Recommended religious/philosophical texts

[All Along The Watchtower]

In this thread, we give recommendations for religious and/or philosophical texts.

What are some good ones to start with?

[TJ in Oregon]

I'd recommend the Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis to Catholics in particular. Some of it doesn't necessarily apply to people living in the modern world since it was written for monks living in seclusion, but I think it captures a sort of spiritual hunger very well.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

The Vimalakirti Sutra is well worth reading even for non-Buddhists, particularly for anybody who wants a good sense of how deep the distrust of the body and sense perception in certain types of mysticism runs:

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(From Chapter 2)

For those who'd rather stay within the Abrahamic religions, I'd like to second TJ's recommendation of Kempis and add that Rowan Williams is and remains a brilliant theologian, though he proved to be a questionable administrator. Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, both Englishwomen of about a generation or so before Thomas à Kempis, I'd recommend to people interested in how tactile and personal religion could be in the Middle Ages.

[The Mikado]

Margery Kempe's experience is profoundly alien to me in a way I can't totally describe.  I think she might well be a Pentecostalist or other Charismatic if she incarnated today.  The constant sobbing...

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

Margery Kempe's experience is profoundly alien to me in a way I can't totally describe.  I think she might well be a Pentecostalist or other Charismatic if she incarnated today.  The constant sobbing...

This is a really good way to put it, and it's a large part of why I'd recommend her. Her work is really visceral, even in comparison to other material from that period (and English spirituality in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries could get pretty visceral).

[DC Al Fine]

Mere Christianity is excellent if you want an easy to read text.

[DemPGH]

The Jefferson Bible. I purchased recently a Smithsonian Edition, which is an exact replica of the one that Jefferson used. He actually took New Testaments in Greek, Latin, French, and English, and not only edited out all the mumbo-jumbo, he actually pieced / edited together in actual snippets and chunks of verses the teachings and philosophy of Jesus the way a film-maker would take six or eight hours of footage and put it together to make a coherent two-hour movie. It's really a marvelous and cogent work. If I were one of these independent theologians this text would be the one that I would primarily use.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

The problem is that 'editing out all the mumbo-jumbo' makes the New Testament next to worthless as a text on its own terms. The Jefferson Bible is well worth reading as an example of Enlightenment thought and attempts to revitalize (as people like Jefferson saw it) the ethical and aesthetic properties of their religious patrimony.

[DemPGH]

The problem is that 'editing out all the mumbo-jumbo' makes the New Testament next to worthless as a text on its own terms. The Jefferson Bible is well worth reading as an example of Enlightenment thought and attempts to revitalize (as people like Jefferson saw it) the ethical and aesthetic properties of their religious patrimony.

I think mumbo-jumbo distracts people from the actual philosophical message, and that's what Jefferson was hammering out. To me it would make perfect sense for a Christian to hone in on this message. Virgin births, raising people from the dead, etc. are matters of something else.

Besides, the New Testament and the Bible were put together by Constantine - the whole religion was invented by Constantine. It was tampered with from the get-go. Jefferson was trying to refocus on the philosophy of Jesus Christ. 

[John Dibble]

I haven't read it myself, but I've had multiple people recommend Lost Christianities.

http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Christianities-Battles-Scripture-Faiths/dp/0195182499

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

The problem is that 'editing out all the mumbo-jumbo' makes the New Testament next to worthless as a text on its own terms. The Jefferson Bible is well worth reading as an example of Enlightenment thought and attempts to revitalize (as people like Jefferson saw it) the ethical and aesthetic properties of their religious patrimony.

I think mumbo-jumbo distracts people from the actual philosophical message, and that's what Jefferson was hammering out. To me it would make perfect sense for a Christian to hone in on this message. Virgin births, raising people from the dead, etc. are matters of something else.

Besides, the New Testament and the Bible were put together by Constantine - the whole religion was invented by Constantine. It was tampered with from the get-go. Jefferson was trying to refocus on the philosophy of Jesus Christ. 

That's a...decidedly non-Christian interpretation of the 'actual philosophical message' of Christianity, hence what I was saying about the Christian holy texts' 'own terms', but okay.

We have some extant pre-Constantinian texts, and they present a religion that's if anything more concerned with 'mumbo-jumbo' and arcane cosmologies than Constantinian Christianity, not less.

[The Mikado]

If the "point" of Christianity isn't that Jesus is the Christ, or Messiah, who is the Son of God and sent to redeem humanity of its sins and rose from the dead and that without him the road to eternal life is closed, then it's pretty devoid of content, honestly.  That's really what the Jeffersonian Bible misses: the point of Christianity isn't Jesus' message, it's Jesus himself.

Also, Nathan's absolutely right.  If you think there was less mysticism and miracles in Christianity before it became codified into what we now know as Christianity, you probably haven't looked at the Gnostic Gospels. 

[DemPGH]

The Mikado / Nathan:

Absolutely agree with you both regarding the supernatural in ancient texts. Indeed, human beings had absolutely no concrete knowledge about how anything worked (outsiders like Democritus were onto some things, yes, but they were rejected), including reproduction, which is why we get fantastical stories about virgin births. we also get stories about talking snakes, the Earth stopping and starting magically, God having a son who is really him and who he sends on some sort of suicide mission from which he'll rise from the dead, magic gardens, a man lying in the stomach of a fish for three days, raising the dead, and so on. Complete nonsense.

Now this is the wonder of the Jefferson Bible and Jeffersonian Christianity (and these days if there was such a thing as a Jeffersonian Christian, I would be one, but in the absence of such I am an agnostic): People like me don't need the supernatural. It's childish and produced by a culture that hadn't even evolved to conceptualize laws, let alone the subjects that discovered them: physics, chemistry, and biology. For me, church (and organized religion) are completely insufficient. Both fail, in other words. They fail critical analysis, and if any belief system fails critical analysis, it ain't sound.

Jefferson's compilation / edits comprise a rational text for a rational age. The heart of the matter is not hocus-pocus, it's a message about how to build a better community, which I think is what was at the heart of Jesus Christ's concerns.

[DC Al Fine]

Jefferson's compilation / edits comprise a rational text for a rational age. The heart of the matter is not hocus-pocus, it's a message about how to build a better community, which I think is what was at the heart of Jesus Christ's concerns.

Completely baseless assertion. Provide evidence for your view. There are numerous instances in scripture of Jesus claiming to be God 'Before Abraham was I AM' etc. Throw in the "my kingdom is not of this world' and you have a figure pretty focussed on the eternal.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

Now this is the wonder of the Jefferson Bible and Jeffersonian Christianity (and these days if there was such a thing as a Jeffersonian Christian, I would be one, but in the absence of such I am an agnostic): People like me don't need the supernatural. It's childish and produced by a culture that hadn't even evolved to conceptualize laws, let alone the subjects that discovered them: physics, chemistry, and biology. For me, church (and organized religion) are completely insufficient. Both fail, in other words. They fail critical analysis, and if any belief system fails critical analysis, it ain't sound.

I'd say 'good for you' if you weren't being quite so supercilious about it.

Anyway, No Abode: The Record of Ippen is a good primary-source text from one of the downright strangest holy men of medieval Japan if anybody can get their hands on it (I'm pretty sure it's out of print). God in the World by Thomas O'Meara is a pretty good introduction to Karl Rahner for the confused and perplexed, although it's a little hagiographic about Rahner the man. Mary Midgley's writing is very good where it touches on religion, although she has a limited understanding of genetics (this fact, along with several about her interlocutor, was established during a feud with Richard Dawkins back in the eighties that nobody really 'won').

There's a book of essays by a bunch of different contemporary writers called Feminism, Sexuality, and the Return of Religion that I wonder if Mikado mightn't be interested in. Some of the stuff in it has certainly influenced my views on those subjects. Relatedly, anything by Sarah Coakley.

I've been meaning to learn more about Hinduism. Any recommendations for that?

[afleitch]

The Good Book by A.C Grayling.

It's an intersting concept and at times unwieldy but it draws together ancient non-religious philosophy and modern science in a curious way. And of course, The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins. Still easily his best work.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

Independently of its content, the style that Grayling wrote The Good Book in struck me as contrived and, in context, self-aggrandizing. The Blind Watchmaker, however, is a very good book, although I think the best Dawkins book is actually The Ancestor's Tale.

[afleitch]

Independently of its content, the style that Grayling wrote The Good Book in struck me as contrived and, in context, self-aggrandizing. The Blind Watchmaker, however, is a very good book, although I think the best Dawkins book is actually The Ancestor's Tale.

And the traditional 'Good Book' isn't? Seriously though, it's an interesting attempt I think at producing a book no-one really needs; it's in danger of replicating the structural failings of the bible. It's best to let philosphers and thinkers speak for themselves than to splice them together.

Worth also mentioning 'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

Independently of its content, the style that Grayling wrote The Good Book in struck me as contrived and, in context, self-aggrandizing. The Blind Watchmaker, however, is a very good book, although I think the best Dawkins book is actually The Ancestor's Tale.

And the traditional 'Good Book' isn't?

Fair point!

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I think this is a fair assessment.

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Oh yes. An excellent work. Fully deserves the high praise it gets, more so than most other classical Roman works.

[DemPGH]

Jefferson's compilation / edits comprise a rational text for a rational age. The heart of the matter is not hocus-pocus, it's a message about how to build a better community, which I think is what was at the heart of Jesus Christ's concerns.

Completely baseless assertion. Provide evidence for your view. There are numerous instances in scripture of Jesus claiming to be God 'Before Abraham was I AM' etc. Throw in the "my kingdom is not of this world' and you have a figure pretty focussed on the eternal.

Haha, you know, I never really meant to hit anybody's buttons with this; I know a guy who is a Church of the Brethren minister, I consider him for a religious person to be fairly non-conservative, and he is repulsed by the idea of the Jefferson Bible. I guess I just don't get it. It makes a lot of sense to me. I find it heady and inspirational, but the reaction here is one major reason why I don't consider myself a Christian. 

Anyway, DC Al Fine, to respond:

This comes to mind. John 10:30: Jesus says, "The Father and I are one." Then John turns right around and says that Jesus said in John 14:28: "for the Father is greater than I." Well, which is it? And you surely know that this stuff was written down well after the fact. The presence of mysticism and the supernatural is undoubtedly a type of anticipatory hook, a way to grab one's attention.

In support of my view I would point to the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, the golden rule, "bear one another's burdens" (Gal. 6:2), the numerous instances where emphasis is placed on fellowship, and I can't list many more off the top of my head. It's about community.

I like supernatural themed entertainment in movies, but it brings down the heady nature of what's really going on in much of the New Testament, I think, when people want to focus on it. It's window dressing, there to grab peoples' attention, and that's not a supercilious attitude, as some might contend. I just think it's time to grapple with magic apples and talking snakes, juxtapose that stuff with the Sermon on the Mount, and think critically about what makes sense and what doesn't.

[afleitch]

Nathan deleted his response which is in part good because it was a little uncharacteristic of him .

I actually don't rank Jesus as a particularly outstanding moral character, even if we're just concentrating on the 'bit in the middle', the parables and kind words. The supernatural elements make him even less of a moral figure. We have the 'dumb' and the epileptic being cured by the devil being chased away and the paralytic man being cured because his sin was forgiven. There are Christians of particular denominations today who because of this blame medical conditions on sin or on the influence of the devil. That to me as both an ignorant and an immoral position to take.

Leaving just the 'good bits' is partially pointless because these are found in other philosophies and no doubt was crafted by the NT writers from many of these sources, the Stoics in particular. So there seems to be two Jesus' in the NT. The Jesus who 'says' and the Jesus who 'is said to have' neither of which are objectively reliable

For those who believe, you are then asked to make the leap from deism to theism and have the deity point a finger and tell one group of people the truth, tell them what's right and what's wrong and have a god-man be resurrected (an impossibility which in the NT is a remarkably common thing that seems to happen; the graves of Jerusalem spilled open) and why? to destroy death, to 'take away the sins of the world' by having one final primitive physical sacrifice. You can see how that act is left wanting for alot of people who see much beauty and understanding in an honest world. It's nothing new. Plutarch said of Romulus when comparing tales of him ressurection to Aristeas; 

"for they say Aristeas died in a fuller's work-shop, and his friends coming to look for him, found his body vanished; and that some presently after, coming from abroad, said they met him traveling towards Croton...many such improbabilities do your fabulous writers relate, deifying creatures naturally mortal."

I don't even consider Jesus' resurrection as a moral act either. A sin can be forgiven, but to be taken away as if it had not happened? People should live with their transgressions; it's part of our humanity and conscience. No one can take that away from you and I mistrust anyone who says it can be.

In my post-Christian phase, once I'd stopped believing in god and the supernatural and understood most of the rest of the NT to be a re-dressing of contemporary philosophies I didn't really see much benefit to be had from the NT. It's not even as poetic and epic driven as the Jewish books of the Old Testament.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

Nathan deleted his response which is in part good because it was a little uncharacteristic of him .

I was going to rewrite it in more detail and with less exasperation later on, probably sometime tomorrow, if that's all right with you. I'll be able to address the things you're saying here too, then.

A lot of what you're saying does touch on why I think the whole exercise is pointless and a little offensive to people who do see value in the supernatural portions of these stories; frankly it seems like a dismally dreary thing to spend one's time on if one isn't going to be a Christian anyway. And that's part of why it irritates me so much, to the point of writing responses that I then realize need to be reconsidered.

[DC Al Fine]

Jefferson's compilation / edits comprise a rational text for a rational age. The heart of the matter is not hocus-pocus, it's a message about how to build a better community, which I think is what was at the heart of Jesus Christ's concerns.

Completely baseless assertion. Provide evidence for your view. There are numerous instances in scripture of Jesus claiming to be God 'Before Abraham was I AM' etc. Throw in the "my kingdom is not of this world' and you have a figure pretty focussed on the eternal.

Anyway, DC Al Fine, to respond:

This comes to mind. John 10:30: Jesus says, "The Father and I are one." Then John turns right around and says that Jesus said in John 14:28: "for the Father is greater than I." Well, which is it? And you surely know that this stuff was written down well after the fact. The presence of mysticism and the supernatural is undoubtedly a type of anticipatory hook, a way to grab one's attention.

In support of my view I would point to the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, the golden rule, "bear one another's burdens" (Gal. 6:2), the numerous instances where emphasis is placed on fellowship, and I can't list many more off the top of my head. It's about community.

I like supernatural themed entertainment in movies, but it brings down the heady nature of what's really going on in much of the New Testament, I think, when people want to focus on it. It's window dressing, there to grab peoples' attention, and that's not a supercilious attitude, as some might contend. I just think it's time to grapple with magic apples and talking snakes, juxtapose that stuff with the Sermon on the Mount, and think critically about what makes sense and what doesn't.

Ok for one, Genesis is a totally different work from the gospels.

Secondly, there are plenty of examples of prophets telling people to do better on this Earth. Suddenly Jesus shows up, says "I am the Son of God." committing a capital crime in the process, and for what? Making the world a better place? I just don't see it happening. People don't risk death for theological claims if they don't believe them themselves.

[afleitch]

Secondly, there are plenty of examples of prophets telling people to do better on this Earth. Suddenly Jesus shows up, says "I am the Son of God." committing a capital crime in the process, and for what? Making the world a better place? I just don't see it happening. People don't risk death for theological claims if they don't believe them themselves.

He may have believed his own claim. There were dozens of would be 'messiah's' walking around Judea at that time; Simon of Peraea in 4BCE, Athronges in 3CE, Menahem Ben Judah and so on. That doesn't mean he (or they) were correct or courageous.

[DemPGH]

Secondly, there are plenty of examples of prophets telling people to do better on this Earth. Suddenly Jesus shows up, says "I am the Son of God." committing a capital crime in the process, and for what? Making the world a better place? I just don't see it happening. People don't risk death for theological claims if they don't believe them themselves.

He may have believed his own claim. There were dozens of would be 'messiah's' walking around Judea at that time; Simon of Peraea in 4BCE, Athronges in 3CE, Menahem Ben Judah and so on. That doesn't mean he (or they) were correct or courageous.

Yeah, and there's another possibility. It seems there's a history, at least in the Bible and in Christianity, that when someone really, really, really wants other people to do something or to live a certain way, they invoke God. "God pulled me aside and told me to tell all of you people this or that." Which seems very strange to my limited, rational mind. If it's enough to get God's attention, I think God would just tell people. Not leave cryptic notes lying about or speak through the gibberish that is the Revelation.