Religious movements, by their nature, have three fundamental foundations on which the whole tradition rests: teachers, the teachings transmitted by them, and students who profess this teaching. In other words, a living religion is possible only in a group of convinced followers who profess the doctrine preached by the founder. As for this article, we will talk about the second pillar - the creed, or rather its written source - the Holy Scriptures.
General information
Scripture, whatever religious tradition it may be, represents the semantic core of dogma. A sacred myth can attribute its origin to gods, prophets, messiahs, etc. In any case, its appearance is sanctioned from above and represents the transfer of divine knowledge - an indisputable truth sent from the realm of the other world. Such a look at sacred texts makes them a source of revelation in the eyes of believers and literally the word of God.
However, not everything is so simple - the nature of each individual religion leaves a special imprint on the perception of the text, and the sacred books of the world's religions have an ambiguous interpretation in the interpretation of their adherents.
The body of texts recognized as sacred is usually called a canon or canonical collection within the framework of tradition. Often he is given his own name, such as: the Quran - the holy book of Muslims, the Jewish Torah or the Christian Bible.
Torah and Tanah - sacred literature of Judaism
The oldest monotheistic religion is Judaism. Thanks to him, Christianity and Islam saw the birth. The holy book of Judaism - the Torah - is a collection of five works attributed by tradition to the prophet Moses. According to legend, Moses received the bulk of the contents of the Torah at Sinai, meeting with God face to face.
The further development of the Jewish cult led to the emergence and dissemination of new texts elevated by worshipers to the rank of sacred and inspired, that is, inspired from above by the Lord himself. These books include the Ketuvim collection, which means the Scriptures, and the Neviim collection, which translates as the Prophets. Accordingly, the first included narratives of sacred history and the so-called literature of wisdom - an anthology of instructive parables, psalms and pedagogical works. The second collection united a number of works of Jewish prophets. All of them were compiled into a single set of sacred texts, called "TaNaH." This word is an abbreviation made up of the first letters of the words Thor, Neviim, Ketuvim.
The composition of the Tanah, with minor modifications, is identical to the Old Testament of the Christian tradition.
The new revelation is the new Scripture. Holy books of christians
The canon of the New Testament of the Christian church was formed by the 4th century from a mass of diverse literature. However, various streams and jurisdictions still have several different versions of the canon. In any case, the core of the New Testament is the four Gospels, accompanied by a series of apostolic letters. The books of Acts and the Apocalypse stand apart. Such a structure allowed some commentators to substantively compare the New Testament with the Tanach, relating the Gospels to the Torah, the Apocalypse with the prophets, Acts with historical books, and the literature of wisdom with the epistles of the apostles.
A single collection of Old and New Testaments is a Christian holy book, the Bible, which simply translates “books” from Greek.
The revelation of a new prophet. Muslim canon
The holy book of Muslims is called the Quran. It does not contain any significant fragments from the New Testament or Tanakh, but to a large extent retells the contents of the first of them. In addition, it also mentions Isa, that is, Jesus, but there is no correlation with the New Testament scriptures. Rather, on the contrary, there is controversy and distrust of the Christian Scripture in the Qur'an.
The Muslim holy book - the Quran - is a collection of revelations received by Mohammed at various times from God and the archangel Gabriel (Jabrael - in the Arab tradition). These revelations are called surahs, and they are arranged in the text not in chronological order, but in length - from the longest to the shortest.
This is the position that Islam holds in relation to the Judeo-Christian scriptures: the holy book of the Jews, the Torah, is true. However, the time of her leadership was over, and the Covenant with Moses was exhausted. So the Torah and the entire Tanah are no longer relevant. The books of Christians are a fake that distorted the original gospel of the prophet Jesus, restored and continued by Mohammed. Therefore, the only holy book is the Qur'an, and there cannot be another.
Book of Mormon and Biblical Revelation
Another attempt to derive his creed from the Mosaic source was distinguished by Mormonism. He recognizes both the Old and New Testaments as sacred, but he ascribes the highest authority to the so-called Book of Mormon. Adherents of this teaching believe that the original of their sacred text was written on gold plates, then hidden on a hill near New York, and subsequently opened by the angel to the prophet Joseph Smith, a resident of 19th-century America. The latter performed under divine guidance the translation of the records into English, after which they were again hidden by angels in an unknown place. The sacred status of this work is currently recognized by more than 10 million followers of the Mormon church.
Vedas - the heritage of the ancient gods
The holy books of religions of the world of monotheistic persuasion are combined into single collections and collected in codes. Eastern polytheistic systems are distinguished by a different approach to sacred scriptures: they are independent from each other, often doctrically unconnected and contradictory. Therefore, at first glance, the scripture system of dharmic religions may seem confused or unnecessarily confusing. However, this is only at first glance.
The sacred texts of Hinduism are called Sruti. The latter comprise the four Vedas. Each of them is divided into two parts: samhit (hymns) and brahman (ritualistic instructions). This is the most authoritative corps of every Orthodox Hindu. In addition to Shruti, there is also the Smriti corps - a tradition. Smriti is a written source and yet authoritative enough to be included in the number of holy books. It consists of 18 Puranas and two major epics - Ramayana and Mahabharata. In addition, in Hinduism, the Upanishads are also considered sacred. These texts are tracts that mystically interpret the brahmana.
Precious word of buddha
Prince Siddhartha preached a lot, and the speeches he made once formed the basis of the canonical sacred texts of Buddhism - sutras. It should immediately be noted that there is no such thing as a holy book of Buddhism, in the traditional monotheistic sense. There is no God in Buddhism, which means there is no inspired literature. There are only texts written by enlightened teachers. This is what gives them credibility. As a result, Buddhism has a rather extensive list of holy books, which makes it difficult to study and systematize them.
In southern Buddhism, mainly in the Theravadin tradition, the so-called Pali canon, tripitaka, is adopted as a sacred book of Buddhism. Other Buddhist schools disagree with this and offer their own scriptures. The most impressive among the others is the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism: its holy canon includes the collections of Ganjur (speeches of the Buddha) and Danjur (comments on Ganjur) with a total volume of 362 volumes.
Conclusion
The main sacred books of world religions were listed above - the most vivid and relevant for our time. Of course, the list of texts is not limited to this, just as it is not limited to the list of mentioned religions. Many pagan cults do not have codified scripture at all, calmly dispensing with oral mythological tradition. Others, although they have authoritative cult-forming works, still do not incriminate them with a sacred supernatural nature. Some canons of a few religious traditions were left out of the scope and were not considered in this review, because even the encyclopedia format, but not a small article, can allow even a brief coverage of the holy books of the world's religions.