i'll just make a couple of quick points.
On Bibles: The Oxford Annotated Bible is good, even if the NRV translation has its own issues. You can often find old copies of these at second-hand stores, especially in college towns, where students might have to buy one for class and then sell it at end of term.
Also, The Jerusalem Bible, if you want to go this far, is good for the Hebrew Bible, although iirc it doesn't include the OT Apocrypha, so it's still nice to have something on hand that does.
Incidentally, I'm a big fan of the Anchor Bible series. top notch stuff and worth watching for when you go to second-hand stores. I own a couple of copies for my fave books (including Job and The Song of Songs). much of the commentary will be irrelevant, unless you're doing in-depth studies, but the translations are as scholarly as you could possibly hope for and the notes are outstanding.
> At the moment I am looking around for a manageable version of the
> Talmud and have just figured out that probably what I am looking for
> is the Mishnah with just early commentaries, the Babylonian Talmud, a
> very early version. It seems the Venice version was already something
> like fifteen volumes---busy critters, these arcane scribblers. So I
> am trying to figure out what is the basic minimum. From a very limited
> search it seems to come down to The Living Talmud, trans, Goldin J.,
> New American Library, (1957)---better suggestions, anyone?
Paulist Press has a series called "Classics of Western Spirituality" in which they have published a treasure trove of jewish, christian, and muslim spiritual-theological work. They have a volume of selections from the Talmud (not sure if it's the babylonian or jerusalem, as i don't have it at hand) as well as midrash, though nothing of straight mishnah or of hadith. incidentally, you don't need to read all of the mishnah or talmud, anyway, so i wouldn't worry about getting a complete text.
>
> Just by realizing that the Talmud is now something in the range of
> twenty some odd volumes, means something interesting to me. I had a
> similar problem looking into Islam. The best reference work I could
> find is the Encyclopedia of Islam in some twenty plus volumes. There
> is another interesting problem going on here too. A lot of the lengthy
> commentaries on the Qur'an are not translated, or at least I haven't
> found many.
>
> Without actually seeing either one--the Talmud or the commentaries of
> the Qur'an, I am guessing that both of these are vast legal works that
> give laws and interpretations for everything from preparing food to
> going to war---in other words the rules for constructing an entire
> social life. This explains to me how you arrive at a non-secular
> concept of state.
again, not going to try getting into everything unless it's relevant to people here. having said that, islamic law is quite complicated. aside from the qur'an, the hadith pass along the customs (sunna) of the prophet. built on top of those are four separate codified legal traditions within the sunni tradition, and one shiite. for the hadith, try the well-received "a manual of hadith": http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/091332115X/qid=1002646130/sr=1-1/ref= sr_1_2_1/107-6898515-2233369
a quick amazon search also turned up the following, which looks interesting: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567444989/qid=1002646336/sr=2-1/ref= sr_2_7_1/107-6898515-2233369
then there is the body of actual legal decisions handed down by the qadis.
it's worth taking the time to read some of the hadith, but beyond that your best bet is to get a good book on the history of law in islam. i'm no expert on this, but i've found ignaz goldhizer's "introduction to islamic theology and law."
jewish legal traditions are also complicated, but less so. i would just add to your list moses maimonides' "mishneh torah," but you'll probably have to go to a library to get it, as it's both huge and of quite limited availability. i could find no translation of selections in print. i just happen to have inherited a multi-volume set in english.
i vaguely recall that a large paperback volume edited by patrick geary has a lot of pertinent material, but i can't seem to find my copy: "Readings in Medieval History."
>
> I was talking to a state supreme court clerk Friday about this problem
> of the division between secular and religious laws and he said that in
> his studies in commonwealth law, the church in the the English system
> controlled what we now consider under family law. In other words it
> was mostly concerned with domestic life, rather than public
> life. Wasn't this division what was behind Henry VIII's battle with
> Rome and Thomas Beckette?
becket's conflict was with henry ii, not henry viii. becket was murdered in 1170. i'm not convinced the church-state conflict can be reduced to a conflict over private-public life, but that's another long conversation.
as for the rest of this, i think the same problem with public-private is one issue. the other is that there were, in fact, secular law codes that were critical in the development of western europe in the middle ages. perhaps the most important is the burgundian, but there were a plethora of "national" codes (applying to burgundians, alamani, franks, "romans" or whatever regardless of where they lived). this began to settle down in the fifth century and many codifications relied heavily on the theodosian code of 438. later, laws became more "territorial" than "national" or "personal", so that the same laws applied to everyone within a given territory. in any event, there was a real difference between canon law and civil law.
rather than go into all the rest of this, at the moment, i'm going to recommend Jacques LeGoff's "Medieval Civilization."
jeff