The Norton Anthology of World Religions

The Norton Anthology of World Religions book photo

“To see others with a measure of openness, empathy, and good will.... In that capacity lies the foundation of human sympathy and cultural wisdom.” —JACK MILES, General Editor, from the Preface

A landmark work in which the six major, living, international world religions speak to readers in their own words.

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.”

Book Details

  • Hardcover

  • November 2014

  • ISBN 978-0-393-06253-3

  • 6.1 × 9.3 in / 4000 pages

  • 48 pages of color illustrations

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General Editor Jack Miles Introduces The Norton Anthology of World Religions

About the Editors

  • Jack Miles, Distinguished Professor of English and Religious Studies at the University of California at Irvine, is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning GOD: A Biography and Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God. He lives in Irvine, California.

  • Wendy Doniger is Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago. She has taught at numerous universities including Harvard and Oxford. Her book The Hindus: An Alternative History was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

  • Donald S. Lopez Jr. is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan.

  • James Robson, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University, is the author of Power of Place: The Religious Landscape of the Southern Sacred Peak in Medieval China. His current research includes a project on the history of the confluence of Buddhist monasteries and mental hospitals.

  • David Biale, Emanuel Ringelblum Professor of Jewish History at the University of California, Davis, is the author of ten books, including Eros and the Jews, Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought, and Cultures of the Jews: A New History.

  • Lawrence Cunningham is the John A. Brian Professor of Theology, Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame. He has edited and authored over twenty-five books including Culture and Values: A Survey of the Western Humanities, A Brief History of the Saints, and An Introduction to Catholicism.

  • Jane Dammen McAuliffe, past president of Bryn Mawr College, is the author of Abbasid Authority Affirmed and Qur’anic Christians: An Analysis of Classical and Modern Exegesis. She is currently a Distinguished Visiting Scholar the Library of Congress’ John W. Kluge Center.

The Norton Anthology of World Religions box set photo