Customer Reviews

The Portable World Bible (Portable Library)

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This book was really difficult to read at times, but please don't take that the wrong way. When I say difficult, I mean it challenged me and I feel any book on spirituality should do that. After all, what good is a book if its just teaching you what you already know? "The Portable Wold Bible" takes seven of the worlds most influential religions and summarizes them and also compares and contrasts them. The religions compared are Hindu, Confucianist, Taoist, Mohammedan, Buddhist, Judeo-Christian, and Zoroastrian. By learning a little of each religion, an open-minded person can learn much about there own religion, whether it is something listed above or not. I'm a Catholic, but found the writings of Hindu, Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucianist very enlightening. What was written there has got me thinking about many things. It will probably be something for me to digest for several months. It's very interesting to also learn that most of our major religions sprang to life about the same time in history. I definitely recommend this book to anyone questing to learn more about the god they worship or pay respect to.

The Nobel winning physicist Richard Feynman attributed much of his success to his stubborn obsession of reading the basic papers of physics himself and not relying on other people to interpret them. I like this book because it offers the same thing - a glimpse into the world's largest religions through their own writings. I'm most familiar with Christianity and thought that the chapters covering Judaism and Christianity presented a fair representation of both religions so I'm assuming that other religions are covered in a similar fashion. The translations are very readable and there is a helpful glossary at the books' end. Good book.

This volume is a timely and comprehensive overview of major philosophical and religious systems now shaping our world.