Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life

We discuss the Iliad's role as one of the most deeply religious books ever composed, an enduring statement of the living tradition of polytheism and a profound effort to understand the meaning of life.

Though written to himself, this Roman emperor's great work has proven an enduring legacy, a reflection of an ethical life as applicable today as it was almost 2,000 years ago and a monument to self-sufficient wisdom.

Composed in the same period as the "Iliad," the "Bhagavad Gita" is regarded as the supreme creation of Sanskrit literature. Though an epic statement of polytheism, it proclaims truth as an all-encompassing, single, divine power.

The most influential religious book ever composed, the Book of Exodus has shaped three great living religious traditions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - in its proclamation of a single, all-powerful God.

Each of the Gospels presents a portrait of Jesus differing in emphasis. Mark, drawn from the firsthand account of Peter, is the most concise and dramatic. Its Jesus is both prophet and philosopher, testifying to his search for wisdom by his trial and death.

We examine the sacred book that holds for Muslims the same place that the words of Jesus do for Christians, the words of the book itself held as the revelation of God to humankind.

The question of fate or destiny is at the core of the earliest literary work to come down to us, the Sumerian "Epic of Gilgamesh," composed in the 3rd millennium B.C. in what is now Iraq.

Gilgamesh proclaims a heroic ideal: We are fated to die, but in the meantime, let us strive to be as great as possible. This same message is the theme of the first great work of English literature, the 8th-century Anglo-Saxon epic, "Beowulf."

If God is good, why does evil exist? The Book of Job is the most enduring attempt to answer that question, a profound disquisition on the ultimate mystery of God and the frailty of any human attempt to understand the divine.