What Makes a Text Influential?

     At this point I've seen two blogs that use Biblical evidence in order to support both writers connection to their readers, and how multiple texts are connected. This prompted me to have an increasing curiosity into what exactly it is that makes the Bible such an influential text in the literature community. Foster develops upon the idea that "There is nothing new under the sun", that there exists an underlying connection between all texts and those that come before it. Through this observation, I determined that it is much easier to view texts as steps in a type of ancestral "family tree", given that themes and archetypes from one text are oftentimes required to at least lay a foundation for a future text. Given that the Bible (along with Greek texts) were written far before literature was created on a large enough scale for a massive amount of people, it is fair to say that the Bible and other religiously inspired texts were some of the first if not only texts many people read. A few individuals would go on to write manuscripts of their own, using the story and character archetypes from the particular text(s) they have read. The Bible undoubtedly being one of the most (if not the most) popular texts in the world adds an additional layer to why many people view it as such an influential text. Yes, the Greek myths are older than certain books of the Bible, but given that there are many people throughout history who had never known the Greek myths but were well acquainted with the Bible certainly is a factor into which archetypes authors base their literature upon. Much of American and other Western literature features a protagonist overcoming a massive, seemingly indestructible barrier. A few key examples would be texts of people overcoming poverty, grief, an illness, or widespread oppression. This arc for many people would have first arisen in the story of David and Goliath in the Bible. While texts before it (or at least oral stories, there is deep controversy in studying the age of particularly ancient texts) likely held a similar theme, most authors would have gotten this theme from David and Goliath. This leads to many authors (particularly Western Christians), writing in a similar style. However, many of these authors added their own themes or characteristics of their protagonist, some even defined entire genres. These people are the Steinbecks, the Stowes, the Shakespeares of the world. Each popular author is simply another step in an overarching story of the human experience, which is easily traced back to the themes and archetypes of the oldest texts known to man.