prize user-friendliness, though that might be a translational artifact.

[King]

The Greco in Greco-Roman was the best there ever was.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The Book of Mormon has the advantage of having had only a single author.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

within the bible, I would have to say Galatians...Paul takes no prisoners in that letter.  He first shoots the angels, then himself, then Peter&James&John, then Peter&Barnabas.  After he has destroyed all leadership other than Christ himself, both human and angelical,  Paul then turns to his now leaderless audience and explains the simple one step plan of salvation by asking them a series of rhetorical either-or questions related to their relationship with Jesus.  And then he walks them through the OT explaining how the obvious answers to those rhetorical questions were clearly spelled out ages ago.

and after clearing out all the clutter and leaving them with nothing but Christ to focus on, he tells them not to make him clean up their religious clutter again because his body is full of scars from the enemies of the gospel:

Gal 6:17 "Finally, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus."

The whole letter is concise, to the point, and is done with an attitude that is both extremely angry and extremely loving...frustrated that he is, once again, having to deal with the same clutter that he has had to battle time and time again.

[useful idiot]

I'd agree Galatians is pretty great in that way. It was the first book I read after I got saved, for no particular reason. I just picked up a Bible and went to the first book I opened to. The entire spectrum of Paul's writing and emotion is there. I'd really love to read Paul's third letter to the Corinthians,

For the NT though, as far as language goes, I'd pick 1 Peter (far too overlooked). In the OT I'd go with Ezekiel.

As far as the other religious documents on the list, I've only read the Koran, the BoM, and the Odyssey. I read part of Gilgamesh, but it was for high school and I didn't care for it. Honestly the Koran was horrible. The BoM is pretty bad. It's written in King James English, so it superficially has the feel of the Bible, but what's there is completely empty.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

Hebrew Bible, especially Psalms.  2 Isaiah is also quite beautiful.

[pbrower2a]

So far as I can tell, the Koran, even in translation, has more literary merit than any other Holy Writ.

[The Mikado]

So far as I can tell, the Koran, even in translation, has more literary merit than any other Holy Writ.

Well, that would make sense, seeing as you seem to like the long-winded, rambling style of writing. 

[memphis]

As lit, they all pretty much suck. They're written the way a teenaged girl gossips: and then this happenned, and then this happenned, and then this happened. There's no flow and there are no words to ease transitions. The skill of writing has come a long way since ancient times.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

As lit, they all pretty much suck. They're written the way a teenaged girl gossips: and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened. There's no flow and there are no words to ease transitions. The skill of writing has come a long way since ancient times.

Aside from the genealogical records, which can get rambling,  I would have to totally disagree with that statement.  Many of the books of the bible set out from the opening passage to address a certain topic and follow that topic all the way through to the end of the specific book, building point upon point on top of the opening topic.  Examples:

-   very single statement of the book of Galatians is geared towards addressing the single point of the book (letter).

-   the entire book of Hebrews, which is a pretty sizable letter, addresses the first point made in the opening verse.

Even in OT cases like Genesis, which includes a long list of genealogy, there is still an easily identifiable flow and purpose to the book and it obviously transitions directly into the next book, Exodus. 

So you’ll have to point out an example where you think there is no flow or transition.

[memphis]

Pick and read any prose chapter of the Bible. Poetry is obviously a completely different situation. Then, read a chapter of any novel written in the last 200 years. There's an enormous difference in the way they are written. The Bible, written by people who were largely unfamiliar with the written word, reads like somebody talking in a transcript. There aren't the complex sentence structures and transitions you find in modern written text. It's like pre-Renaissance artwork before they discovered perspective. The Bible, and all ancient texts could use some conjunctions and subordinte clauses. This doesn't mean that the Bible's authors didn't have a sense of purpose throughout their works. It just means that writing as a technique had not yet developed to the complex way it is today.

[The Mikado]

I don't really understand that perspective.  I like the writing style of ancient authors (I love reading Plutarch, for example) far more than many more contemporary authors.  Heck, even the oldest book on the list of options, Gilgamesh, has some slow moments, but it's still a fun, quick read.  (It's only about 60 pages, which helps).  Gilgamesh does have the problem that Homer's works have, that they have that repetitive style to help people memorizing them get into the flow, but that's really the only major issue.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Pick and read any prose chapter of the Bible. Poetry is obviously a completely different situation. Then, read a chapter of any novel written in the last 200 years. There's an enormous difference in the way they are written. The Bible, written by people who were largely unfamiliar with the written word, reads like somebody talking in a transcript. There aren't the complex sentence structures and transitions you find in modern written text. It's like pre-Renaissance artwork before they discovered perspective. The Bible, and all ancient texts could use some conjunctions and subordinte clauses. This doesn't mean that the Bible's authors didn't have a sense of purpose throughout their works. It just means that writing as a technique had not yet developed to the complex way it is today.

The Bible in the original languages has plenty of conjunctions and subordinate clauses. If you don't see them it's because the translators took them out and substituted punctuation (if ancient texts had punctuation they would probably have been written differently).