Synopsis:
This magisterial Norton Anthology, edited by world-renowned scholars under the direction of Pulitzer Prize winner Jack Miles, offers a portable library of more than 1,000 primary texts from the world s major religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism (Volume 1); and Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Volume 2). The anthology brings together foundational works the Bhagavad Gita, the Daode jing, the Bible, the Qur an with the writings of scholars, seekers, believers, and skeptics whose voices over centuries have kept these religions vital. Beginning with the provocative question, Can religion be defined?, Miles s dazzling introduction tells a new story: traveling from prehistory to the present day, he illuminates how world religions came to be acknowledged and studied, absorbed and altered, understood and misunderstood. To help readers encounter strikingly unfamiliar texts with pleasure, this Norton Anthology provides accessible introductions, headnotes, annotations, pronouncing glossaries, maps, illustrations, and chronologies. For readers of any religion or none, The Norton Anthology of World Religions opens new worlds that, as Miles writes, invite us all to see others with a measure of openness, empathy, and good will. . . . In that capacity lies the foundation of human sympathy and cultural wisdom. "
About the Authors:
Jack Miles is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and Religious Studies with the University of California at Irvine and Senior Fellow for Religious Affairs with the Pacific Council on International Policy. He spent 1960-1970 as a Jesuit seminarian, studying at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem before enrolling at Harvard University, where he completed a Ph.D. in Near Eastern languages in 1971. His book God: A Biography won a Pulitzer Prize in 1996. Its sequel Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God led to his being named a MacArthur Fellow for 2003-2007. The third in this trilogy, God in the Qur'an, was published in 2018. Miles is general editor of The Norton Anthology of World Religions and, most recently, the author of Religion As We Know It: An Origin Story.
Wendy Doniger (Ph.D. Harvard University) is Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago. She first trained as a dancer under George Balanchine and Martha Graham and then went on to complete two doctorates in Sanskrit and Indian Studies (from Harvard and Oxford). She has taught at Harvard, Oxford, the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and the University of California at Berkeley. In 1984 she was elected president of the American Academy of Religion, in 1989 a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1996 a member of the American Philosophical Society, and in 1997 president of the Association for Asian Studies. She has been awarded seven honorary degrees, and her book The Hindus: An Alternative History was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Donald S. Lopez, Jr. (Ph.D. University of Virginia) is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. His works include Elaborations on Emptiness: Uses of the Heart Sutra, Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism under Colonialism, Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West, The Story of Buddhism, The Madman’s Middle Way, The Scientific Buddha, From Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha, The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (with Robert Buswell), and In Search of the Christian Buddha (with Peggy McCracken, published by Norton). He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Getty Research Institute. In 2000 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
James Robson (Ph.D. Stanford University) is Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. He is the editor of Buddhist Monasticism in East Asia: Places of Practice, and the author of Power of Place: The Religious Landscape of the Southern Sacred Peak [Nanyue ??] in Medieval China as well as numerous journal articles, including “Signs of Power: Talismanic Writings in Chinese Buddhism," "Faith in Museums: On the Confluence of Museums and Religious Sites in Asia," and "A Tang Dynasty Chan Mummy [roushen] and a Modern Case of Furta Sacra? Investigating the Contested Bones of Shitou Xiqian." His current research includes a long-term project on local religious statuary from Hunan province and a project on the history of the confluence of Buddhist monasteries and mental hospitals.
David Biale (Ph.D. UCLA) is Emanuel Ringelblum Professor of Jewish History at the University of California, Davis, where he directs the Humanities Institute. He is the author and editor of ten books, including Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History, Eros and the Jews, Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought, and Cultures of the Jews: A New History. In 2011, he was awarded the UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement.
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