- ISBN13: 9780060663421
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
A world Bible for our time from Buddhist, Hindu, Confucian, Taoist, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and primal religion sources! In this perfect companion to Huston Smith’s bestselling The World’s Wisdom, Philip Novak distills the most powerful and elegant expressions of the wisdom of humankind. Authentic, poetic translations of key texts are coupled with insightful introductions and “grace notes.”… More >>
The concept of this book–a collection of selections from the world’s sacred texts, and a companion text to Huston Smith’s wonderful “The World’s Relgions”–is great, but I think Novak’s execution of it was poor.
What bothered me the most about this book was Novak’s translations. I was already very familiar with the Western texts (the Bible) that Novak “updated”, and I had a hard time getting over the modern, “inclusive” language Novak chose that in my opinion reduced a lot of the majestic beauty of older translations, such as the King James version.
Some of Novak’s translations “modernized” the language to change the meanings of certain passages radically from what was intended.
It would also have been nice if Novak had kept the references to the original sources alongside the text rather than buried at the back of the book so that I could easily look up his selections in the language I was more familiar with, but that is a minor complaint.
Rating: 1 / 5
I recieve the book in recorded time and in great condition. A great buy, thanks.
Rating: 5 / 5
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.
Rating: 5 / 5
Author really has a good study of texts in many ancient books. These books are considered holy in many religions. The passages are from Bhagavat Geeta, Bible, Koran etc. A more information on the background of books is essentials.
The author selects the passages wisely. There is so material out there that to select a few `sacred’ text can be real difficult. The book does not explain why some texts are chosen over others though. This can be a personal preference and I think the author has done well. But sometimes its not easy to find the hidden meaning behind the scriptures. It means much more than just a plane translations. The author uses effective and easy language for translation. However since I know a little Sanskrit, I can say the translation could have been more accurate.
This book can be helpful to scholars, teachers and public speakers.
Rating: 4 / 5
To begin, Novak assembled this book as a compendium to accompany Huston Smith’s book on world religions, so you may want to give both of them a shot at the same time, reading Novak’s sections after the corresponding Smith sections.
Concerning the book itself, it is a fantastic collection of original sources and it looks like you can get a used copy + shipping for less than $10. For me, that says a lot. Concerning what was selected, there is no doubt that Novak put some serious effort in selecting what he did. The reader will get a very nice exposure to many elements within each religious tradition. However, the translations chosen are not so impressive, but there may be issues beyond the author’s control here, so I cannot fault him too much. For example, the Dao Dejing was translated by Stephen Mitchell, who did an alright job, but his is hardly considered to be the authoritative translation. The good news is that it is nearly published in it entirety! On a similar positive note, the citations in the back are often quite informative. With a flip to the back, you will be brought to the original source. Now, I don’t want to say that this book is showing its age, but many of the sources seem a bit dated. My suspicion is that this was how the price of the book was kept to a minimum. Also, in the last fourteen years since this was published, a lot of good translation work has come from Chinese philosophy. I worry that some of the older translations may give false impressions as to the state of the research today.
With this book, you have to take the good with the bad, and the best part seems to be the affordability. You will not be able to find a collection as thorough as this for anywhere near the price.
Rating: 4 / 5
To begin, Novak assembled this book as a compendium to accompany Huston Smith’s book on world religions, so you may want to give both of them a shot at the same time, reading Novak’s sections after the corresponding Smith sections.
Concerning the book itself, it is a fantastic collection of original sources and it looks like you can get a used copy + shipping for less than $10. For me, that says a lot. Concerning what was selected, there is no doubt that Novak put some serious effort in selecting what he did. The reader will get a very nice exposure to many elements within each religious tradition. However, the translations chosen are not so impressive, but there may be issues beyond the author’s control here, so I cannot fault him too much. For example, the Dao Dejing was translated by Stephen Mitchell, who did an alright job, but his is hardly considered to be the authoritative translation. The good news is that it is nearly published in it entirety! On a similar positive note, the citations in the back are often quite informative. With a flip to the back, you will be brought to the original source. Now, I don’t want to say that this book is showing its age, but many of the sources seem a bit dated. My suspicion is that this was how the price of the book was kept to a minimum. Also, in the last fourteen years since this was published, a lot of good translation work has come from Chinese philosophy. I worry that some of the older translations may give false impressions as to the state of the research today.
With this book, you have to take the good with the bad, and the best part seems to be the affordability. You will not be able to find a collection as thorough as this for anywhere near the price.
Rating: 4 / 5
Btw, really good work. Waiting on the next post!