1. By the Star when it setteth,

2. Your comrade erreth not, nor is deceived;

3. Nor doth he speak of his own desire.

4. It is naught save an inspiration that is inspired,

5. Which one of mighty powers hath taught him,

6. One vigorous; and he grew clear to view

7. When he was on the uppermost horizon.

8. Then he drew nigh and came down

9. Till he was distant two bows' length or even nearer,

10. And He revealed unto His slave that which He revealed.

11. The heart lied not in seeing what it saw.

12. Will ye then dispute with him concerning what he seeth?

13. And verily he saw him yet another time

14. By the lote-tree of the utmost boundary,

15. Nigh unto which is the Garden of Abode.

16. When that which shroudeth did enshroud the lote-tree,

17. The eye turned not aside nor yet was overbold.

18. Verily he saw one of the greater revelations of his Lord.

19. Have ye thought upon Elath and Ozzoh

20. And Menoth, the third, the other?

21. Are yours the males and His the females?

22. That indeed were an unfair division!

23. They are but names which ye have named, ye and your fathers, for which God hath revealed no warrant. They follow but a guess and that which they themselves desire. And now the guidance from their Lord hath come unto them.

24. Or shall man have what he coveteth?

25. But unto God belongeth the after life, and the former.

37 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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