Religious movements in nature are three fundamental basis on which the whole tradition of the teacher, they transmit the teaching and practicing the teaching students.In other words, living religion is possible only in the group of diehard followers, professing the doctrine preached by the founder.As for this article, we will focus on the second pillar - doctrine, or rather its written source - the Scriptures.
General
Scriptures, to whatever religious tradition, it may include a semantic core beliefs.The sacred myth can attribute its origin to the gods, prophets, messiahs and so on.. In any case, his appearance more than authorized and represents the transmission of divine knowledge - indisputable truth sent down from the region of the underworld.This view of the sacred texts of making them in the eyes of the faithful a source of revelation and literally the word of God.
But not so simple - the character of each individual religion imposes a special mark on the perception of the text, and the sacred books of the world's religions have adherents in the interpretation of its ambiguous interpretation.
corpus, considered sacred, within the tradition usually called canon and canonical collections.Often, it is given its own name, such as: the Koran - the holy book of the Muslims, the Jewish Torah or the Christian Bible.
Torah and Tanakh - Jewish sacred literature
The oldest monotheistic religion is Judaism.Thanks to him, saw the birth of Christianity and Islam.The holy book of Judaism - the Torah - is a collection of five works attributed to the tradition of the prophet Moses.According to legend, the bulk of the content of the Torah Moses received at Sinai, face to face with God.
further development of the Jewish cult has led to the emergence and spread of new texts, admirers erected to the rank of sacred and inspired, that is inspired by the Lord over.These books include a collection of "Ketuvim", which means "the Scriptures" and the collection "Neviim", which translates as "a prophet."Accordingly, the first includes the narrative of sacred history and the so-called wisdom literature - an anthology of edifying parables, psalms and works of pedagogical character.In the second collection teamed up a number of works of Jewish prophets.They were summarized in a single set of sacred texts, called the "Tanakh."This word - an acronym composed of the first letters of the words of the Torah, Neviim, Ketuvim.
Tanakh in its composition, with minor modifications, is identical with the Old Testament of the Christian tradition.
new revelation - a new scripture.The sacred books of the Christians
Canon of the New Testament of the Christian church was formed in the IV century of mass heterogeneous literature.However, various currents and jurisdictions still have a few different options of the canon.In either case, the core of the New Testament are the four Gospels, followed by a number of Epistles.Stand out of the book of Acts and the Apocalypse.This structure has allowed some commentators to compare meaningfully the New Testament with the Tanach by relating the Gospel with the Torah, the Apocalypse prophets, Acts of historical books and books of wisdom with the Apostle.
unified collection of Old and New Testaments - is the Christian holy book, the Bible, which is translated from the Greek, a "book."
revelation of a new prophet.Canon
Muslim Holy book of Muslims called the Koran.It does not contain any significant fragments of the New Testament or Tanakh, but largely recounts the content of the first of them.Also mentioned in it and Jesus, that is, Jesus, but the correlation with the New Testament, no.Rather, on the contrary, the Qur'an is viewed controversy and distrust of the Christian Scriptures.
Muslim holy book - the Koran - is a collection of revelations received by Muhammad at a different time from God and the Archangel Gabriel (Dzhabraelya - in the Arab tradition).These revelations are called suras, and are located in the text, in chronological order and in length - from the longest to the shortest.
This is the position that in relation to the Judeo-Christian scriptures takes Islam: the sacred book of the Jews - the Torah - true.However, as time passed its leadership, and the Covenant with Moses exhausted.So that the Torah and the entire Tanach more irrelevant.Christian Books - fake, distorts the original Gospel of Jesus the prophet, recovery and continued by Mahomet.Therefore, the only holy book - the Koran, and the other can not be.
Book of Mormon and the Bible revelation
Another attempt to bring his doctrine of Moses scored source Mormonism.He recognizes as sacred, and the Old and New Testaments, but the highest authority assigns a so-called Book of Mormon.Adherents of this theory believe that the original source of the sacred text was written on golden plates, then hidden on a hill near New York, and later opened the angel to the prophet Joseph Smith, a resident of the XIX century America.Last performed under divine guidance plates translation into English, after which they were again hidden angels at an undisclosed location.The sacred status of this product acknowledges currently more than 10 million followers of the Mormon Church.
Vedas - the legacy of the ancient gods
sacred books of the monotheistic religions of the world are united in a common sense collections, collected in codes.Oriental polytheistic system distinguishes different approach to the sacred writings: they are independent from each other in nature, often doctrinally bound and not contradictory.Therefore, at first glance, the system of the scriptures dharmic religions may seem chaotic or too confusing.However, it is only at first glance.
sacred texts of Hinduism called Shruti.Last account for a four Vedas.Each of them is divided into two parts: samhithas (hymns) and Brahman (the teachings of the ritual order).This authoritative body of every orthodox Hindu.Shruti addition, there is also a body Smriti - a legend.Smriti is a source of work and at the same time sufficiently authoritative to be included among the sacred books.It consists of 18 Puranas and two major epics - Ramayana and the Mahabharata.In addition, the Hindu Upanishads still revered as sacred.These texts are treatises mystically interprets the Brahmin.
precious words of the Buddha
Prince Siddhartha lot of preaching, and the speeches they had once formed the basis of the canonical Buddhist sacred texts - sutras.It should make a reservation that there is no such thing as a holy book of Buddhism in the traditional monotheistic understanding.In Buddhism there is no God and, therefore, there is no literature inspired.There are only texts written by enlightened teachers.That is what gives them credibility.As a result, Buddhism has a rather extensive list of sacred books, making them difficult to study and systematization.
In southern Buddhism, mainly in the Theravadin tradition, as the sacred book of Buddhism adopted the so-called Pali canon - Tripitaka.Other Buddhist schools disagree and offer their own versions of the sacred literature.Most impressively against other looks Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism: part of its sacred canon includes collections Gandzhur (speech of the Buddha) and Dandzhur (comments to the Kanjur) a total of 362 volumes.
Conclusion All the above scriptures religions of the world - the most vivid and relevant to our times.Of course, this list is not limited to text, but it is limited and the list referred to religions.Many pagan cults have no codified writings, calmly dispensing oral mythological tradition.Others, although they are reputable kultoobrazuyuschie works, yet they are not charged with the sacred nature of the supernatural.Some canons of a few religious traditions left out of the equation, and were not considered in this review, because even briefly highlight the sacred books of the world's religions, without exception, can afford only the format of an encyclopedia, not a small article.
