“Windows To Spirituality”
Definition Of Trinity Athanasian Creed In the early centuries of its existence, the Catholic Church, in order to codify and crystallize all of the biblical data on the Holy Trinity, and to counter various heresies, produced Creeds. The most famous of these are the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, recited in...
Dating The Bible This article covers Dating The Bible. The oldest surviving Hebrew Bible manuscripts—including the Dead Sea Scrolls—date to about the 2nd century BCE (fragmentary) and some are stored at the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. The oldest extant complete text survives in a Greek translation called the Septuagint, dating...
Critics Of Gospel Of Matthew This article covers the Critics of Gospel of Matthew. Of the four canonized Gospels, it is my opinion that the Gospel of Matthew is the most reliable and accurate, describing Jesus as a Prophet. Although one item stands out when compared to the remainder of...
Critics Of Gospel Of Mark This article covers the Critics of Gospel of Mark. In scholarly circles, Mark 16:9-20 is known as the “Marcan Appendix,” because there are sound reasons for believing that the author of Mark did not write this passage. Textual evidence indicates that as far as original...
Christ’s Agony In The Garden Of Gethsemane Christ’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane is a passage in the Gospel of Luke (22:43–44), describing a prayer of Jesus, after which he receives strength from an angel, on the Mount of Olives prior to his betrayal and arrest. It is one of several passages which...
Books Of The Bible Different religious groups include different books in their biblical canons, in varying orders, and sometimes divide or combine books. The Jewish Tanakh (sometimes called the Hebrew Bible) contains 24 books divided into three parts: the five books of the Torah (“teaching”); the eight books of the Nevi’im (“prophets”); and the eleven books of Ketuvim...
Biblical Canon A biblical canon or canon of scripture is a set of texts (or “books”) which a particular Jewish or Christian religious community regards as authoritative scripture. The English word canon comes from the Greek κανών, meaning “rule” or “measuring stick”. Christians were the first to use the term in reference to scripture, but Eugene Ulrich regards the notion as Jewish....
Biblical Criticism Biblical criticism is the use of critical analysis to understand and explain the Bible. During the eighteenth century, when it began as historical-biblical criticism, it was based on two distinguishing characteristics: (1) the scientific concern to avoid dogma and bias by applying a neutral, non-sectarian, reason-based judgment to the study of the Bible, and (2) the belief...
Bible Let Me To Islam This article covers the journey of a truth seeker from Christianity to Islam called “Bible Let Me To Islam“. During my Christian days there were many verses in the Bible that made me question the religion I was following (Christianity). There was one particular verse, 1...
Authorized King James Version The King James Version (KJV), also known as the King James Bible (KJB) or simply the Authorized Version (AV), is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, begun in 1604 and completed as well as published in 1611 under the sponsorship of James VI and I. The books of the King James Version include...
Tripitaka Tripitaka or Tripiṭaka (Tipiṭaka) is the traditional term for the Buddhist scriptures. The version canonical to Theravada Buddhism is generally referred to in English as the Pali Canon. Mahayana Buddhism also holds the Tripiṭaka to be authoritative but, unlike Theravadins, it also includes in its canon various derivative literature and commentaries that were...
Vinaya The Vinaya (“leading out”, “education”, “discipline”) is the regulatory framework for the sangha or monastic community of Buddhism based on the canonical texts called the Vinaya Pitaka. The teachings of the Gautama Buddha can be divided into two broad categories: Dharma “doctrine” and Vinaya “discipline”. Extant vinaya texts include those of the Theravada (the only...
Vimalakirti Sutra The Vimalakirti Sutra or The Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa (विमलकीर्तिनिर्देश), or (the Vimalakīrti Sūtra or Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra) is a Mahayana Buddhist sutra. It was extremely influential in East Asia, but most likely of considerably less importance in the Indian and Tibetan sub-traditions of Mahāyāna Buddhism. The word nirdeśa in the title means “instruction, advice”, and...
Theravada Theravada or Theravāda (“School of the Elders”) is the oldest of Buddhism‘s extant schools. Theravadins have preserved their version of the Gautama Buddha‘s teaching in the Pāli Canon. The Pāli Canon is the only complete Buddhist canon surviving in a classical Indian language, Pāli, which serves as the school’s sacred language and lingua franca. For over a...
What Is Tengyur? The Tengyur or Tanjur or Bstan-’gyur (“Translation of Teachings”) is the Tibetan collection of commentaries to the Buddhist teachings, or “Translated Treatises”. The Buddhist Canon Main article: Tibetan Buddhist canon To the Tengyur were assigned commentaries to both Sutras and Tantras, treatises and abhidharma works (both Mahayana and non-Mahayana). Together with the 108-volume...
Tantras In Buddhism The Buddhist Tantras are a varied group of Indian and Tibetan texts which outline unique views and practices of the Buddhist tantra religious systems. Overview Buddhist Tantric texts began appearing in the Gupta Empire period though there are texts with elements associated with Tantra that can be...
Pali Canon The Pāli Canon is the standard collection of scriptures in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, as preserved in the Pāli language. It is the most complete extant early Buddhist canon. During the First Buddhist Council, Ananda recited the Sutta Pitaka, and Upali recited the Vinaya Pitaka thirty years after the parinibbana of Gautama Buddha in Rajgir....
Mahayana Sutras The Mahayana sutras are a broad genre of Buddhist scriptures that various traditions of Mahayana Buddhism accept as canonical. They are largely preserved in the Chinese Buddhist canon, the Tibetan Buddhist canon, and in extant Sanskrit manuscripts. Around one hundred Mahayana sutras survive in Sanskrit, or in Chinese...
Mahayana Mahayana or Mahāyāna (“Great Vehicle”) is one of two main existing branches of Buddhism (the other being Theravada) and a term for classification of Buddhist philosophies and practice. This movement added a further set of discourses, and although it was initially small in India, it had long-term historical significance....
Buddhist Texts Buddhist Texts are those religious texts which are part of the Buddhist tradition. The first Buddhist texts were initially passed on orally by Buddhist monastics, but were later written down and composed as manuscripts in various Indo-Aryan languages and collected into various Buddhist canons. These were then translated into other...
