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+--- Thread: Greatest spiritual book ever written outside of the Bible? (/thread-46905.html)
- Praise the Lord! - 11-27-2012 06:59 AM
There is no greater spiritual book other than the KJV Bible.
- arthvader - 11-27-2012 06:59 AM
It's either The Book of Mormon because of its clarity and its support for the Bible, or The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for sheer beauty and power of language.
Chocolat and Praise the Lord!: He said other than the Bible, not more important than the Bible.
- greatjail858 - 11-27-2012 06:59 AM
I found the "Book of the dead" by the Egyptians interesting. Even though the Buddhists had no special "book" I did like their philosophies about life. I don't like the Bible.
- trevvidog - 11-27-2012 06:59 AM
The Chronicles of Narnia. [Esp. the last book (not sure what that was called), but it's depiction of the end of the world, and then life in "heaven" are beautiful.]
- babygirl16_holly - 11-27-2012 06:59 AM
Other than the bible..
I like A Purpose Driven Life.
I haven't read it all.. But I like it so far.
Its a book to help you with your walk with god.
The bible is a hard book to understand.. And all I can do is to pry that God will help me read and understand it.
A Purpose driven life is not another version of the bible.
Its sort of like talking to other Christians and relating to experiences.. But your reading.
Its not easy to stay saved when you are a new Christian or if you are in hard times.. And this book helps a lot.
- metsgal31 - 11-27-2012 06:59 AM
mere christianity by C.S. Lewis
- Mark T - 11-27-2012 06:59 AM
There are several you could choose from.
I personally like the Meditations - by Marcus Aurelius - not so much a spiritual book as a philosophically based set of observations or points of guidance.
- The Tao Te Ching / I Ching - influenced Eastern Philosophy profoundly including Hinduism, Taoism, Confucian and Shinto faiths and to a lesser extent informing some early views of Christianity.
- In your question it's not clear but strictly speaking not too many religious texts are strictly original, and as such the Christian Bible is not an "original" document, it was directly preceded by the Torah, which itself was a variant of the written Sumerian and Babylonian Creation mythos based on various texts but centered on the Zoroastrian dualistic faith.
- Similarly, the New Testament, / Bible is not the last in the line, either, there are variants such as the Gnostic / Apocryphal Liturgical writings which were not selected among the total of available writings selected at the Council of Nicea. Similarly, most modern Christians would view the King James Version as a relatively standard variant. The Koran / Q'uran is itself another variant of selections from the Torah and New Testament and General Apocrypha + the teachings of Mohammad later liturgical commentaries as is the Book of Latter Day Saints.
- The Bhagavad Gita is among many such seriously important and self-consistent Hindu Texts, which are largely complementary with other "Gitas" or "Books/Songs" , Uddhava Gita, Ashtavakra Gita
, The Ganesha Gita.
In the modern age, we have certainly created our own set of texts which stand up against some of the more ancient texts - for better or worse.
- Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost - these non-religious books essentially provided the lurid imagery which was later to inform the more evangelical and fundamentalist "reform" movements of Protestantism - notably in the North America.
- Thomas Malthus' - "An Essay on the Principle of Population", has been EXTREMELY influential, not in itself directly, so much as the massive impact on other philosophies and the scientific vein of inquiry it inspired. Both Erasmus and Charles Darwin were strongly influenced in their work and writings by Mr. Malthus.
- Similarly Ayn Rand, Marx, Heigel, Trotsky, Lenin and others were all directly or indirectly inspired by the underlying principle of economic , mechanistic approaches to solving "mankind's" social / spiritual problems through philosophical / governmental methods of control.
Most recently you have seen a movement in society towards very rational , a religious , evidence based philosophies, so Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and others clearly were able to find and effect changes upon the psychological life of patients, this has had a NON-TRIVIAL effect on society and have been directly incorporated into almost all media we experience today.
The personal work if not the writings of Edward Bernays in this regard has had a very disproportionate effect on people and their perceptions over time since the concepts of modern marketing and persuasion were essentially developed and have been refined ever since the 1920's when they were first invented.
Another avenue of this rationalist approach has been - especially after WW2, a realization that while rationality might not save our species, religious traditional messages and methods are increasingly dangerous when considered in combination with WMD, such as nuclear weapons and thus a new rational / less religious worldview is considered preferable. Champions of this viewpoint would include Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins,Michiu Kaku, Douglas Adams, Gene Roddenberry, Jarred Diamond and others who view a more scientific / rational approach to problems as preferable.