Cutter

Despite, or perhaps because of, being an atheist, I have a bit of an interest in world religions and for some time have considered reading up on the various religions and building up a bit of a library of religious texts. I figured the best place to start would be with the Abramic religions but I need some advice regarding the various texts.

The first question I have would be, which version of the Bible to get? I have the KJV(RLE), which IMHO is completely unreadable. It's all the damn italics. So I want another version of the Bible; I don't care if it's in Ye Olde English, so long as it doesn't have any fucking italics! I'd prefer a Catholic version I might add, because of the extra chapters (unless you'd recommend getting the Apocrypha seperately?). Also, I've heard about various non-cannonical texts as well, are these worthing getting?

So much for Christianity, now onto Judaism and Islam. I know even less about their texts. Are there multiple versions of the Qur'an and the Tanakh like there is with the Bible? If so, which versions to get? In addition to the Qur'an and Tanakh I'm also interested in the Hadith and Talmud (and any other texts you may have to recommend). Bear in mind too, I only speak/read English so Arabic and Hebrew text recommendations aren't going to be much use to me!

Finally, I'm also interested in whatever texts the Baha'i Faith adhere to.

And for any of my fellow Melbournites who may read this, if you can point me toward some bookshops that have a good range of religious texts, that would be appreciated as well.

Thanx in advance.

Cutter

Is this everyone's subtle way of telling me not to bother with religion?

Toto

You'd have a better chance of an answer if this were moved to BC&A.

You can find the entire Bible online in all of its various forms at

<a href="http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible" target="_blank">http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible</a>

Cutter

Oh. Well in that case could the mods move this to BC&A?

Bree

Sorry - I was sleeping . Consider it done.