Customer Reviews

How the Great Religions Began

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Originally published in 1929, this book is surprisingly "modern" in its appraoch to world religions. It is certianly not brilliantly academic, but it attempts to take a broad view of religions from all over the world in all time periods. It tells stories about all of the major religions, without being critical of beliefs or giving too much credence to stories which require faith. Of interest to the casual scholar of religion, or someone who wants a different perspective on their or another faith.

Like it or not statistics say that 96% of humanity consider themselves religious. A huge percentage of the subscribe to a handful of faiths, buddhism, confucianism, taoism, judaism, islam and christianity. If you would like to understand the mind of humanity, what drives it in so much of its day, I'm not sure you can do so without at least a basic understanding of the religions which they follow. If you would understand the world, you should read a book like this, in fact this one is pretty good even if Amazon doesn't have a picture for it, so perhaps read this one.

this is a great book for everyone to read -- it shows there are more than one religion in this world

This book is an excellent introduction to how great religions began.

For Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Toaism, Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, this book details both the myths of beginning and the basic theological structure of each religion surveyed.

For the "Readers'Digest" crowd, the book even starts each discussion with a one page precise describing in simple terms when the religion was founded, who founded it, what it major religious texts are and where adherents can be found.

What it lacks in length it makes up for in force by its description of the natural similarities that exist between disparate faiths and therefore peoples.

Excellent book!!!