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Religious Book Store > Religious books beginning with W
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The World's Wisdom: Sacred Texts of the World's Religions |
Author: Philip Novak
Published: 1995-08-24 |
List price: $16.95
Our price: $12.38
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As of: January 06th, 2009 04:16:39 AM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 The World's Wisdom: Sacred Texts of the World's Religions
This book is a wonderful read and gives a broad view of the sacred stories of the world's major religions. The language is clear and easily understood. This is a good resource for understanding the basic precepts of a variety of beleif systems. I really enjoyed it.
A treasure
On repeated visits to the bookstore, I kept getting drawn to this book, leafing through it and inevitably had to buy it.
The foreword of this book is written by Huston Smith, author of The World's religions. The author Philip Novak is a professor of religious studies. He wrote this book because there was no handy reference book for his students in which he could draw from all the wisdom of the various religions. This book was also written to be used in conjunction with Smith's book.
I like this book a lot. It saves from having to study a tremendous amount about different religions just to get a little wisdom. Having studied Buddhism and Taoism, I was delighted to find my knowledge expanded still further.
For example with Buddhism, he includes A Sutra about the practice of right mindfulness, which I find incredibly useful and reassuring. I love the passage Dear to Me from the Bhagavad Gita.
I also appreciate the passage from Chuang Tsu about The Quiet Mind, which is brilliant.
There are chapters on Primal religions, and Creation Myths, and even Shamanism. Common patterns are interesting to see. Novak allows us to see the patterns, and draw our own conclusions. The book is very well structured, and includes Grace Notes, which is updated and contemporary writings on each religion.
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 great idea, but...
Let me start by saying that I am an undergraduate student taking a class on world religions. I didn't just pick this book up for a fun introduction to religious scripture; it's for my class.
That said, I have really enjoyed it. We're only at Christianity in the class so far, but the author seems to have a wide-spread knowledge of which selections are important to talk about (though as a lay-person, I really have no idea) and include. I already have it all marked up with my favorite passages from different religions and little notes about them!
The reason I'm giving it 3 stars, however, is this: lack of quick and easy citations. I am not a Bible scholar, nor am I a Jew or Christian, so reading his sections on Judaism and Christianity have been particularly confusing, since he does not tell the reader which book the selections are from. I have a feeling that there is some meaning lost when taken out of context and I really would like to be able to flip to the specific book of the OT or NT that a passage is from, but that is unrealistic at this point. If, however, he had given the name of the book, the chapter, line, etc etc, it would be much much easier. Other than that, I've loved it. I just wish that, when talking about the Gospels in class, I could flip to that section in Novak and know which book which passage came from immediately.
 The World's Wisdom
An excellent compliation of primary materials on world religions. Excellent, but brief introductory notes make this book an excellent companion for introductory comparative religion courses.
Among The Best
This is defintiely one of the better book's on the wisdom of the various religions around the world. Good content, and a pretty diverse variety of material included here. Any studdent of religion will appreicate it.
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