The Bible of the World

xxi, 1415 pp. "Introduction: The Bible of the World is the result of a diligent attempt on the part of a lay editor, with the advice of two scholars, to put into one volume the scriptural essence of eight great living source religions for the use of the modern English reader. It would be difficult to separate and state the many reasons for entering upon so challenging, so attractive, and at the same time so difficult a project, but some of the impelling stimulants are apparent. Most obvious of these are the facts that the material involved is superb from a purely literary point of view, and that by far the greatest part of it included here is little known to the average reader. Nowhere in literature isthere more profound or beautiful poetry than that contained in the earliest scriptures of Hinduism, the Vedic hymns, composed no one knows when, but certainly more than a millennium before the birth of Christ; in the Chinese odes and the Tao-Te-King or in the best of the Psalms of the Judeo-Christian Bible. There are no better stories anywhere than those of the Upanishads the Bhagavad--Gita, the Puritans, the Hitopadesa, and the Parables of Sri Ramakrishna in Hinduism; the Pali Tripitaka the Jataka birth stories and Buddhaghosha's Parables of Buddhism; the Zendavesta and Pahlavi tests of Zoroastrianism; the book of Chuang Tze of Taoism; and the Jewish Old Testament. There is nowhere a more profound or timeless philosophy than is embodied in the more thoughtful and philosophic scriptures of all of these religions."