Return Styles: Pseud0ch, Terminal, Valhalla, NES, Geocities, Blue Moon. Entire thread

Extremely important books in World History

Name: york 2005-01-26 19:57

Let's compile a list.  Please note that this is not 'good novels'.  should be like 50-100 for consideration...

Religion:

The Bible
The Torah (although a subset of the Bible in a sense, it would necessarily have a Jewish tradition of literature bound up with it, i.e. The Talmud, which makes it distinct)
The Koran
(Eastern texts?  list the most important.. Hindu writings..?)

Politics/philosophy/econ:

Marx & Engels: The Communist Manifesto
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung
Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf (even this volume itself is somewhat on the verge of 'importance' in my view.  we can argue back and forth on this)

Even though there is a body of right/liberal political thought, specific, smaller texts which can easily be seen to be EXTREMELY IMPORTANT for ages, rather than merely important or widely influential, escape me at the moment.  Please argue for some.  Also I exclude ancient Greek philosophical texts because I need to hear a case for their EXTREME IMPORTANCE, so to speak.

Science:

Isaac Newton: Philosiphaie Naturalis Principia Mathematica (the Principia)
(Newtonian Kinematics and calculus sketched and applied)

Euclid: the Elements (all math rests on this, to this day.  the layout of the Principia takes a cue from it, and it could be argued that no book, outside of religion, has both existed for so long and remained so relevant.)

Is there such a thing as a novel which is an 'Extremely Important' book, rather than just a marker of its time?  This would suggest such a novel is more than a good story, but changed society. 

Get Listin'

Name: Anonymous 2005-01-29 20:38

The torah has explanations by critical scholars in the margins, each sentence can be understood in myriad ways... the commentary within the torah is almost more important than the main narrative text itself

The many layers of commentary on the torah is not included within "the bible" as the subset labeled 'the old testament'

The torah is not a subset of "the bible". the 'old testament' is a translated copy of the purely literal text in the tanach - which includes the literal torah

"The bible" combines latter-day books of narrative.. written years after jesus died.. with the plain-text old testament(sans commentary)

Talmud or mishna is also completely different, as well as the navi...

Talmud(being technical) has the closest correlation to law, it is a log of logical argumentation about the technicalities of mundane laws derived from the torah(the spiritual). it is a set of massive books arguing over 'what ifs' on a mundane scale.  Talmud was once a completely oral tradition by region or school.. so there are various opinions on almost every topic 

The torah is all metaphor and innuendo, navi is a soap opera about prophets during the days of kings, talmud is the codified technical law

Newer Posts
Don't change these.
Name: Email:
Entire Thread Thread List