1. Ha. Mim.

2. By the Scripture which maketh plain,

3. Lo! We have appointed it a Lecture, in native that haply ye may understand.

4. And Lo! in the Source of Decrees, which We possess, it is indeed sublime, decisive.

5. Shall We utterly ignore you because ye are a wanton folk?

6. How many a prophet did We send among the men of old!

7. And never came there unto them a prophet but they used to mock him.

8. Then We destroyed men mightier than these in prowess; and the example of the men of old hath gone before them.

9. And if thou Mohammed ask them: Who created the heavens and the earth, they will surely answer: The Mighty, the Knower created them;

10. Who made the earth a resting-place for you, and placed roads for you therein, that haply ye may find your way;

11. And Who sendeth down water from the sky in due measure, and We revive a dead land therewith. Even so will ye be brought forth;

12. He Who created all the pairs, and appointed for you ships and cattle whereupon ye ride.

13. That ye may mount upon their backs, and may remember your Lord's favour when ye mount thereon, and may say: Glorified be He Who hath subdued these unto us, and we were not capable of subduing them;

14. And lo! unto our Lord we surely are returning.

15. And they allot to Him a portion of His bondmen! Lo! man is verily a mere ingrate.

16. Or chooseth He daughters of all that He hath created, and honoureth He you with sons?

17. And if one of them hath tidings of that which he likeneth to the Beneficent One, his countenance becometh black and he is full of inward rage.

18. Liken they then to God that which is bred up in outward show, and in dispute cannot make itself plain?

19. And they make the angels, who are the slaves of the Beneficent, females. Did they witness their creation? Their testimony will be recorded and they will be questioned.

20. And they say: If the Beneficent One had so willed, we should not have worshipped them. They have no knowledge whatsoever of that. They do but guess.

21. Or have We given them any scripture before this record so that they are holding fast thereto?

22. Nay, for they say only: Lo! we found our fathers following a religion, and we are guided by their footprints.

23. And even so We sent not a warner before thee Mohammed into any township but its luxurious ones said: Lo! we found our fathers following a religion, and we are following their footprints.

24. And the warner said: What! Even though I bring you better guidance than that ye found your fathers following? They answered: Lo! in what ye bring we are disbelievers.

25. So We requited them. Then see the nature of the consequence for the rejecters!

64 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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