Impressive writings!?

This is what I believed as a Baha'i, that his writings were superhuman. This is what the writings themselves put forward as the greatest proof after his person (for those who didn't get to meet him).

Combined with the reportedly prolific pace with which he wrote, it felt incredibly compelling.

What's interesting is that after several years of leaving the Baha'i Faith, re-reading those same works is far less impressive. It really is incredibly subjective.

Baha'u'llah had a suite of literary motifs he'd reuse and they get tiresome.

For example he over-relied on imagery of veils, foliage, the sun, birds singing, etc. It would go something like this: thus doth the all-knowing inform thee, that verily my writings are my proof. Yea, to this doth attest the warbling of every bird, could ye but hear it! Lift the veil that haply the sun of reality might dawn in this Day of Days, and ye become accounted among those whose names are inscribed in the Book of Life. Verily this is better for you than that which ye possess, could ye but perceive it!

You also realise he'd use far more words than is necessary to say simple things. And we also know he plagiarised some works verbatim without citing them, including incorrect facts (e.g. the years of birth of famous Greek philosophers).

Another way of challenging this idea is to ask people today if they have heard of Baha'u'llah or the Bab? And ask them if they have heard of Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, etc. All contemporaries of the Bab/Baha'u'llah but far more widely appreciated. That shouldn't be the case even with the mitigating circumstances -- we are after all talking about the claim that these works were supposedly produced by God when he manifested himself twice during that same period -- it shouldn't even be a competition! Yet here we are showing how unimpressive they are..

https://www.reddit.com/r/exbahai/comments/1gcj8xx/make_love_not_war_why_was_bahaullah_unable_to/