With so many religions, how can I know which one is true?

“And they say: "None shall enter Paradise unless he be a Jew or a Christian." Those are their (vain) desires. Say: "Produce your proof if ye are truthful."”

“Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil and believes in Allah hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks. And Allah heareth and knoweth all things.”

“Do they not consider the Qur'an (with care)? Had it been from other Than Allah, they would surely have found therein Much discrepancy.”

“We have, without doubt, sent down the Message; and We will assuredly guard it (from corruption).”

“And if ye are in doubt as to what We have revealed from time to time to Our servant, then produce a Sura like thereunto; and call your witnesses or helpers (If there are any) besides Allah, if your (doubts) are true.”

“Who receiveth guidance, receiveth it for his own benefit: who goeth astray doth so to his own loss: No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another: nor would We visit with Our Wrath until We had sent a messenger (to give warning).”

“Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.”

“That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not:-”

“And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:”

“And then these verses, which were neither supernaturally inspired, nor learned before in the past, occurred to me:”

Jaini writes that the authority of the Jain teachings rests ultimately on the fact that they were preached by an omniscient being. Jain teachers claim that only the teachings of the Jina can stand the scrutiny of reason (p. 89).

Jaini writes that the Jaina, who does not hold to a God acting in the world, cannot lean on faith in divine grace. He has to rely largely on his own initiative and effort, for his needs in this world and for his salvation (p. 89).

Reports a second-century CE account by Ban Gu that the Analects was compiled by the first and second generations of Confucius's disciples and then handed down privately for centuries. Notes that the classicist Zhu Weizheng argued in 1986 that the Analects is neither quoted nor named before the second century BCE, the century in which its text was fixed, and that excavated copies date from the first century BCE. Suggests the Analects may in part be a selection from a larger and more varied body of Confucius-related material.

Sima Qian's chapter on Laozi says he was Li Er, also called Dan, a man of Chu who kept the archives at the Zhou court. Laozi cultivated the Way and virtue, and his learning aimed at hiding himself and having no name. When he left Zhou, the keeper of a pass asked him to write a book. So he wrote a book in two parts, of some five thousand words, on the meaning of the Way and virtue. Then he left, and no one knows where he ended. The chapter then gives other accounts. Some say it was Lao Laizi, also a man of Chu, who wrote fifteen chapters on the uses of the Taoist teaching. It records that the Grand Historian of Zhou, also named Dan but written with a different character, met Duke Xian of Qin long after Confucius died. Some say this Dan was Laozi, some say not, and no one knows whether it is so. It calls Laozi a gentleman who lived hidden from the world.

“regretting the errors in the old words, and wishing to correct the misstatements in the former chronicles, She, on the eighteenth day of the ninth moon of the fourth year of Wa-dō, commanded me Yasumaro”

“So in the dimness of the great commencement, we, by relying on the original teaching, learn the time of the conception of the earth and of the birth of islands; in the remoteness of the original beginning, we, by trusting the former sages, perceive the era of the genesis of Deities and of the establishment of men.”

“The Hindus have received their religion through their revelation, the Vedas. They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without end. It may sound ludicrous to this audience, how a book can be without beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual law discovered by different persons in different times. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery, and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical and spiritual relation between soul and souls and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits were there before their discovery and would remain even if we forgot them. The discoverers of these laws are called Rishis, and we honor them as perfected beings, and I am glad to tell this audience that some of the very best of them were women.”

“As a skilled craftsman makes a car, a singer I, Mighty One! this hymn for thee have fashioned. If thou, O Agni, God, accept it gladly, may we obtain thereby the heavenly Waters.”

“Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus,”

“And God spake all these words, saying,”

“As the word of the Lord cometh to me, so I make known, O Lalo”

“This is the Book; in it is guidance sure, without doubt, to those who fear Allah;”

“I am the vanquisher of all, the knower of all, unsullied in the midst of all things. I've given up all, freed through the ending of craving. Since I know for myself, whose follower should I be? I have no tutor. There is no one like me.”

“And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.”

“And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.”

“And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.”

“Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.”

“(At a distance of) Laksha Yojanas above the sun is seen the moon; in two fortnights it enjoys one Samvatsara of the sun, in two days and a quarter one month and in one day one Paksha of the sun; sometimes its speed becomes quicker than that of the sun.”

The Moon is an average of 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometres) from the Earth. The Sun, the solar system's only star, is about 93 million miles (150 million kilometres) from the Earth, so it is about 390 times farther away than the Moon.

“They then together produced the Sun-Goddess, who was called Oho-hiru-me no muchi.”

“In one writing it is said:—"Izanagi no Mikoto said: 'I wish to procreate the precious child who is to rule the world.' He therefore took in his left hand a white-copper mirror, upon which a Deity was produced from it called Oho-hiru-me no Mikoto.”

“Thereafter, a Deity was produced by his washing his left eye, which was called Ama-terasu-no-oho-Kami.”

Jaini reports that the Svetambaras hold that Mahavira married the princess Yasoda and fathered a daughter, while the Digambaras believe he remained a bachelor throughout his life (p. 11). On clothing, he writes that the Digambaras believe Mahavira and the other Jinas went without clothing at all times after their renunciation, and that every Jain monk must do the same. In the Svetambara account Mahavira wore a cloth for a time before going without clothing, and the Svetambaras do not require their monks to go without clothing. Jaini calls this doubtless the single most important point of contention between the two traditions (p. 13).

In a note on Mahavira's family, Jacobi records that the story of the transfer of Mahavira's embryo from the womb of the Brahmin woman Devananda to that of the Kshatriya woman Trisala is rejected by the Digambaras, while the Svetambaras uphold its truth. He adds that the story is found in the Acaranga, the Kalpa Sutra and many other books.

“All things are not-self— when this is seen with wisdom, one grows disillusioned with suffering: this is the path to purity.”

“And what is the burden? The five grasping aggregates, it should be said. What five? The grasping aggregates of form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness. This is called the burden. And who is the bearer of the burden? The individual, it should be said; the venerable of such name and such clan. This is called the bearer of the burden.”

“P.—Surely then the person is known in the sense of a real and ultimate fact? Th.—Granting that the Exalted One said that which is quoted, is that a reason for affirming that the person is known in the sense of a real and ultimate fact?”

“Say not that the Hindu and Musalman books are false; false is he who reflecteth not on them. If you say that the one God is in everything, then why kill fowls?”

“Do they not consider the Qur'an (with care)? Had it been from other Than Allah, they would surely have found therein Much discrepancy.”

“How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us? Lo, certainly in vain made he it; the pen of the scribes is in vain.”

Sorts the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls into groups. Some are close to the medieval Masoretic text; some follow the Hebrew text behind the Greek Septuagint, among them 4QJer-b, which has the shorter form of Jeremiah; some are close to the Samaritan Pentateuch; and many follow none of these. The Great Isaiah Scroll differs from the Masoretic text in many small details of spelling and grammar, while agreeing with it in content in most places.

On the ending of Mark, reports that verses 9-20 are missing from the two oldest Greek manuscripts, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, and from some early translations; that Clement of Alexandria and Origen show no knowledge of them; and that Eusebius and Jerome say the passage was absent from almost all the Greek copies they knew.

Jamison and Witzel write that the Rig Veda has come down basically in only one extremely well preserved school, that of Shakalya, whose word-by-word analysis of the text (the Padapatha) is also handed down; the Bashkala and Mandukeya collections are lost. Their table of Vedic texts lists the surviving collections: one of the Rig Veda, three of the Sama Veda, six of the Yajur Veda (one of them partial) and two of the Atharva Veda, which they say differ considerably from each other. The table marks other texts as lost, such as the Paippalada school's Brahmana, which has no surviving text.

Witzel judges Patanjali's list of schools (21 of the Rig Veda, 101 of the Yajur Veda, 1,000 of the Sama Veda, 9 of the Atharva Veda) to be clearly unrealistic in part (p. 259, n. 10). He notes that other Rig Veda versions, now lost, such as that of the Bashkala school, had more hymns and ended with a different hymn; only the Shakala Rig Veda ends with the hymn it has today (p. 265, n. 32). He compares them there with the Rig Veda's apocryphal hymns (the Khila collection), which he describes on pp. 284-285 as handed down as a separate collection only in Kashmir. He also describes early Yajur Veda texts known only from fragments, among them the now lost Caraka Samhita (p. 298).

“we are told by the Svetambaras, as well as the Digambaras, that besides the Angas, there existed other and probably older works, called Purvas, of which there were originally fourteen. The knowledge of these Purvas was gradually lost, till at last it became totally extinct.”

“The text of the three pitakas and the atthakatha thereon did the most wise bhikkhus hand down in former times orally, but since they saw that the people were falling away (from religion) the bhikkhus came together, and in order that the true doctrine might endure, they wrote them down in books.”

Geiger, the chronicle's translator, gives about 483 BCE as the probable year of the Buddha's death, and stresses that the date is only approximate. He places the beginning of the second half of King Vattagamani's reign at the end of 29 or the beginning of 28 BCE, and his return to the throne about ten years earlier by the chronicle's own figures.

“The Bhikkhus of the Great Council settled a doctrine contrary (to the true Faith). Altering the original redaction they made another redaction. They transposed Suttas which belonged to one place (of the collection), to another place; they destroyed the (true) meaning and the Faith, in the Vinaya and in the five Collections (of Suttas).”

Reports a second-century CE account by Ban Gu that the Analects was compiled by the first and second generations of Confucius's disciples and then handed down privately for centuries. Notes that the classicist Zhu Weizheng argued in 1986 that the Analects is neither quoted nor named before the second century BCE, the century in which its text was fixed, and that excavated copies date from the first century BCE. Suggests the Analects may in part be a selection from a larger and more varied body of Confucius-related material.

“I hear that the chronicles of the emperors and likewise the original words in the possession of the various families deviate from exact truth, and are mostly amplified by empty falsehoods.”

Says Guru Arjan and his scribe Bhai Gurdas completed the first edition, the Adi Granth, in 1604 and installed it in the Golden Temple at Amritsar. Its hymns are chiefly by six of the Gurus, with others by Hindu bhakti saints and the Sufi Sheikh Farid. Guru Gobind Singh later added the hymns of Guru Tegh Bahadur to make the final edition. The article reports a scholarly debate over two early manuscripts: at one place the Kartarpur manuscript has only the two opening lines of a hymn of Guru Arjan, followed by blank folios, while the Banno manuscript, dated 1644, has the whole hymn. Scholars disagree which reflects the original.

“Then woe to those who write the Book with their own hands, and then say:"This is from Allah," to traffic with it for miserable price!- Woe to them for what their hands do write, and for the gain they make thereby.”

“We have, without doubt, sent down the Message; and We will assuredly guard it (from corruption).”

Zayd ibn Thabit reports that after many who knew the Qur'an by heart were killed at Yamama, Abu Bakr asked him to gather the Qur'an into one volume, reminding him that he used to write down the revelation for the Messenger of Allah. Zayd collected it from written pieces and from the memories of men, and the finished copy passed from Abu Bakr to Umar and then to Hafsa.

“And if ye are in doubt as to what We have revealed from time to time to Our servant, then produce a Sura like thereunto; and call your witnesses or helpers (If there are any) besides Allah, if your (doubts) are true.”

“Do they not consider the Qur'an (with care)? Had it been from other Than Allah, they would surely have found therein Much discrepancy.”

“And I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more: for I the Lord have spoken it, saith the Lord God.”

“Son of man, Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon caused his army to serve a great service against Tyrus: every head was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled: yet had he no wages, nor his army, for Tyrus, for the service that he had served against it:”

“Him God raised up the third day, and shewed him openly; Not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead.”

“Verily We have sent thee in truth, as a bearer of glad tidings, and as a warner: and there never was a people, without a warner having lived among them (in the past).”

“Who receiveth guidance, receiveth it for his own benefit: who goeth astray doth so to his own loss: No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another: nor would We visit with Our Wrath until We had sent a messenger (to give warning).”

“This is the Book; in it is guidance sure, without doubt, to those who fear Allah;”

“Do they not consider the Qur'an (with care)? Had it been from other Than Allah, they would surely have found therein Much discrepancy.”

“We have, without doubt, sent down the Message; and We will assuredly guard it (from corruption).”

Zayd ibn Thabit reports that after many who knew the Qur'an by heart were killed at Yamama, Abu Bakr asked him to gather the Qur'an into one volume, reminding him that he used to write down the revelation for the Messenger of Allah. Zayd collected it from written pieces and from the memories of men, and the finished copy passed from Abu Bakr to Umar and then to Hafsa.

“And if ye are in doubt as to what We have revealed from time to time to Our servant, then produce a Sura like thereunto; and call your witnesses or helpers (If there are any) besides Allah, if your (doubts) are true.”

“Verily We have sent thee in truth, as a bearer of glad tidings, and as a warner: and there never was a people, without a warner having lived among them (in the past).”

“Who receiveth guidance, receiveth it for his own benefit: who goeth astray doth so to his own loss: No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another: nor would We visit with Our Wrath until We had sent a messenger (to give warning).”