There can be only one answer to that - the Bible. Twenty years ago, I was convinced the content alone justified the claims of a divine origin, which opinion has only grown stronger in the years since. Even if you don't believe in it, it is worth reading as literature - an extraordinarily epic story, and a lot of stuff to say about humanity and divinity along the way. Everything else, comparatively, seems to me like it was written by children.
But that's a useless answer, as the purpose of such a question is to generate recommendations, and that's unlikely to be a new one to anybody.
One of the books that's impacted me the most in the last few years is Homer's Illiad. I used to wonder why we read The Odyssey in high school and never talked about The Illiad, but I don't wonder now! I think all the violence in Illiad would warrant more than a PG-13 rating. ;) But it is a great story about men and gods and struggle and war, with a lot to say about what mankind is and what it can be, and a lot of heroes to want to grow up to be someday. The introduction to my copy includes the quote, "It is a good thing that war is so terrible, otherwise we would grow to love it too much." That quote will make no sense to most people; if it resonates with you, this book is your kind of book.
I am currently reading through Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology, as I am looking for wisdom on how to navigate the highly technological time I find myself in. I haven't finished it, but I find the insights profound, and I see the ideas everywhere. I think it may prove to be the best thing I've ever read on the topic of what it means to interact with technology and remain human.
Shakespeare is legendary for a reason. I haven't read one of his plays yet that that I didn't deeply enjoy. They never hit right in high school, but as an adult I find them profound. I giggled my way through A Comedy of Errors recently and it still makes me smile.
A Christian recommendation - I've very much enjoyed Jeremy Taylor's 1650 Holy Living and Dying. Probably the best book on Christian life I've read, and I've read quite a few - and it's a book that rarely makes people's short lists. It's long and I haven't finished it, but as much as I've read so far continues to impact me.
Edit: I almost forgot! I read The Princess and the Goblin several years ago. It is a fairy tale intended for children, and is yet one of the best books I have ever read on the subject of girlhood, and I have spent a lifetime searching for them. If you have (or are, or find yourself in an occasion to love) a girl, I can't recommend it highly enough.
I'm atheist-agnostic, but I've read the Bible several times and the Qu'ran twice. I think it is important to have at least a passing knowledge of these books, and TBH, as long as you cherry-pick, there is a lot of good life advice in there.
I'm fascinated by both books for their history and authorship, though. Who wrote them? Why did they write them? How did they write them? What parts of their content is backed by historical record? etc.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy
I know, right? These works are deeply mysterious and not to be dismissed lightly. I remember coming away from the Bhagavad Gita with the same sense of Who? What?? How??? What on earth?
An experience not to be missed, to be sure. The world is full of the bizarre and inexplicable, and would surely be diminished by a need to explain everything.
Stick with QCT, I’ve been coming back to that essay for 20 years. Given your other recs, you might want to go back to a few of the Dialogues: the Apology, the Laches, maybe the Phaedrus. And if you’re serious about the divine origin stuff, after reading the Apology, read the third chapter of Walden.
Numbers and Leviticus are the worst slog of a book I've come across. Don't think people are very honest with themselves when they read through it and think, yes God made this so beautiful.
You know, the names of a couple of the oldest books of the Bible in English are not very good. "Numbers" does have a census for the first few chapters, and I'll grant that a census isn't gripping reading. It impresses upon the reader the intended historicity of the account - Illiad has a long description of how many troops and boats came from where for a similar reason. After that, though, the book continues the narrative that left off in Exodus, and is similar in tone and content. The original name of the book, "Ba midvar" or "In the wilderness" is a better title, as it recounts the story of Israel's time in the wilderness.
Leviticus was my favorite book for a long time, and I still regard it with great affection. But I've also heard people deride it as nonsensical, and I get where that is coming from. Throwing the One Ring into Mount Doom has been similarly derided as "the destruction of some jewelry", which is how it must seem if you aren't familiar with the backstory and the symbolism. We live in an age that really likes to downplay context and symbolism and historical connections, and would tend to regard "the destruction of some jewelry" as a reasonable take - maybe even an enlightened take. Such a perspective sees the blood of bulls and rams in Leviticus as nothing else, and it's no wonder it seems gross and uncompelling. To me, that take is missing almost the entire story: if you can talk about the One Ring without saying anything about power, you have basically missed everything of significance about it. And in Leviticus, blood is life, God gives it and God claims it, and we learn from the rituals surrounding it that holiness and life requires sacrifice and death, something both immediately true and a deep truth at many levels. The invisible things, the symbols and connections and significances and virtues, have retreated from the modern mind, first becoming unimportant, then not real, then not even perceptible. I regard this as a tragic turn of events, and I think it is not unrelated to our current civilizational struggles. But any rate, ancient works in general, and the Bible in particular, put a lot of emphasis on the poetic, the symbolic, the deeper meanings of things. If you're going to enjoy such works, you're going to need to see beyond the literal.
For me, Leviticus has this breathtaking mix of the intensely symbolic and the intensely practical. I am often taken aback at the imagery being so on point, and yet so accessible to a poor bronze age people. And I think often on its lessons in leadership as I navigate related challenges. Above and beyond that, it does a lot to illustrate what God is like in terms of day to day relationship with him - an education about how this whole affair works, in contrast to the idols and magicians and cults. This is how things are, this is the sort of God you serve. Plenty of what it has to say about the life of the man of God is profound, perhaps even shocking.
And one more thing - it is unsurprising that an ancient handbook on ritual would seem incoherent to a people who have abandoned all practice of ritual and are energetically at work burning down any stray ones the last generation might have missed. Our individualism has metastasized to the point that it seems all common experiences must be destroyed on principle. I not only hail from that culture, but am doubly poor: as an evangelical protestant, my Christianity is shorn of tradition and liturgy, with sacrament reduced to the bare minimum required by the text. There are certainly historical reasons for that, up sides or at least intended up sides, and I'm not looking to convert. At the same time, I have been thinking recently about the role of ritual in teaching and binding together, in turning individuals into a people, and I can't deny that the body of the Catholic and the Orthodox seems to have a sort of spine to it that the Protestant lacks, and I'm starting to think this is why. Leviticus is ... God's solution to that need, at one place and time. I am a student, likely not even knowing what the poverty of my historical circumstance has left me ignorant of. But it may be not just an example to the religious - it may be that our society could learn a thing or two from this ancient social technology. This religion did survive for millenia, whereas our attempt at an anti-ritualistic, rationalistic, individualistic civilization seems to be fraying after a few short centuries. Maybe we could do with some civilizational mortar.
Anyway - that's some of what I see. I think it would take a lot of education and spiritual experience to get similar things on your own. Leviticus is a hard book. It may or may not help, but you can always look at a commentary to get some of the flavor of what an experienced reader sees. Here's one online example - https://ccel.org/ccel/henry/mhc1/mhc1.Lev.ii.html
What is "the Bible"? As many threads in this post have pointed out, the translator and translation have a huge impact on the final product.† Are you referring to ancient Hebrew? A version approved by the Catholic Church or is it something concocted by that German heretic? Something else?
† Sometimes with death sentences handed out for challenges to R̶o̶m̶a̶n̶ papal supremacy!
But that's a useless answer, as the purpose of such a question is to generate recommendations, and that's unlikely to be a new one to anybody.
One of the books that's impacted me the most in the last few years is Homer's Illiad. I used to wonder why we read The Odyssey in high school and never talked about The Illiad, but I don't wonder now! I think all the violence in Illiad would warrant more than a PG-13 rating. ;) But it is a great story about men and gods and struggle and war, with a lot to say about what mankind is and what it can be, and a lot of heroes to want to grow up to be someday. The introduction to my copy includes the quote, "It is a good thing that war is so terrible, otherwise we would grow to love it too much." That quote will make no sense to most people; if it resonates with you, this book is your kind of book.
I am currently reading through Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology, as I am looking for wisdom on how to navigate the highly technological time I find myself in. I haven't finished it, but I find the insights profound, and I see the ideas everywhere. I think it may prove to be the best thing I've ever read on the topic of what it means to interact with technology and remain human.
Shakespeare is legendary for a reason. I haven't read one of his plays yet that that I didn't deeply enjoy. They never hit right in high school, but as an adult I find them profound. I giggled my way through A Comedy of Errors recently and it still makes me smile.
A Christian recommendation - I've very much enjoyed Jeremy Taylor's 1650 Holy Living and Dying. Probably the best book on Christian life I've read, and I've read quite a few - and it's a book that rarely makes people's short lists. It's long and I haven't finished it, but as much as I've read so far continues to impact me.
Edit: I almost forgot! I read The Princess and the Goblin several years ago. It is a fairy tale intended for children, and is yet one of the best books I have ever read on the subject of girlhood, and I have spent a lifetime searching for them. If you have (or are, or find yourself in an occasion to love) a girl, I can't recommend it highly enough.