The World's Wisdom: Sacred Texts of the World's Religions

Rating:
Summary: Nice research
Review: 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:
Summary: the best of religion
Review: Easily the best anthology of religious writings I've seen, and I've seen quite a few. Beautiful and educational; as a teacher, I've found it very useful for religion courses. If you've any interest in religion or spirituality, this book is a must for your collection.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent "Cliff Notes" Guide to Sacred Texts
Review: If you are looking for a sort of all-in-one overview of the sacred texts for most of the world's major religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Primal Religions (myths and stories from native peoples throughout the world), "The World's Wisdom" is a unique source.

Phillip Novak does a nice job of putting each text into context. He also ends each section with "Grace Notes" which are key sayings or quotes by more contemporary adherents (the section on Christianity includes exerpts from the Gospel of Thomas, St. Francis, Meister Eckhart and Thomas Merton, among others).

Including Zoroastrianism, which was arguably the first monotheistic religion and highly influential many of those that came after it, would have made this book truly complete. Still, "The World's Wisdom" will become every bit as essential as Huston Smith's "World Religions" and is a perfect companion to it.
Highly recomended.

Rating:
Summary: The World's Wisdom
Review: Novak does a fine job selecting many absolute jewels from the texts of the world's major religions. His chapter introductions and brief explanations of certain passages will suffice to keep the beginner student of world religions focused upon the intended meaning of these texts. Each chapter glances different textual moments in the history of a particular religious group. There are "Grace Notes" sections at the end of each chapter which include some splendid writings from mystics/commentators within their respective traditions. One word of warning: there are some alterations made to some passages in order to include women in the many spiritual traditions which have sadly neglected to recognize women's spirituality. To Novak's credit, he does annotate each occassional alteration. In spite of this one possible nuisance for some few readers, this book is sure to inspire, and could well serve as a map for further, more thorough study of world religions. (Note: though Novak's book stands alone, it is designed--chapter by chapter--after Huston Smith's classic _The Religions of Man_, which examines the world's major religious traditions with far fewer references to their texts. Novak's selections make for a much more authentic and interesting introduction to the religions of the world.)

Rating:
Summary: The World's Wisdom
Review: Novak does a fine job selecting many absolute jewels from the texts of the world's major religions. His chapter introductions and brief explanations of certain passages will suffice to keep the beginner student of world religions focused upon the intended meaning of these texts. Each chapter glances different textual moments in the history of a particular religious group. There are "Grace Notes" sections at the end of each chapter which include some splendid writings from mystics/commentators within their respective traditions. One word of warning: there are some alterations made to some passages in order to include women in the many spiritual traditions which have sadly neglected to recognize women's spirituality. To Novak's credit, he does annotate each occassional alteration. In spite of this one possible nuisance for some few readers, this book is sure to inspire, and could well serve as a map for further, more thorough study of world religions. (Note: though Novak's book stands alone, it is designed--chapter by chapter--after Huston Smith's classic _The Religions of Man_, which examines the world's major religious traditions with far fewer references to their texts. Novak's selections make for a much more authentic and interesting introduction to the religions of the world.)

Rating:
Summary: nice concept, poor execution
Review: 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:
Summary: Among The Best
Review: 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.