Non-Biblical religious/spiritual literature

[Vijay]

Inspired by the "Translations of the Bible" thread: What kinds of religious or spiritual literature other than the Bible (if any) do you have?

My own is limited to this little kids' book called The Amazing Adventures of Hanuman, an edition of this with a cover that looks slightly different because it's newer, a few poems by Ovid, Norse Myths by Kevin Crossley-Holland, and a lot of this (which very often includes Indian religious literature) and this (which also occasionally includes various kinds of religious myths, legends, etc. from all over the world).

[Salmoneus]

How are you defining "religious or spiritual" here? Why does Ovid qualify?

[zompist]

My books are a mile away right now, but from memory I have the Quran, a Passover Haggadah, the Dao De Jing, and (abridged versions of) the Rigveda and the Mahabharata.

[Vijay]

Why does Ovid qualify?

I meant parts of the Metamorphoses, which is almost all Greek mythology AFAICT.

[linguoboy]

Why does Ovid qualify?

I meant parts of the Metamorphoses, which is almost all Greek mythology AFAICT.

If we're counting any literature which incorporates mythological elements, then I have scores of books that qualify.

Even if we construe this more narrowly, I've got more titles than I can list here. I used to be a mythology buff and have quite a few collections of myths and legends from various cultures. If we add in all of my late husband's works on Buddhism we're talking easily hundreds of books.

[Salmoneus]

If we're counting any story with superhuman characters in it, I have a copy of The Silmarillion... and a lot of other fantasy novels too.

[Vijay]

Even if we construe this more narrowly, I've got more titles than I can list here. I used to be a mythology buff and have quite a few collections of myths and legends from various cultures.

Does each of those collections have a name of its own, and is it possible to list those names? Is each collection part of a series or something like that?

[linguoboy]

Even if we construe this more narrowly, I've got more titles than I can list here. I used to be a mythology buff and have quite a few collections of myths and legends from various cultures.

Does each of those collections have a name of its own, and is it possible to list those names? Is each collection part of a series or something like that?

I don't have all my books grouped by subject area, so the first thing I'd have to do is go on a merry chase to track down all of the volumes. It would literally take me hours and seems like a less rewarding task for both me and the intended audience than just selecting a few titles of particular interest.

[Vijay]

Even if we construe this more narrowly, I've got more titles than I can list here. I used to be a mythology buff and have quite a few collections of myths and legends from various cultures.

Does each of those collections have a name of its own, and is it possible to list those names? Is each collection part of a series or something like that?

I don't have all my books grouped by subject area, so the first thing I'd have to do is go on a merry chase to track down all of the volumes. It would literally take me hours and seems like a less rewarding task for both me and the intended audience than just selecting a few titles of particular interest.

Okay, so then what would a few titles of particular interest be?

[Pabappa]

Only thing I can add is Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman, which I read about 20 years ago, but still remember in fairly rich detail. It helped me come to my current religious viewpoint of believing in God without believing in (or caring about) the factual accuracy of any particular religion or its scripture. It helped me accept that people who undergo spiritual rebirth do not automatically become sinless selfless superhuman beings, and that someone who has seemingly lapsed ... be it myself or someone else .... does not need to start all over again from a worse position than before.

[linguoboy]

Okay, so then what would a few titles of particular interest be?

Probably the most distinctive ones in my library are the works on Korean shamanism. The tradition is strictly oral, so it doesn't have religious texts as such. But some of the foundational mythology is drawn from works like the Samguk sagi and Samguk yusa, of which I have translated selections in Myths and hegends from Korea: an annotated compendium of ancient and modern materials (Routledge, 2012). IIRC, this also includes a version of the legend of Princess Pari, who's considered shamanism's spiritual founder. I also have one of Laurel Kendall's ethnographical works, which includes snatches of mythology and legend, as well as a book of transcribed and translated chants from shamanic ceremonies. There may also be something in Kim Harvey's Six Korean Women: the socialization of shamans, although it's mostly biographical.

[Ryusenshi]

I have (in no particular order):
- two translations of the Quran
- one version of the Ramayana
- the Gathas
- the Analects of Confucius
- the Tao Te Ching (now that's a confusing book if I've ever read one)
- the Catechism of the Catholic Church
- the Golden Legend by Jacobus da Varagine
- the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (*)

I also have several books about mythology: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Hesiod's complete works, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Also, I have Dante's Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost.

(*) I keep it on the same shelf as a joke; it was released in 2006, but I feel it's already dated.

Only thing I can add is Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman

Hey, I have this one too! (and never read it)

[Vijay]

I forgot to mention that I have this and this. I also forgot that I have this Taiwanese cartoon version of Zhuang Zi Shuo (with the original Classical Chinese text at the bottom of each page) and two Singaporean Chinese cartoon books about Confucius and I think Jataka tales.

[mèþru]

Mythology by Edith Hamilton (mainly Greek, some Roman and Nordic)
Celtic Myths and Legends by Peter Berresford Ellis (Irish, Manx, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish and Breton folktales and mythology)

Not sure if it counts:
Kalevala (1954 Harvard translation by Francis Peabody Magoun)

[Vijay]

Mythology by Edith Hamilton (mainly Greek, some Roman and Nordic)

Yay, another user with that book!

Not sure if it counts:
Kalevala (1954 Harvard translation by Francis Peabody Magoun)

I don't see why not, given that I counted the Metamorphoses!

[gach]

Not sure if it counts:
Kalevala (1954 Harvard translation by Francis Peabody Magoun)

I don't see why not, given that I counted the Metamorphoses!

Though in itself it's a quite late work that represents only one interpretation of the old mythology. A couple of percent of the the lines are due to Lönnrot himself when he edited the text from his recorded raw material and he wrote also that he could have equally well written several other Kalevalas from the same source material.

I have also The Magic Songs of the Finns (in the Finnish original) that was also edited by Lönnrot. It's a thematic compilation of Finnish and Karelian magic spells that were still part of an oral tradition when they were collected in the 19th century. They often contain mythological material and are composed in the same metre as the purely mythical poetry.

[linguoboy]

I also forgot that I have this Taiwanese cartoon version of Zhuang Zi Shuo (with the original Classical Chinese text at the bottom of each page)

That was one of my favourite books of philosophy and I stupidly lent it out to someone who never returned it. I really should track down a replacement before they start to become scarce.

[Vijay]

I also forgot that I have this Taiwanese cartoon version of Zhuang Zi Shuo (with the original Classical Chinese text at the bottom of each page)

That was one of my favourite books of philosophy and I stupidly lent it out to someone who never returned it. I really should track down a replacement before they start to become scarce.

Well, at least in your case, it was only one book, and you're already at least thinking of finding a replacement. (Not really relevant to religion or spirituality, but) In high school, I once lent a classmate my entire collection of this because she was a native speaker of Chinese who was constantly trying to read manga in Japanese and I was curious about what she liked besides yaoi (and then, of course, I never saw it again). My dad ended up buying as many back issues as possible, but one particular issue I had given her is gone forever and totally irreplaceable.

[Ryusenshi]

I just added the Book of Mormon to my personal collection. The infuriating part is that I had to order it online, even though there's an LDS church two blocks from my home, since they don't have it in English.

[rotting bones]

Currently the Tarka Samgraha is the only original text I have in my possession. I also have Classical Indian Metaphysics by Stephen Phillips. Back home: I have a volume called Early Taoist Texts. From the new religious movements, I have the Laws of Form by George Spencer-Brown. Wish I'd brought that one with me. I also have many, many Qurans, variously translated into many languages, untranslated, unabridged, abridged, and simplified, as if it needed further simplification. You know how those Qurans keep piling up. I don't like them. Like Shakespeare, the Quran was meant to be performed. My mother did her thesis on the Vaishnava Padavali, so we have that, of course. (Take that, cultural separatists!) I remember having a very nice Zen book whose name I'd have to look up. I have Plato's Dialogues, which Neoplatonists counted as religious. What else? Most people would not count this as a sacred text, but I also have the Road to Reality by Penrose, the central text of my personal "religion", so I brought it with me. That's all I can remember.

[Nortaneous]

I left most of my books with my parents when I moved out and haven't gotten around to collecting them yet, so the only ones I have with me now are:

- A collection of ancient Bible fanfiction, if that counts
- Book of Mormon
- Zhuangzi
- various secondary literature around the Constitution, which totally counts

As for the rest of the list:

- Daodejing
- Analects
- Mencius, Han Feizi, bits and pieces of the Xunzi in PDF form but I really ought to get the whole thing
- something about Krishna that I don't know how I ended up with
- Principia Discordia

- the Tao Te Ching (now that's a confusing book if I've ever read one)

Far less confusing than most books in its reference class, I think. A lot of the confusion is added by bad translation -- it might help to read translations in parallel, and try to come up with a gloss for the original Chinese. The distance between the original language and the languages it's translated into seems to hurt here even more than usual.

[not that I could explain it now; it's been like eight years]

Then again, I have a hard time with translations in general. I can read Mishima in translation without wanting to check the original text, and Chinese philosophical texts as long as the translation isn't garbage (most translations of the Analects are garbage but once you get to the second-tier literature [which is more worth reading anyway; I can't get anything out of the Analects, probably because the point of it is that it's just the seed of the interpretive tradition that constitutes Confucianism, but I've found Xunzi to be worth reading, and Han Feizi scooped Goodhart on his eponymous law by what, 2300 years?] the translators generally do alright), but not much else. I keep trying to study the Bible and giving up halfway through Genesis because come on, I'm an adult, I can handle a fucking footnote, can we be serious here

(Heaney's Beowulf, incidentally, isn't even fit to be used as toilet paper)

I should sit down and read the Mahabharata etc. at some point but see above; then again, I should sit down and learn Sanskrit

[Vijay]

I could probably just tell you a lot of (the stories from) the Mahabharata from memory.