Sacred Texts Blog Archive

February 7, 2007

The Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel of Thomas is a New Testament-era apocryphon completely preserved in a papyrus Coptic manuscript discovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Egypt. The book was bound in a method now called Coptic binding. Unlike the four canonical gospels, which combine narrative accounts of the life of Jesus with sayings, Thomas is a "sayings gospel". It takes the less structured form of a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus, brief dialogues with Jesus, and sayings that some of his disciples reported to Didymus Judas Thomas. Thomas does not have a narrative framework, nor is it worked into any overt philosophical or rhetorical context.
The work comprises 114 sayings attributed to Jesus. Some of these sayings resemble those found in the four canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). Others were unknown until its discovery, and a few of these run counter to sayings found in the four canonical gospels.
When a Coptic version of the complete text of Thomas was found, scholars realized that three separate Greek portions of it had already been discovered in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, in 1898. The manuscripts bearing the Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas have been dated to about AD 200, and the manuscript of the Coptic version to about 340. Although the Coptic version is not quite identical to any of the Greek fragments, it is believed that the Coptic version was translated from an earlier Greek version.

Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas

External links
Thomasine Church
Gospel of Thomas Collection at The Gnosis Archive
Gospel of St. Thomas - Lost book of the Bible? (Christian apologetics)
The Nag Hammadi Library
An examination of the Gospel of Thomas by a Christian apologetics thinktank

The Qur'an

The Qur’ân, Part I

The Qur’ân, Part II

The Qur'ān [1] (Arabic: القرآن ‎al-qur’ān, literally "the recitation"; also called al-qur’ān al-karīm "The Noble Qur'ān"; also transliterated as Quran, Koran, and Al-Quran) is the central religious text of Islam.
Muslims believe the Qur'ān, in its original Arabic, to be the literal word of God[2] that was revealed to Muhammad over a period of twenty-three years[3] until his death, and believe it to be God's final revelation to humanity[4][5]. Muslims regard the Qur'ān as a continuation of other divine messages that started with those revealed to Adam — the first prophet — and including the Suhuf-i-Ibrahim (Scrolls of Abraham/Ibrahim)[6], the Tawrat (Torah)[7][8], the Zabur (Psalms)[9][10], and the Injil (Gospel)[11][12][13], in between. The aforementioned books are recognized in the Qur'ān [14][15], but Muslims are directed to follow the Qur'ān — the last and final, completely untainted (with God promising to protect it: "Verily We: It is We Who have sent down the Dhikr [the Qur'ān] and surely, We will guard it [from corruption]"[16][17]) message from God.
The Qur'anic verses were originally memorized by Muhammad's companions as Muhammad recited them, with some being written down by one or more companions on whatever was at hand, from stones to pieces of bark. The collection of the Qur'ān compilation took place under the Caliph Abu Bakr, this task being led by Zayd ibn Thabit Al-Ansari. "The manuscript on which the Quran was collected, remained with Abu Bakr till Allah took him unto Him, and then with 'Umar till Allah took him unto Him, and finally it remained with Hafsa bint Umar (Umar's daughter)."[18]

The Qur’ân, Part I translated by E.H. Palmer [1880] (Sacred Books of the East, vol. 6)This is a completely new etext of the first volume of the Palmer text, with full introduction and footnotes.

The Qur’ân, Part II translated by E.H. Palmer [1880] (Sacred Books of the East, vol. 9)This is a completely new etext of the second volume of the Palmer text, with full footnotes and the text of the index for Part I and Part II.

February 4, 2007

The Holy Bible

The word "Bible" refers to the canonical collections of sacred writings of Judaism and Christianity.

Judaism's Bible is often referred to as the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, which includes the sacred texts common to both the Christian and Jewish canons.

The Christian Bible is also called the Holy Bible, Scriptures, or Word of God. It is divided into two parts, the Old Testament and the New Testament; some versions also have an Apocrypha section. The Old Testament includes all the contents of the Jewish Tanakh. In addition, Old Testaments published by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches contain books not found in the Tanakh, but which are found in the Greek Septuagint.

More than 14,000 manuscripts and fragments of the Hebrew Tanakh exist, as do numerous copies of the Septuagint, and 5,300 manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, more than any other work of antiquity.

Related Articles: King James Version, New International Version, New Living Translation, Christianity, Tanakh

The King James Version of the Bible

The King James or Authorised Version of the Bible is an English translation of the Christian Bible first published in 1611. The New Testament was translated from the Textus Receptus (Received Text) edition of the Greek texts, so called because most extant texts of the time were in agreement with it. The Old Testament was translated from the Masoretic Hebrew text.

One thing to note about the names of the books in the KJV, particularly if you are linking to the files here: the KJV books called 1, 2, 3 and 4 Kings are called Samuel 1 and 2, and Kings 1 and 2 respectively in other versions and translations. However, the abbreviations used at this site are sa1, sa2, ki1 and ki2 respectively across all of the Bible etexts.

The Full Online King James Version Bible

Related Articles: The Holy Bible, New International Version, New Living Translation

The Lún Yǔ (Confucian Analects)

The Analects (Traditional Chinese: 論語; Simplified Chinese: 论语; pinyin: Lún Yǔ), also known as the Analects of Confucius, are a record of the words and acts of the central Chinese thinker and philosopher Confucius and his disciples, as well as the discussions they held. The Chinese title literally means "discussion over [Confucius'] words."

Written during the Spring and Autumn Period through the Warring States Period (ca. 479 BCE - 221 BCE), the Analects is the representative work of Confucianism and continues to have a

tremendous influence on Chinese and East Asian thought and values today.

The Analects by James Legge [1893]