In the chalice_circle (UU) community there is a discussion about personal bibles or collections of texts held to be sacred...

"Many UUs use the "Building Your own Faith" curriculum, yes? Does this involve, or have you taken it upon yourself to compile a personal bible that you hold inspirational or otherwise sacred? What's in it? How do you come to decide what to put in it? Is it a haphazard inspirational quote book, or is it a more serious thing? Do you have a vetting process - does it matter "who" a passage is from, how old it is, or just that it speaks to you?"

Now, I don't have a personal official collection of holy texts per se but if I was going to compile one off the top of my head:

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The Mythic Books:
*Creation myth similar to the Miwok creation myth.
*'How the world evolved' Excerpt from the Digha Nikaya (3.28ff.)
*Enuma Elish (not sure on this one actually)
*The Epic of Gilgamesh
*Hesiod's Theogony & Works and Days
*Homer's Iliad & Odyssey
*Various Myths (mostly Greek & Roman, with some myths from the Japanese, Native American groups, and a few other sources).
*Paul Carus' The Gospel of Buddha

The Practical Books:
*Various bits on how to perform sacrifices, rituals, alter & sanctuary setup, and other bits from various sources.
*Ovid's Fasti

The Wisdom Books:
*Dao de jing
*Heraclitus
*Epictetus' Encheiridion
*The Golden Sayings of Epictetus
*Various Bits of Epictetus' Discourses
*Various Bits of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations
*The Gospel of Thomas
*Aesop's Fables (all of them)
*The Dhammapada
*The Bhagavad Gita
*Kalama Sutta
*Various bits from other sutras and Buddhist sources.
*Raymond M. Smullyan's 'Is God a Taoist?'.
*Various other bits from The Tao is Silent by Raymond M. Smullyan.

Hymns & Prayers:
*The Homeric Hymns
*The Orphic Hymns
*Various other Hymns & Prayers

The Books of Oracles:
*Bits from various ancient oracles
*I Ching
*Perhaps another oracle book...

The Continuity
*Various Writings on Death & Rebirth.
*A myth of the end & rebirth of the universe (probably self-composed)

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Most of the things on the list are texts that I have found useful, good, or wise...

So I'll toss the question out to my f-list: What texts would you put in a personal bible and why?

Edit:

Actually, now that I think about it the Gospel of Thomas might have to be axed from this collection because it makes little sense with out the context and study of the Septuagint...

And added something I forgot about that is decent Paul Carus' The Gospel of Buddha which is an important document in the spread of Western Buddhism and has even been adopted by some sects in Asia (Sri Lanka & Japan) mostly as a teaching tool for the young since it conveys some of Shakyamuni's most important teachings along with the story of his life in a fairly easy to read story format.

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