1. Having descended from Heaven onto this island, they saw to the erection of an heavenly august pillar, they saw to the erection of an hall of eight fathoms. Then His Augustness the Male-Who-Invites asked his younger sister Her Augustness the Female-Who-Invites, saying: "How is thy body formed?" She replied, saying: "My body, growing by growth, is fully formed, but there is one part that has not grown together." Then said His Augustness the Male-Who-Invites: "My body, growing by growth, is fully formed, but there is one part that has grown to excess. Therefore, would it be well that I should insert this part of my body that has grown to excess into that part of thy body that has not grown together, and so procreate lands?" Her Augustness the Female-Who-Invites replied, saying: "It would be well." Then said His Augustness the Male-Who-Invites: "Since this is so, let us, thou and I, go around this heavenly august pillar, and meeting one another, perform the august union of our august persons." This covenant having been made, he said: "Do thou go around from the right, and I will go around from the left, and let us meet." When the covenant was fulfilled and they had gone around, Her Augustness the Female-Who-Invites spoke first, saying: "O what a fair and lovely youth!" Then His Augustness the Male-Who-Invites said: "O what a fair and lovely maiden!" After each had finished speaking, His Augustness the Male-Who-Invites said to his younger sister: "It is not proper that the woman should speak first." Nevertheless they began the work of procreation in the bridal chamber, and bore a child, the Leech-Child or one like unto a leech. This child they placed in a boat of reeds, and let it float away. Next they gave birth to the Island of Aha. This likewise is not reckoned among their children.

About this reader

What is Scripture?

Scripture is a browser-based reader for sixteen sacred texts spanning multiple religious and literary traditions. It provides chapter-by-chapter navigation, full-text search across all works, word concordance with frequency analysis, verse-linked notes, text-to-speech, and deep linking to any chapter or verse.

Traditions Represented

The collection spans Abrahamic, East Asian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Finnish, and Norse traditions. It includes King James biblical text and Apocrypha, Pickthall's Quran, the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, Legge's Four Books, Tao Te Ching, and Book of Poetry, Chamberlain's Kojiki, West's Bundahishn, Kern's Lotus Sutra, Haug and West's Arda Viraf, Crawford's Kalevala, and Bellows' Poetic Edda.

The committed manifests and chapter files currently describe 121 books, 2,724 chapters, and 63,141 verse records. In poetry and prose works, a verse record can represent a line or paragraph rather than a canonically numbered scriptural verse.

Licensing

The application source is AGPL-3.0. Generated text downloads and their structured arrangement are CC BY-SA 4.0; the underlying historic source texts are treated as public-domain inputs. The corpus metadata therefore describes the distributed arrangement with its CC BY-SA license rather than the Public Domain Mark.

Concordance and Related Passages

The concordance is an exact-word occurrence index with linked records grouped by work. Related Passages is separate: a TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency) cosine-similarity index compares chapter vocabulary after stop-word removal and stores up to five cross-book matches above its threshold. It is a lexical discovery aid, not a claim of historical or theological equivalence.

Deep Linking

Every chapter and verse has a permanent URL. Chapter links follow the pattern /scripture/{work}/{book}-{chapter} (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1 for Genesis 1). Verse links append the verse number (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1:26 for Genesis 1:26). These URLs can be shared, bookmarked, or cited directly.

Accessibility

Scripture supports keyboard navigation throughout: Tab moves between controls, Enter activates verse actions, and arrow keys navigate chapters. The reading pane has a skip-to-content link. All overlays (search, concordance) are focus-trapped ARIA dialogs. Dynamic content regions use aria-live for screen reader announcements. Light and dark themes are available through the theme toggle. Verse numbers are visible to assistive technology. No flashing content or motion hazards.

Scripture is part of a suite of educational simulations at a9l.im. Explore particle physics with Geon, redistricting with Gerry, or cellular metabolism with Cyano.