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Writing a 'Holy Book' for your Conworld...

 
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dusepo



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PostPosted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 4:56 pm    Post subject: Writing a 'Holy Book' for your Conworld... Reply with quote

Recently, I have been gathering together bits (much in the way the Bible, Qu'ran, Tripitaka etc were written) for a 'Holy Book' for my Conculture.

It is based on a whole series of sayings by an ancient wise king. There are then sections for astrology, magic and similar topics.

Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas? I am unsure how to put it all together.
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langover94



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PostPosted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 5:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I would say to write it in the order that you think of it. Then you could put it in whatever sections you want it to be in.

What are some other peoples' spiritual texts from their conworld like? Mine is called the Abrab, and it is basically like revalations and teachings directly from God himself.
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yssida



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PostPosted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 4:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think go with langover's idea. It's nice since it's more chronological, and that could be of great help to your con-scholars too.
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 1:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Koran is ordered from longest to shortest.
The Buddhist scriptures are ordered by number of things discussed; there's a book of "ones", a book of "twos", ..., a book of "elevens", and a book of "twelves".
I thought Tripitaka was a novel, rather than a scripture. It's probably a "historical novel" in the sense that there really was a Chinese lama named Tripitaka who traveled to get the Mahayana scriptures; but Monkey ("Great Sage, Peer of Heaven" Sung wo Kung) and others are clearly fictional.
The Book of Mormon is suspiciously similar to a "speculative novel" written by a Biblical scholar and American anthropologist of a religious and speculative bent; a Christian who published shortly before Joseph Smith's revelation. I think it's a novel too, though nowhere near as well-written as, for instance, "the Silmarillion".
Some books in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) were clearly meant as fiction; Jonah, for one. Esther probably qualifies as "historical fiction". Job is a narrative poem that was "re-worked" by at least two subsequent authors. So, of course, being unabashed fiction does not disqualify something from being canonized as "Holy Scripture". To a lesser degree that also applies to the Book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine that ends the New Testament.
The four Gospels, or at least three of them (no idea which three), might uncharitably be called "historical fiction". More charitably they are attempts at histories written by people who couldn't remember exactly and accurately every last detail anymore, but got the gist right.
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langover94



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 2:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
The Koran is ordered from longest to shortest


I didn't know that... I thought that it was maybe in just in whatever order Mohammed wanted it in? And the Fatiha is a lot shorter than Al-Baqarah... but then again maybe it was just an introduction.

Quote:
The four Gospels, or at least three of them (no idea which three), might uncharitably be called "historical fiction". More charitably they are attempts at histories written by people who couldn't remember exactly and accurately every last detail anymore, but got the gist right.


I don't really think that the Gospel is categorized as fiction. However we do have to think of what audiences the authors were aiming at for the most effective conversion. The Gospel of Matthew was more aimed toward Jewish conversion, so he may have bended the story a bit. For instance the Jews always thought that the Savior would be born in Bethlehem (where King David was born), so Matthew may have elaborated on that fact when in reality, Jesus was probably born at home in Nazareth.
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Aeetlrcreejl



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 9:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

langover94 wrote:
I didn't know that... I thought that it was maybe in just in whatever order Mohammed wanted it in? And the Fatiha is a lot shorter than Al-Baqarah...


Muhammad received the revelations, than Abu Bakr/Umar (can't remember which) ordered them.
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 7:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

langover94 wrote:
I don't really think that the Gospel is categorized as fiction.
Not usually, no; I said that was "uncharitable". However, considered as histories, it's clear they can't all be perfectly accurate. That doesn't mean they're not histories, though.
And as you say they were written for purposes, and the authors were not historiographers, so their purposes were not to write histories; rather, writing the history was a means to an end, though probably a "truthful" end, certainly "truthful" from each gospelist's point-of-view. (Possibly Luke is an exception; he seems to have been an amateur historiographer, and his other purposes could have stemmed from his interest in relating the history rather than the other way around.) So as compared to histories written by such people as von Ranke, they may leave something to be desired when considered as "history". But their authors didn't intend them to be considered, primarily, as "history".
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dusepo



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 9:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

eldin raigmore wrote:

The Buddhist scriptures are ordered by number of things discussed; there's a book of "ones", a book of "twos", ..., a book of "elevens", and a book of "twelves".
I thought Tripitaka was a novel, rather than a scripture. It's probably a "historical novel" in the sense that there really was a Chinese lama named Tripitaka who traveled to get the Mahayana scriptures; but Monkey ("Great Sage, Peer of Heaven" Sung wo Kung) and others are clearly fictional.
.


The Tripitaka was written on palm leaves about a hundred years after the Buddha's death, which were then written into books and translated from there. These became the central Theravada/Hinayana scriptures, and were then later incorporated into Mahayana and Vajrayana when they took off about 0 and 500 AD respectively. The Tripitaka literally means 'Triple Basket' and is a series of rules for monks and nuns and sayings of the Buddha.

As a Buddhist, this is an area i know about, lol.
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Last edited by dusepo on Thu Feb 21, 2008 9:04 am; edited 1 time in total
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langover94



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 10:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Not usually, no; I said that was "uncharitable". However, considered as histories, it's clear they can't all be perfectly accurate. That doesn't mean they're not histories, though.


I see.
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yssida



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PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 12:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

eldin raigmore wrote:

I thought Tripitaka was a novel, rather than a scripture. It's probably a "historical novel" in the sense that there really was a Chinese lama named Tripitaka who traveled to get the Mahayana scriptures; but Monkey ("Great Sage, Peer of Heaven" Sung wo Kung) and others are clearly fictional.


I'm not sure about this. In our second year asian history class, our teacher told us that Tripitaka is more scripture-like, and was written probably in South India or Sri Lanka, and consisted of three parts; thus 'tri'. Further, it seems that Tripitaka is closer to the "book of <insert number here>" scriptures you were talking about. The monkey, I'm not too sure.
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 10:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

yssida wrote:
I'm not sure about this. In our second year asian history class, our teacher told us that Tripitaka is more scripture-like, and was written probably in South India or Sri Lanka, and consisted of three parts; thus 'tri'. Further, it seems that Tripitaka is closer to the "book of <insert number here>" scriptures you were talking about. The monkey, I'm not too sure.
I just Googled it and you're right. The "tripitaka" is "the three baskets" or "the three collections" and is Buddhist scripture; I started replying before reading far enough to find out how many of them are Theravada and how many are Mahayana. (I.e. some versions of Tripitaka are Theravada.)
Wikipedia wrote:
Versions

  • Tipiṭaka (Pali Canon) of the Theravada school.
  • Tripiṭaka preserved in the East-Asian Mahayana tradition (Chinese translations):

    • The Āgamas contain the Majjhima Nikāya and Saṃyutta Nikāya of the Sārvāstivāda.
    • The Āgamas contain the Dīgha Nikāya of (probably) the Dharmaguptaka.
    • The Āgamas contain the Aṅguttara Nikāya (Ekottara Āgama of (possibly) the Mahāsaṅghika.
    • The Vinaya Piṭakas of Sārvāstivāda, Mahāsaṅghika, Dharmaguptaka, Mahīśāsaka.
    • Mahāyāna sūtras and some Buddhist tantras

  • The Mūlasārvāstivādin Vinaya Piṭaka is preserved in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, along with Mahāyāna sūtras and tantras.
  • The Gandharan Buddhist texts contains some books and fragments of the Tipiṭaka of (probably) the Dharmaguptaka school.



Here's the source of my error:

Wikipedia wrote:
The Chinese form of Tripiṭaka, "Sanzang" (三藏), was sometimes used as an honorary title for a Buddhist monk who has mastered all the Tripiṭaka canons, most notably in the case of the Tang Dynasty monk Xuanzang, whose pilgrimage to India to study and bring Buddhist text back to China was portrayed in the novel Journey to the West as "Tang Sanzang". Due to the popularity of the novel, the term in "Sanzang" is often erroneously understood as a name of the monk Xuanzang. One such screen version of this is the popular 1979 Monkey (TV series).




Monkey Journey To The West wrote:
Tripitaka is a handsome, devout Buddhist monk, reincarnated from a golden cicada. He is selected by Guan Yin to undertake a journey to India to receive Holy ...


The "Monkey" I was talking about is referred to in the following URLs;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0161-9705(199412)16%3C69%3ACITJTT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6
http://www.monkeyjourneytothewest.com/about.html
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/the_comparatist/v029/29.1lin.pdf
http://www.chinainstitute.org/educators/pdfs/fromsilktooil_pdf6.pdf
http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/lofiversion/index.php/t15757.html
http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/worldlit/content.asp?b=3&c=litlinks&r=China&i=chengen

http://www.monkeyheaven.com/multiversearticle.html
http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/citation/66/1/117
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0034-6705(194401)6%3A1%3C110%3ACATFE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C
http://wongkk.com/answers/ans03b/sep03-2.html
http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-EPT/whalen.htm
http://san.beck.org/3-7-MingEmpire.html
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kyonides



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PostPosted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 10:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have a question that may be a suggestion as well. Would your conreligion(s) have ambiguous descriptions, commandments, principles or passages?

langover94 wrote:
I don't really think that the Gospel is categorized as fiction. However we do have to think of what audiences the authors were aiming at for the most effective conversion. The Gospel of Matthew was more aimed toward Jewish conversion, so he may have bended the story a bit. For instance the Jews always thought that the Savior would be born in Bethlehem (where King David was born), so Matthew may have elaborated on that fact when in reality, Jesus was probably born at home in Nazareth.

If there was a census, then it's probable that he was born in Bethlehem as the prophecy said. I mean, if Joseph was a descendant of King David, then he would have been forced to travel all the way long to Bethlehem. I also remember there are at least two Bethlehems in Israel / Palestine.
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