Word Finder - scriptures

definition

A sacred writing or holy book.

example

The primary scripture in Zoroastrianism is the Avesta.

definition

(by extension) An authoritative statement.

In the next literary period (1530-1606) several translations of the Scriptures are recorded.

A priest will recite some hymns from the scriptures.

They therefore elect elders, who expound the Scriptures, baptize and hear confessions.

He disliked the uncouth style of the Scriptures.

The pope, no longer possessing any more power than other bishops (though Marsilius recognizes that the supremacy of the Church of Rome goes back to the earliest times of Christianity), is to content himself with a pre-eminence mainly of an honorary kind, without claiming to interpret the Holy Scriptures, define dogmas or distribute benefices; moreover, he is to be elected by the Christian people, or by the delegates of the people, i.e.

But on the other hand the church in maintaining its place and power may condemn as heretical genuine efforts at reform by a return, though partial, to the standard set by the Holy Scriptures or the Apostolic Church.

He rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures, 6.

The standpoint of the Reformed churches was the substitution of the authority of the Scriptures for the authority of the church.

The enlargement of the horizon of knowledge by the advance of science, the recognition of the only relative validity of human opinions and beliefs as determined by and adapted to each stage of human development, which is due to the growing historical sense, the alteration of view regarding the nature of inspiration, and the purpose of the Holy Scriptures, the revolt against all ecclesiastical authority, and the acceptance of reason and conscience as alone authoritative, the growth of the spirit of Christian charity, the clamorous demand of the social problem for immediate attention, all combine in making the Christian churches less anxious about the danger, and less zealous in the discovery and condemnation of heresy.

Calvin consented to the death of Servetus, whose views on the Trinity he regarded as most dangerous heresy, and whose denial of the full authority of the Scriptures he dreaded as overthrowing the foundations of all religious authority.

During the course of the 19th century in Scottish Presbyterianism the affirmation of Christ's atoning death for all men, the denial of eternal punishment, the modification of the doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures by acceptance of the results of the Higher Criticism, were all censured as perilous errors.

If any person who has been educated in or has professed the Christian religion shall, by writing, printing, teaching, or advised speaking, assert or maintain that there are more Gods than one, or shall deny any of the persons of the Holy Trinity to be God, or shall deny the Christian religion to be true or the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be of divine authority, he shall for the first offence be declared incapable of holding any ecclesiastical, civil, or military office or employment, and for the second incapable of bringing any action, or of being guardian, executor, legatee, or grantee, and shall suffer three years' imprisonment without bail.

In his time there was no fixed, divinely instituted congregational organization, no canon of New Testament Scriptures, no anti-Gnostic theology, and no Catholic Church.

He compiled the Garden of the Soul (1740 ?), which continues to be the most popular manual of devotion among English-speaking Roman Catholics, and he revised an edition of the Douai version of the Scriptures (1749-1750), correcting the language and orthography, which in many places had become obsolete.

A number of widows and maidens met together in the house of Marcella to study the Scriptures with him; he taught them Hebrew, and preached the virtues of the celibate life.

The result of all this labour was the Latin translation of the Scriptures which, in spite of much opposition from the more conservative party in the church, afterwards became the Vulgate or authorized version; but the Vulgate as we have it now is not exactly Jerome's Vulgate, for it suffered a good deal from changes made under the influence of the older translations; the text became very corrupt during the middle ages, and in particular all the Apocrypha, except Tobit and Judith, which Jerome translated from the Chaldee, were added from the older versions.

The Articles of Marburg, which thus came into being, contain the doctrine of the Trinity, of the personality of Christ, of faith and justification, of the Scriptures, of baptism, of good works, of confession, of government, of tradition, and of infant baptism.

Considering the important part played by the Egyptian sojourn of the Hebrews, as narrated in the Scriptures, it was certainly not an overenthusiastic prediction that the Egyptian monuments when fully investigated would divulge important references to Joseph, to Moses, and to the all-important incidents of the Exodus; but half a century of expectant attention in this direction has led only to disappointment.

In the Hebrew scriptures the waters were gathered together in one place at the word of God, and the dry land appeared.

And everything that he had heard from them about the Lord, about His miracles and about His teaching, Polycarp used to tell us as one who had received it from those who had seen the Word of Life with their own eyes, and all this in perfect harmony with the Scriptures.

In some cases they introduced new systems of ecclesiastical organization, and in all they sought to justify their innovations by an appeal from the Church's tradition to the Scriptures.

He denounced the papal government as utterly degraded, and urged that the vast property of the Church, which he held to be the chief cause of its degradation, should be secularized and that the clergy should consist of " poor priests," supported only by tithes and alms. They should preach the gospel and encourage the people to seek the truth in the Scriptures themselves, of which a translation into English was completed in 1382.

Yet the discussions he aroused, the attacks he made upon the institutions of the medieval Church, and especially the position he assigned to the Scriptures as the exclusive source of revealed truth, serve to make the development of Protestantism under Henry VIII.

The Bible had long been available in the language of the people, and there are indications that the numerous early editions of the Scriptures were widely read.

The first parliament of the reign swept away almost all the species of treasons created during the previous two centuries, the heresy acts, including the Six 1547- Articles, all limitations on printing the Scriptures in 1553.

Luther found no in- orAnti- tellectual difficulties in his acceptance and interpreta- Trinl- tion of the Scriptures as God's word, and in maintaining against the Anabaptists the legitimacy of every old custom that was not obviously contrary to the Swiptures.

Zwingli, moreover, never knew anything of those spiritual experiences which drove Luther into a cloister and goaded him to a feverish "searching of the Scriptures" in the hope of finding spiritual peace.

For Waldo had a translation of the New Testament made into Provençal, and his preachers not only stirred up men to more holy lives but explained the Scriptures at their will.

Eliot produced his Indian translation of the Scriptures in 1661-1663, and by about 1675 there were six Indian churches with some 4 000 converts.

Seeing that the anthropomorphic language used of the angels is similar to that used of God, the Scriptures would hardly seem to require a literal interpretation in either case.

The ancient name of the people of Yemen was Saba (Saba' with final hemza); and the oldest notices of them are in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Hence there appear constant traces of study of the Apostolic writings, so far as these were accessible in the locality of each writer at his date of writing (for the details of this subject, and its bearing on the history of the Canonical Scriptures of the New Testament, see The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, Oxford, 1 9 05).

Some of the priests are learned in the Buddhist scriptures, and most of the Pali scholarship in Siam is to be found in monasteries, but there is no learning of a secular nature.

In the Rig-Veda there is one Apsaras, wife of Gandharva; in the later scriptures there are many Apsaras who act as the handmaidens of Indra and dance before his throne.

For the organization of these churches no divine sanction is claimed, though all are theoretically modelled on the lines laid down in the Christian Scriptures.

It gave birth to a new interest in the Scriptures, being the first definite commentary in the language.

But the Creed was but the condensed essence of the New Testament scriptures, and behind it there lay an appeal to these scriptures, which was especially necessary where (as in the case of the Valentinian Gnostics) the dissident bodies professed to accept the common belief of Christians.

Just as the ancient Scriptures were considered to be the Word of God, so that what they contained was necessarily the true and inspired doctrine, so also the New Testament was available for proving the Church's dogma.

The doctrines of Christianity, and in many communities the customs of the Church, were held to be inferences from the inspired text of the Scriptures.

After the beginning of the 3rd century there were still no doubt men under the control of the hierarchy who experienced the prophetic ecstasy, or clerics like Cyprian who professed to have received special directions from God; but prophets by vocation no longer existed and these sporadic utterances were in no sense placed on a level with the contents of the sacred Scriptures.

Even as professor of Greek he had given great prominence in his lectures to the study of the Scriptures; but he found a much more congenial sphere when, in 1698, he was appointed to the chair of theology.

The Manuductio was translated into English in 1813, under the title A Guide to the Reading and Study of the Holy Scriptures.

In this he not only endeavoured to obviate some objections which were taken to the former part, but continued his inquiries into the doctrines of the Christian religion, religious toleration and the proper rules for interpreting the Scriptures.

The Reformation quickened men's interest in the Scriptures to an extraordinary degree, so that, notwithstanding the adverse attitude adopted by the Roman Church at and after the council of Trent, the translation and circulation of the Bible were taken in hand with fresh zeal, and continued in more systematic fashion.

When the Finnish Bible Society began to publish editions of the Scriptures, the tsar Alexander I.

Impressed by the popular ignorance of the Scriptures, he himself translated, or caused others to translate, the New Testament into French from the Vulgate, and formed an association to distribute copies systematically at low prices.

The prefaces to his various editions contain details as to the methods of this association, and repeatedly insist on the importance of reading the Scriptures.

Protestant missionary societies have engaged energetically in the task not only of translating, but of printing, publishing and distributing the Scriptures.

Thus the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (founded 1698), besides its other activities, has done much to cheapen and multiply copies of the Scriptures, not only in English and Welsh, but in many foreign languages.

In 1722 editions of the Scriptures were also issued in Bohemian and Polish.