Terrazza del Duomo, Milan, Italy
I highly recommend you read the Hebrew Bible
Note: I’m not religious
Potential benefits:
- The most immediate one is that you will instantly connect with the massive Jewish and Christian community in the West. You’ll quickly grasp their allusions, idioms, and proverbs. It’s like knowing the local dialect in Vietnam: you’ll immediately see how much locals appreciate you.
- The next benefit: you’ll realize how the average Western mindset is influenced. This can increase your empathy, which is crucial for smooth dialogue and negotiation.
- Another benefit: it raises your literary appreciation to a new level. The West has left behind a massive literary heritage. Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction self-help books, recognizing the shape of the Bible can absolutely help you spot the essence, or the creative limitations, of a work (I bet a bazillion works rely on the Bible already, it’s so cliché == ).
- And countless other benefits (like realizing your friend “David,” whose name is as common as dirt, was once a king. It feels like reading the lore after watching a movie or playing a game. Plus: you gain a deeper understanding of current world conflicts).
So, if you want to start reading, what do you need to know?
Here is my crude summary, using everyday language for complete newbies:
- All three faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (and many more), share a common root: the Abrahamic religions.
- The Hebrew Bible talks about this shared origin (and is still used by Jewish people today).
- Christianity (worshipping Jesus) reuses the Hebrew Bible and calls it the Old Testament. So, with the post I wrote above, I’m mostly referring to the Old Testament. It’s great if you read the New Testament too, but the Jewish faith doesn’t use it.
- The Quran of the Islamic faith also touches upon details from the Hebrew Bible. I find reading the Quran after the Hebrew Bible much more interesting. Having read One Thousand and One Nights, which mentioned the Quran frequently, added quite a lot to the excitement.
In short, if you care about Western culture, go give the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) a try. 😆
Google Gemini 2.5 Flash provided help with the English translation.