Holy book

A holy book is a text sacred to a particular religion. Not to be confused with a holey book, a book that has been eaten by worms, though there is some overlap between the two categories.

A dime a dozen
Scriptures
Divine scribblings
v - t - e
“”SCRIPTURES, noun; The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
“”What I’m saying is, if God wanted to send us a message, and ancient writings were the only way he could think of doing it, he could have done a better job.
—Carl Sagan, Contact[1]
“”Why should one think that God performed the miracle of inspiring the words of the Bible, if he didn't perform the miracle of preserving the words of the Bible?
—Bart Ehrman[2]

Notable Holy Books
In order of approximate publication dates:
  • The Vedas (~1500 BCE)[3]
  • The Upanishads (Primary texts written during 8th-6th Century BCE, but several minor texts have been written as late as the 1500s.)[4]
  • The Avesta (Zoroastrianism)
  • The Torah (Compiled between 600-400 BCE from scrolls dating back to 1200 BCE)[5] Or maybe a much later date…[6]
  • The Tao Te Ching (6th century BCE)[7]
  • The Mozi (Mohism, c. 5th century BC)
  • The Bible (Compiled from books written between 1200 BCE and 150-200 CE)[8] (Re-route back to the Torah observation two lines up.)
  • The Qur'an (Roughly 650 CE)[9]
  • Bardo Thodol/Tibetan Book of the Dead (14th century/1927)
  • The Guru Granth Sahib of Sikhism [10]
  • Calculus textbooks (17th century)[11]
  • The Book of Mormon (19th century)[12]
  • The Aqdas (19th century)
  • The Canonical Codes (Cao Dai, 1920s)
  • Dianetics (20th century)[13]
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (20th century)[14]
  • The Principia Discordia (20th century)[15]
  • The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (21st Century)[16]
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See also

References
  1. Contact: A Novel by Carl Sagan (1985) Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0671434004. Chapter 10 (p. 164)
  2. Heyns Lecture Series, April 25, 2007
  3. Internet Sacred Text Archives: Hindusim — The Vedas
  4. Internet Sacred Text Archive: The Upanishads
  5. The Hebrew Bible in English
  6. This discusses some of the issues.
  7. Encyclopedia Britannica: Lao-tzu
  8. BibleGateway.com
  9. Mr. Mohammed, Esq.
  10. See the Wikipedia article on Guru Granth Sahib.
  11. See Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, as in "simultaneously and independently", as they say in College Bowls.
  12. Joseph Smith
  13. L. Ron Hubbard
  14. The honourable Douglas Adams
  15. The Wholey Booque of Discordians Everywhere
  16. See the Wikipedia article on The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
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