Different interpretations of the Bible are discussed in three parts, The Old Testament, The New Testament and various translations. He wishes to record here his deep appreciation of the service of these men: Dr. In the preparation of the manuscript he has been greatly helped by various students and.
Here the outstanding example is the fourteen-volume Sacred Books and Literature of the East, a magnificent printed anthology, well selected from the best in all the great sacred literatures. Due to space limitations, not much illustrative material is included in the body of the text. However, page references will be found in some of the more popular anthologies where additional selections can be found.
It can therefore serve well as a reading guide that can be used in conjunction with any of the better known selections from the world's religions. The rest of the answer is that the author fully intended to include a chapter to be called Greco-Roman Sacred Literature.
The Scriptures of Mankind: An Introduction by Charles Samuel Braden
The presence of this quality in the Bible to a large extent is what surely ranks it among the great literatures of the world. We may therefore ask whether it is to the credit of the Bible that it has such a large circulation compared to other books. It speaks, of course, the language of the universal human heart, that is, it speaks to every human being.
Of course, not everything found in them is of the same high order, but the same could be said of the Christian Bible. Sometimes the words of the sacred text are believed to be the very words of God, ipsissima verba, the human element in the situation being merely instrumental. But all the Holy Scriptures claim to be in some degree of divine origin.
Other literature can be studied critically, any method of literary analysis and criticism can be applied, but not in the case of the sacred. Some believe that there is only one proper interpreter of the Bible, e.g. the Roman Catholic Church.
Pre-literate Sacred Scriptures
The fourth period, the creation of the moon and the sun -- The atmosphere that hovers over the earth. Anonymous, for the most part, these sayings can sometimes be attributed, as in the case of Proverbs in the Bible, to a famous wise man of the tribe. Here we will increase in number and add prestige to the name of the Mexican people.
All you of the heavens, all of you of the air, all of you of the earth. And as you see the goddess of the earth doing to the wild animals, so she does to the green herbs and the fish. 20. If only I knew that they could hear me, there in the land of the dead, if I sang a worthy song.
All earthly things have an end, and in the midst of the most joyful lives, the spirit fades, falls, sinks into the earth. There is a great deal of this material scattered throughout the Annual Reports of the Bureau of American Ethnology.
Egyptian Sacred Literature
Some of them are written very carefully, some of the chapters are directed by. Wilson says that perhaps the truly poor (the mass of people) could not afford the Book of the Dead at all. The negative narrative given here is addressed to Osiris, the God of the judgment hall.
How happy is he who reaches the west when he is safe in the hand of the god. The greedy man's ship remains in the mud, while the silent man's boat has a strong breeze. Some of these we have already noted appear in the Pyramid Texts or The Book of the Dead, but apart from that, there have been.
There was already some tendency towards a unified view of the world, but it persisted. When you sit on the western horizon of heaven, the earth is in darkness like the dead.
Babylonian Sacred Literature
Ancient inscriptions of imperial movements did mention Israel and confirm some of the claims found in the books of Kings and Chronicles. Why they did not do this we can no more say than we could in the case of the Egyptians. The account of the decipherment of the Babylonian text is one of the most interesting and romantic stories of scholarship.
He then established the responsibilities of the various gods before proceeding to create life on earth. When Marduk hears the words of the gods, his heart prompts him to create works of art. He must be assigned to the service of the gods, so that they may be at peace!".
Thus aided he comes to his ancestor's place, and the story of Ut-Napishtim, the Babylonian Noah, is told, in which the story of the flood appears. This he must do because of the hatred of Bel or Enlil, the god of Nippur. They variously address Marduk, the chief of the gods, Shamash, the god of justice, Ishtar, and others.
He therefore interrogates the suppliant as recorded in the text - here only partially indicated, separate lines chosen almost at Then follow about 400 guidelines regarding the further implementation of the ceremony with. Would they find here, as they already thought they had found in the account of creation and the flood, proof of.
There is still no complete agreement among scholars as to what exactly was the influence of the Babylonian code. It is all introduced by a speech written just below a scene depicting how Shamash, the god of justice, gave the law to the king. There is a very clear assessment of guilt here, and everywhere, depending on the status of the person who caused the damage, or that of the injured person.
The Sacred Literature of Hinduism
The Sacred Literature of Buddhism
A relaxation of discipline had developed in the order which threatened the stability of the brotherhood. There is a mixture here also of the early and the late as in Digha. It was part of the Vinaya-pitaka according to one of the Buddhist sects (the Lakottaravadins - subdivision of the Mahasanghikas, one of the early schismatic groups).
The Sacred Literature of the Jains
As in the case of the Buddhist scriptures, much of the content purports to be the reported words of the founder. A famine caused the migration of a significant part of the Jain community to the south, led by the great Bhadrabahu. The first Anga, for example, deals with the life of the monks in a mixture of verse and prose.
Here appears a long narrative poem describing in detail the ascetic practices of Master Mahavira himself. It does not lack humor and is quite revealing about the nature of the female toilet in that distant period. A good description of the I'm for Hell idea is found here, as often in their other books.
One of these parables is somewhat similar to the parable of the talents in the Christian Gospels. When the merchant returns, he punishes the first two by asking them to do the menial chores around the house. To the third he entrusts the protection of all property, and to the fourth he entrusts the management of the entire household.
Six princes find out about her and want to marry her, and one of them saw only her big toe in the lady's portrait. Then he tells his father to invite the princes one by one to the city and offer him his daughter. In the first, there is a description of the state of the soul that has acquired perfect knowledge.
The second part is a list of the various schools and their branches and the heads of each. The first part contains the rules for monks and nuns, which read very similarly to those of the Buddhists. Farquhar, An Outline of the Religious Literature of India, names them and gives translations and scholarly treatments of various parts of the canon.
The Sacred Literature of the Sikhs
He wrote a comprehensive life of each of the Gurus and translated most, but not all, of the Rags. The Muslim influence is evident in the Granth's poetry and in the organizational form the movement took. And later Sikhism developed much of the militant spirit of Islam and at one point sought political domination of India.
Below each of these may be verses from some or all of the gurus. In the beautiful, main Sikh temple at Amritsar, a copy of the Granth is now the central object of reverence, if not worship. Several of his poems have been translated into Psalms of the Maratha Saints by Nicol MacNicol.
In it one catches something of the spirit of the poet, and his heartfelt personal dependence on God. English -- winner of the Nobel Prize in 1913, although he himself was one of the most famous of India's sons. The excellencies of the darling must be sung, From whom the highest treasure is obtained.
Here and there Kabir shows a sense of humor as well as an understanding of the true nature of God and salvation. 34;O Farid, if you are wise in understanding, do not write an account of the evil deeds of others. But in fairness it must be said that in the earlier phase of the movement they were not committed to military activities.
The assembly of all but a small part of the Granth was done by the fifth guru, Arjun. There is another, the Daswan Granth, which contains a considerable number of hymns by Gobind Singh, the last of the gurus, and some by his father, Teg Bahadur. Nanak, which has nectar in the heart, but is obtained only by the favor of the Guru;
