I'm curious to learn more about all the world's religions, but mostly about the Abrahamic religions and the ones involved with them (like the Ba'alites, etc.).
Where should I start?

Mac_Guffin wrote:I'm curious to learn more about all the world's religions, but mostly about the Abrahamic religions and the ones involved with them (like the Ba'alites, etc.).
Where should I start?

I would recommend The Masks of God series by Joseph Campbell, although I think some of the ideas in the series are a little dated. Campbell wrote the series for North Americans because he came back from visiting the Orient and realized how little us westerners really know about world mythology.

Your best bet would probably be finding a good religious studies textbook. Oxford University Press has a bunch of Very Short Introductions for most of the major world religions that may also be helpful.

br0k3nglass wrote:Your best bet would probably be finding a good religious studies textbook. Oxford University Press has a bunch of Very Short Introductions for most of the major world religions that may also be helpful.

I also endorse the OUP's VSI series. It has Christianity, Islam and Judaism, as well as The Bible and the Koran, Theology, the New Testament as Literature, the Apocryphal Gospels and the Dead Sea Scrolls. I think there are also ones on Islamic Society (or History, something like that) and Puritanism.

Thanks for the recommendations so far... and thanksin advance to any more I get.

Karen Armstrong's A History Of God covers the development of the Abrahamics, though it's a bit dry. The apophatic theology she espouses these days is vacuous and there's a little of that towards the end of this book; but my impression is that the history's okay.

If you're interested in history, Diarmaid MacCulloch did an excellent (in my opinion) documentary series on a history of Christianity, to which there is a book of also. Pricey though.