Jesus Christ and Reading Lists

So, today was a bit of a big day for me. No holidays this week, but I did keep busy with the project. I went shopping for some books to supplement my celebrations. Prior to this, I had a handful of books of religion. Now I have a lot of books of religion.

My collection includes:

• Bhagavad-Gita
• Buckland's Book of Witchcraft
• Dhammapada
• I Ching
• King James Bible
• Koran
• Megilah
• New Oxford Annotated Bible (for the Apocrypha)
• Pocket Book of Zen
• Principia Discordia
• Satanic Bible
• Tao Te Ching
• The Analects of Confucius
• The Complete Idiot's Guide to World Religions
• The Complete Idiot's Guide to Eastern Philosophy
• The Teachings of Buddha
• Tibetan Book of the Dead
• Torah
• Upanishads

Books I still need are:

• Chang Yung
• Hsiao Ching
• Kojiki
• Li Ching
• Mishnah
• Shih Ching
• Shinto
• Shuh Ching
• Talmud
• Any other books I am unaware of so far...

So, yeah, decent start but far from enough. I seems that it is difficult to find non-Christian religious books in a mainstream bookstore. I am sure I could special order somewhere, but I have not really had the inclination to do so yet. I likely will, at some point.

In other, more entertainment than religious news, I went to see Jesus Christ Superstar tonight. It included the original actor to play Jesus in the movie version back in the 70's. Man, does he still have a great voice. A little disconcerting to see a young cast with a 60 year old Jesus, but it was still a great show. One of my all time favorite musicals, and full of a lot of my favorite songs. Now I have to pull out my CDs of the original cast to listen to. Also want to find a copy of that movie. That was my introduction to the show so it has a special place in my heart.

One thing that I have always been struck by is how in this show, Judas is not really a bad guy. He has good intentions, that sort of spiral out of his control. It is very interesting, and has influenced my own personal view of Judas and his part in the story in general. I also find that this play is much like Shakespeare's Othello in that the play is named after one character (Jesus/Othello) but really more about a different character (Judas/Iago).

Anyhow, great fun.