Sacred Texts

THERE is surely no need to-day to insist on the importance of a close study of the Koran for all who would comprehend the many vital problems connected with the Islamic World; and yet few of us, I imagine, among the many who possess translations of this book have been at pains to read it through. It must, however, be borne in mind that the Koran plays a far greater role among the Muhammadans than does the Bible in Christianity in that it provides not only the canon of their faith, but also the textbook of their ritual and the principles of their Civil Law.

The Icelandic Eddas are the only vernacular record of Germanic heathendom as it developed during the four centuries which in England saw the destruction of nearly all traces of the heathen system. The so-called Elder Edda is a collection of some thirty poems, mythic and heroic in substance, interspersed with short pieces of prose, which survives in a thirteenth-century MS., known as the Codex Regius, discovered in Iceland in 1642.

The New Testament first translated into English from the original tongue by William Tyndale: printed partially in 1525, and completely in 1526.

King James Version : Apocryphal Books : Bell and the Dragon, Prayer of Azariah, (Missing parts of the Book of Daniel), 4 Ezra, 1, 2, 3, 4 Maccabees, Book of Tobit, Book of Baruch, Epistle of Jeremiah : Historical records and account of Jewish and Middle Eastern history removed from Protestant Bibles in 1826. King James Version from the Apocrypha... Larger Print Edition.

SCARCELY any department of theological science has, in the last few decades, received such marked S\attention and cultivation as that branch for which the Germans have adopted the felicitous appellation Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte,-the study of the age of Christ in its political, social, and religious aspects. The Schodde Translation of the Book of Enoch of 1882.

I wrote out a translation of the Yî King, embracing both the Text and the Appendixes, in 1854 and 1855; and have to acknowledge that when the manuscript was completed, I knew very little about the scope and method of the book. I laid the volumes containing the result of my labour aside, and hoped, believed indeed, that the light would by and by dawn, and that I should one day get hold of a clue that would guide me to a knowledge of the mysterious classic.

Over the years the sands of Egypt have surrendered countless treasures and archaeological wonders, and now they have yielded another spectacular find: the Gospel, of Judas, recently discovered and published here for the first time. The very title of the text, the Gospel of Judas -- Judas Iscariot -- -is shocking.