I like your English thread, because I also learn a lot from it.
allf100 wrote:I'm unable to access to the first link. Wikipedia has been being blocked from the mainland of China.
"The rich man and Lazarus (also called the parable of Dives and Lazarus)[a] is a parable of Jesus from the 16th chapter of the Gospel of Luke.[5]"
https://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Luke% ... rsion=nrsvallf100 wrote:Q6: I think it is very necessary for me to read through the Bible in order to understand Western literatures, classic music. Do you think so?
Interesting question.
That might be true, however I think very few today have actually read through the Bible. But in the 19th century, when Moby Dick was written, many of these stories were probably more well known than they are today. That makes the literature sometimes difficult for us to read today. Christianity permeates so much of Western history so you should probably have a good understanding of the religion to understand history, literature and classical music, but you might not need to read the whole bible. I don't consider myself Christian, but it might be hard for us Westerners to realise how much of our Christian upbringing we take for granted. When I was in school we learned the stories from the Bible, I've attended mass in church many times from since I was a child and I know how a christian ceremony is structured, and even if I don't attend church now I'm there sometimes for special ceremonies, but more often for concerts.
Classical music is linked to the church, in the earliest time directly, and after it 'freed' itself from the church it still often took inspiration from Christian texts (like the Requiem sequence). Bach wrote music to 'the glory of God', however in my opinion we can today enjoy the art without being religious or having read the Bible. Classical music also has references to other literature than the Bible (of course). Off the top of my head the works of Goethe, especially "Faust", and Hoffmann's stories (both 19th century), and Dante's 'Divine Comedy' (14th century), and of course Shakespeare.