1. Alif. Lam. Ra. These are verses of the Scripture and a plain Reading.

2. It may be that those who disbelieve wish ardently that they were Muslims.

3. Let them eat and enjoy life, and let false hope beguile them. They will come to know!

4. And We destroyed no township but there was a known decree for it.

5. No nation can outstrip its term nor can they lag behind.

6. And they say: O thou unto whom the Reminder is revealed, lo! thou art indeed a madman!

7. Why bringest thou not angels unto us, if thou art of the truthful?

8. We send not down the angels save with the Fact, and in that case the disbelievers would not be tolerated.

9. Lo! We, even We, reveal the Reminder, and lo! We verily are its Guardian.

10. We verily sent messengers before thee among the factions of the men of old.

11. And never came there unto them a messenger but they did mock him.

12. Thus do We make it traverse the hearts of the guilty:

13. They believe not therein, though the example of the men of old hath gone before.

14. And even if We opened unto them a gate of heaven and they kept mounting through it,

15. They would say: Our sight is wrong - nay, but we are folk bewitched.

16. And verily in the heaven we have set mansions of the stars, and We have beautified it for beholders.

17. And We have guarded it from every outcast devil,

18. Save him who stealeth the hearing, and them doth a clear flame pursue.

19. And the earth have We spread out, and placed therein firm hills, and caused each seemly thing to grow therein.

20. And we have given unto you livelihoods therein, and unto those for whom ye provide not.

21. And there is not a thing but with Us are the stores thereof. And we send it not down save in appointed measure.

22. And We send the winds fertilising, and cause water to descend from the sky, and give it you to drink. It is not ye who are the holders of the store thereof.

23. Lo! and it is We, even We, Who quicken and give death, and We are the Inheritor.

24. And verily We know the eager among you and verily We know the laggards.

25. Lo! thy Lord will gather them together. Lo! He is Wise, Aware.

74 more verses…

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, and Nordic traditions. Christian texts include the King James Version Old and New Testaments (1611) and Apocrypha. The Quran uses Marmaduke Pickthall's 1930 English translation. Latter-day Saint scripture includes the Book of Mormon (1830), Doctrine and Covenants (1835), and Pearl of Great Price (1851).

Confucian works include James Legge's translations of The Four Books (1893) and the Book of Poetry (1876). The Tao Te Ching uses Legge's 1891 translation. The Kojiki uses Basil Hall Chamberlain's 1919 English translation. Zoroastrian texts include the Bundahishn (E. W. West, 1880) and the Arda Viraf (Haug & West, 1872). The Lotus Sutra uses Hendrik Kern's 1884 translation. The Finnish Kalevala uses John Martin Crawford's 1888 translation, and the Norse Poetic Edda uses Henry Adams Bellows' 1923 translation.

Public Domain Translations

Every translation in this collection is in the public domain. The most recent translation dates to 1930 (Pickthall's Quran). All texts are freely available for reading, study, quotation, and redistribution with no copyright restrictions.

Concordance and Related Passages

The concordance indexes every word across all sixteen works, showing frequency and distribution. TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency) scoring identifies passages with similar vocabulary across different traditions, enabling comparative study without requiring prior knowledge of each text's structure. TF-IDF weights words that are frequent in one chapter but rare across the corpus, surfacing meaningful thematic connections rather than common function words.

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. High-contrast mode is available via the theme toggle. Verse numbers are visible to assistive technology. No flashing content or motion hazards.

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