127-595: The Kitáb-i-Íqán ( Persian : كتاب ايقان , Arabic : كتاب الإيقان " Book of Certitude ") is a book written by Baháʼu'lláh , the founder of the Baháʼí Faith . It is the religion's primary theological work and one of many texts that Baháʼís hold sacred . It is considered the second most important book in the Baháʼí writings, with the most important being the Kitáb-i-Aqdas . One Baháʼí scholar states that it can be regarded as
254-570: A 3rd–4th century Christian author wrote in his early-4th-century Latin Institutiones Divinae ( Divine Institutes ): But all scripture is divided into two Testaments. That which preceded the advent and passion of Christ—that is, the law and the prophets —is called the Old; but those things which were written after His resurrection are named the New Testament. The Jews make use of the Old, we of
381-638: A Dari dialect. In the 19th century, under the Qajar dynasty , the dialect that is spoken in Tehran rose to prominence. There was still substantial Arabic vocabulary, but many of these words have been integrated into Persian phonology and grammar. In addition, under the Qajar rule, numerous Russian , French , and English terms entered the Persian language, especially vocabulary related to technology. The first official attentions to
508-629: A Gentile, and similarly for the Gospel of Matthew, though most assert Jewish-Christian authorship. However, more recently the above understanding has been challenged by the publication of evidence showing only educated elites after the Jewish War would have been capable of producing the prose found in the Gospels. Authorship of the Gospels remains divided among both evangelical and critical scholars. The names of each Gospel stems from church tradition, and yet
635-463: A corpus of fourteen "Pauline" epistles. While many scholars uphold the traditional view, some question whether the first three, called the "Deutero-Pauline Epistles", are authentic letters of Paul. As for the latter three, the "Pastoral epistles", some scholars uphold the traditional view of these as the genuine writings of the Apostle Paul; most regard them as pseudepigrapha . One might refer to
762-418: A dictionary called Words of Scientific Association ( لغت انجمن علمی ), which was completed in the future and renamed Katouzian Dictionary ( فرهنگ کاتوزیان ). The first academy for the Persian language was founded on 20 May 1935, under the name Academy of Iran . It was established by the initiative of Reza Shah Pahlavi , and mainly by Hekmat e Shirazi and Mohammad Ali Foroughi , all prominent names in
889-658: A different tradition and body of testimony. In addition, most scholars agree that the author of Luke also wrote the Acts of the Apostles . Scholars hold that these books constituted two-halves of a single work, Luke–Acts . The same author appears to have written the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, and most refer to them as the Lucan texts. The most direct evidence comes from the prefaces of each book; both were addressed to Theophilus , and
1016-500: A language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Farsi , which is the Persian word for the Persian language, has also been used widely in English in recent decades, more often to refer to Iran's standard Persian. However, the name Persian is still more widely used. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has maintained that the endonym Farsi is to be avoided in foreign languages, and that Persian
1143-417: A literary language considerably different from the spoken Persian of the time. This became the basis of what is now known as "Contemporary Standard Persian". There are three standard varieties of modern Persian: All these three varieties are based on the classic Persian literature and its literary tradition. There are also several local dialects from Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan which slightly differ from
1270-451: A lord over them, saith the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the LORD, I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people; and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying: 'Know the LORD'; for they shall all know Me, from
1397-529: A period of several centuries, Ottoman Turkish (which was highly Persianised itself) had developed toward a fully accepted language of literature, and which was even able to lexically satisfy the demands of a scientific presentation. However, the number of Persian and Arabic loanwords contained in those works increased at times up to 88%. In the Ottoman Empire, Persian was used at the royal court, for diplomacy, poetry, historiographical works, literary works, and
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#17328454131011524-511: A scholarly consensus that many New Testament books were not written by the individuals whose names are attached to them. Scholarly opinion is that names were fixed to the gospels by the mid second century AD. Many scholars believe that none of the gospels were written in the region of Palestine . Christian tradition identifies John the Apostle with John the Evangelist , the supposed author of
1651-580: A speaker of Persian. Persian is a member of the Western Iranian group of the Iranian languages , which make up a branch of the Indo-European languages in their Indo-Iranian subdivision . The Western Iranian languages themselves are divided into two subgroups: Southwestern Iranian languages, of which Persian is the most widely spoken, and Northwestern Iranian languages, of which Kurdish and Balochi are
1778-594: A uniformity of doctrine concerning the Mosaic Law , Jesus, faith, and various other issues. All of these letters easily fit into the chronology of Paul's journeys depicted in Acts of the Apostles. The author of the Epistle of James identifies himself in the opening verse as "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ". From the middle of the 3rd century, patristic authors cited the Epistle as written by James
1905-644: Is a continuation of Middle Persian , an official language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE), itself a continuation of Old Persian , which was used in the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE). It originated in the region of Fars ( Persia ) in southwestern Iran. Its grammar is similar to that of many European languages. Throughout history, Persian was considered prestigious by various empires centered in West Asia , Central Asia , and South Asia . Old Persian
2032-610: Is a direct descendant of Middle and Old Persian. Gernot Windfuhr considers new Persian as an evolution of the Old Persian language and the Middle Persian language but also states that none of the known Middle Persian dialects is the direct predecessor of Modern Persian. Ludwig Paul states: "The language of the Shahnameh should be seen as one instance of continuous historical development from Middle to New Persian." The known history of
2159-812: Is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan , as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran . It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet , a derivative of the Arabic script , and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet , a derivative of the Cyrillic script . Modern Persian
2286-654: Is attested in Old Persian cuneiform on inscriptions from between the 6th and 4th century BC. Middle Persian is attested in Aramaic -derived scripts ( Pahlavi and Manichaean ) on inscriptions and in Zoroastrian and Manichaean scriptures from between the third to the tenth centuries (see Middle Persian literature ). New Persian literature was first recorded in the ninth century, after the Muslim conquest of Persia , since then adopting
2413-425: Is conventionally divided into three stages: Early New Persian remains largely intelligible to speakers of Contemporary Persian, as the morphology and, to a lesser extent, the lexicon of the language have remained relatively stable. New Persian texts written in the Arabic script first appear in the 9th-century. The language is a direct descendant of Middle Persian, the official, religious, and literary language of
2540-500: Is foreign to the original Hebrew word brit (בְּרִית) describing it, which only means 'alliance, covenant, pact' and never 'inheritance instructions after death'. This use comes from the transcription of Latin testamentum 'will (left after death)', a literal translation of Greek diatheke (διαθήκη) 'will (left after death)', which is the word used to translate Hebrew brit in the Septuagint . The choice of this word diatheke , by
2667-455: Is not actually attested until 600 years later when it appears in the Sassanid era (224–651 AD) inscriptions, so any form of the language before this date cannot be described with any degree of certainty. Moreover, as a literary language, Middle Persian is not attested until much later, in the 6th or 7th century. From the 8th century onward, Middle Persian gradually began yielding to New Persian, with
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#17328454131012794-452: Is often thought that John the Apostle is John the Evangelist , i.e. author of the Gospel of John ) or to another John designated " John of Patmos " after the island where the text says the revelation was received (1:9). Some ascribe the writership date as c. 81–96 AD, and others at around 68 AD. The work opens with letters to seven local congregations of Asia Minor and thereafter takes
2921-468: Is one of Afghanistan's two official languages, together with Pashto . The term Dari , meaning "of the court", originally referred to the variety of Persian used in the court of the Sasanian Empire in capital Ctesiphon , which was spread to the northeast of the empire and gradually replaced the former Iranian dialects of Parthia ( Parthian ). Tajik Persian ( форси́и тоҷикӣ́ , forsi-i tojikī ),
3048-570: Is one of the earliest attested Indo-European languages. According to certain historical assumptions about the early history and origin of ancient Persians in Southwestern Iran (where Achaemenids hailed from), Old Persian was originally spoken by a tribe called Parsuwash , who arrived in the Iranian Plateau early in the 1st millennium BCE and finally migrated down into the area of present-day Fārs province. Their language, Old Persian, became
3175-529: Is scholarly debate as to the reason why the translators of the Septuagint chose the term diatheke to translate Hebrew brit , instead of another Greek word generally used to refer to an alliance or covenant. The use of the phrase New Testament ( Koine Greek : Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη , Hē Kainḕ Diathḗkē ) to describe a collection of first- and second-century Christian Greek scriptures can be traced back to Tertullian in his work Against Praxeas . Irenaeus uses
3302-486: Is the appropriate designation of the language in English, as it has the longer tradition in western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. Iranian historian and linguist Ehsan Yarshater , founder of the Encyclopædia Iranica and Columbia University 's Center for Iranian Studies, mentions the same concern in an academic journal on Iranology , rejecting
3429-557: Is the major theological work of Baháʼu'lláh, and hence of the Baháʼí Faith. It is sometimes referred to as the completion of the Persian Bayán . Shoghi Effendi , head of the Baháʼí Faith from 1921 to 1957, referred to the work as follows: A model of Persian prose, of a style at once original, chaste and vigorous, and remarkably lucid, both cogent in argument and matchless in its irresistible eloquence, this Book, setting forth in outline
3556-501: Is written as follows: "Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James". The debate has continued over the author's identity as the apostle, the brother of Jesus, both, or neither. The Gospel of John, the three Johannine epistles , and the Book of Revelation , exhibit marked similarities, although more so between the gospel and the epistles (especially the gospel and 1 John) than between those and Revelation. Most scholars therefore treat
3683-486: The Encyclopædia Iranica notes that the Iranian, Afghan, and Tajiki varieties comprise distinct branches of the Persian language, and within each branch a wide variety of local dialects exist. The following are some languages closely related to Persian, or in some cases are considered dialects: More distantly related branches of the Iranian language family include Kurdish and Balochi . The Glottolog database proposes
3810-502: The Kalila wa Dimna . The language spread geographically from the 11th century on and was the medium through which, among others, Central Asian Turks became familiar with Islam and urban culture. New Persian was widely used as a trans-regional lingua franca , a task aided due to its relatively simple morphology, and this situation persisted until at least the 19th century. In the late Middle Ages, new Islamic literary languages were created on
3937-651: The British colonization , Persian was widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent . It took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts on the subcontinent and became the sole "official language" under the Mughal emperors . The Bengal Sultanate witnessed an influx of Persian scholars, lawyers, teachers, and clerics. Thousands of Persian books and manuscripts were published in Bengal. The period of
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4064-614: The Epistle to the Laodiceans and the Third Epistle to the Corinthians as examples of works identified as pseudonymous. Since the early centuries of the church, there has been debate concerning the authorship of the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews, and contemporary scholars generally reject Pauline authorship. The epistles all share common themes, emphasis, vocabulary and style; they exhibit
4191-434: The Gospel of John . Traditionalists tend to support the idea that the writer of the Gospel of John himself claimed to be an eyewitness in their commentaries of John 21 :24 and therefore the gospel was written by an eyewitness. This idea is rejected by the majority of modern scholars. Most scholars hold to the two-source hypothesis , which posits that the Gospel of Mark was the first gospel to be written . On this view,
4318-719: The Hebrew Bible ; together they are regarded as Sacred Scripture by Christians. The New Testament is a collection of Christian texts originally written in the Koine Greek language, at different times by various authors. While the Old Testament canon varies somewhat between different Christian denominations , the 27-book canon of the New Testament has been almost universally recognized within Christianity since at least Late Antiquity . Thus, in almost all Christian traditions today,
4445-560: The Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages . Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran , Afghanistan , and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties , respectively Iranian Persian (officially known as Persian ), Dari Persian (officially known as Dari since 1964), and Tajiki Persian (officially known as Tajik since 1999). It
4572-453: The Jewish Bible 's Book of Jeremiah , Judaism traditionally disagrees: Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; forasmuch as they broke My covenant, although I was
4699-580: The Ottoman Empire . The uncle of the Báb , Ḥájí Mírzá Siyyid Muḥammad, had been perplexed to hear that the promised one of Islam was his own nephew. When he was told that this was the same objection voiced by the uncle of the prophet Muhammad of Islam, he was shaken and decided to investigate the matter. In 1861 he traveled to Karbala , Iraq, to visit his brother, Ḥájí Mírzá Ḥasan-ʻAlí, and then went to Baghdad to meet Baháʼu'lláh. There he posed four questions about
4826-655: The Sultanate of Rum , Turkmen beyliks of Anatolia , Delhi Sultanate , the Shirvanshahs , Safavids , Afsharids , Zands , Qajars , Khanate of Bukhara , Khanate of Kokand , Emirate of Bukhara , Khanate of Khiva , Ottomans , and also many Mughal successors such as the Nizam of Hyderabad . Persian was the only non-European language known and used by Marco Polo at the Court of Kublai Khan and in his journeys through China. A branch of
4953-688: The Turkic , Armenian , Georgian , & Indo-Aryan languages . It also exerted some influence on Arabic, while borrowing a lot of vocabulary from it in the Middle Ages. Some of the world's most famous pieces of literature from the Middle Ages, such as the Shahnameh by Ferdowsi , the works of Rumi , the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám , the Panj Ganj of Nizami Ganjavi , The Divān of Hafez , The Conference of
5080-483: The ezāfe construction, expressed through ī (modern e/ye ), to indicate some of the relations between words that have been lost with the simplification of the earlier grammatical system. Although the "middle period" of the Iranian languages formally begins with the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the transition from Old to Middle Persian had probably already begun before the 4th century BC. However, Middle Persian
5207-585: The " Persianized " Turko-Mongol dynasties during the 12th to 15th centuries, and under restored Persian rule during the 16th to 19th centuries. Persian during this time served as lingua franca of Greater Persia and of much of the Indian subcontinent . It was also the official and cultural language of many Islamic dynasties, including the Samanids, Buyids , Tahirids , Ziyarids , the Mughal Empire , Timurids , Ghaznavids , Karakhanids , Seljuqs , Khwarazmians ,
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5334-553: The "most influential Quran commentary in Persian outside the Muslim world," because of its international audience. The Kitáb-i-Íqán is sometimes referred to as the Book of Íqán or simply The Íqán . The Kitáb-i-Íqán was composed partly in Persian and partly in Arabic by Baháʼu'lláh , the founder of the Baháʼí Faith, in 1861, when he was living as an exile in Baghdad , then a province of
5461-611: The 2nd century. The Pauline letters are the thirteen New Testament books that present Paul the Apostle as their author. Paul's authorship of six of the letters is disputed. Four are thought by most modern scholars to be pseudepigraphic , i.e., not actually written by Paul even if attributed to him within the letters themselves. Opinion is more divided on the other two disputed letters (2 Thessalonians and Colossians). These letters were written to Christian communities in specific cities or geographical regions, often to address issues faced by that particular community. Prominent themes include
5588-636: The Apostle ( Acts 16:10–17 ; arguing for an authorship date of c. AD 62 ), which is corroborated by Paul's Letter to the Colossians ( Col. 4:14 ), Letter to Philemon ( Philem. 23–24 ), and Second Letter to Timothy ( 2 Tim. 4:11 ), the gospel account of Luke "was received as having apostolic endorsement and authority from Paul and as a trustworthy record of the gospel that Paul preached" (e.g. Rom. 2:16 , according to Eusebius in Ecclesiastical History 3.4.8). The word testament in
5715-437: The Apostles is a narrative of the apostles' ministry and activity after Christ's death and resurrection, from which point it resumes and functions as a sequel to the Gospel of Luke . Examining style, phraseology, and other evidence, modern scholarship generally concludes that Acts and the Gospel of Luke share the same author, referred to as Luke–Acts . Luke–Acts does not name its author. Church tradition identified him as Luke
5842-564: The Baháʼí Faith as a Manifestation of God therefore appear only in veiled form. Christopher Buck, author of a major study of the Kitáb-i-Íqán , has referred to this theme of the book as its "messianic secret", paralleling the same theme in the Gospel of Mark in the Christian New Testament . Shoghi Effendi gave the following lengthy description of the book's content: Within a compass of two hundred pages it proclaims unequivocally
5969-672: The Birds by Attar of Nishapur , and the miscellanea of Gulistan and Bustan by Saadi Shirazi , are written in Persian. Some of the prominent modern Persian poets were Nima Yooshij , Ahmad Shamlou , Simin Behbahani , Sohrab Sepehri , Rahi Mo'ayyeri , Mehdi Akhavan-Sales , and Forugh Farrokhzad . There are approximately 130 million Persian speakers worldwide, including Persians , Lurs , Tajiks , Hazaras , Iranian Azeris , Iranian Kurds , Balochs , Tats , Afghan Pashtuns , and Aimaqs . The term Persophone might also be used to refer to
6096-610: The Epistle to the Hebrews does not internally claim to have been written by the Apostle Paul , some similarities in wordings to some of the Pauline Epistles have been noted and inferred. In antiquity, some began to ascribe it to Paul in an attempt to provide the anonymous work an explicit apostolic pedigree. In the 4th century, Jerome and Augustine of Hippo supported Paul's authorship . The Church largely agreed to include Hebrews as
6223-437: The Evangelist , the companion of Paul, but the majority of scholars reject this due to the many differences between Acts and the authentic Pauline letters, though most scholars still believe the author, whether named Luke or not, met Paul . The most probable date of composition is around 80–90 AD, although some scholars date it significantly later, and there is evidence that it was still being substantially revised well into
6350-407: The Gospels were written forty to sixty years after the death of Jesus. They thus do not present eyewitness or contemporary accounts of Jesus's life and teaching." The ESV Study Bible claims the following (as one argument for gospel authenticity): Because Luke , as a second generation Christian, claims to have retrieved eyewitness testimony ( Luke 1:1–4 ), in addition to having traveled with Paul
6477-432: The Grand Redemptive Scheme of God, occupies a position unequalled by any work in the entire range of Baháʼí literature, except the Kitáb-i-Aqdas , Baháʼu'lláh's Most Holy Book. Persian language Russia Persian ( / ˈ p ɜːr ʒ ən , - ʃ ən / PUR -zhən, -shən ), also known by its endonym Farsi ( فارسی , Fārsī [fɒːɾˈsiː] ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to
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#17328454131016604-412: The Jewish translators of the Septuagint in Alexandria in the 3rd and 2nd century BCE, has been understood in Christian theology to imply a reinterpreted view of the Old Testament covenant with Israel as possessing characteristics of a 'will left after death' (the death of Jesus ) and has generated considerable attention from biblical scholars and theologians: in contrast to the Jewish usage where brit
6731-559: The Just . Ancient and modern scholars have always been divided on the issue of authorship. Many consider the epistle to be written in the late 1st or early 2nd centuries. The author of the First Epistle of Peter identifies himself in the opening verse as "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ", and the view that the epistle was written by St. Peter is attested to by a number of Church Fathers : Irenaeus (140–203), Tertullian (150–222), Clement of Alexandria (155–215) and Origen of Alexandria (185–253). Unlike The Second Epistle of Peter ,
6858-500: The Middle Ages, and is because of the lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The standard Persian of Iran has been called, apart from Persian and Farsi , by names such as Iranian Persian and Western Persian , exclusively. Officially, the official language of Iran is designated simply as Persian ( فارسی , fārsi ). The standard Persian of Afghanistan has been officially named Dari ( دری , dari ) since 1958. Also referred to as Afghan Persian in English, it
6985-453: The New Testament consists of 27 books: The earliest known complete list of the 27 books is found in a letter written by Athanasius , a 4th-century bishop of Alexandria , dated to 367 AD. The 27-book New Testament was first formally canonized during the councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) in North Africa. Pope Innocent I ratified the same canon in 405, but it is probable that a Council in Rome in 382 under Pope Damasus I gave
7112-416: The New Testament were all or nearly all written by Jewish Christians —that is, Jewish disciples of Christ, who lived in the Roman Empire , and under Roman occupation . The author of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts is frequently thought of as an exception; scholars are divided as to whether he was a Gentile or a Hellenistic Jew . A few scholars identify the author of the Gospel of Mark as probably
7239-462: The New Testament were only a few among many other early Christian gospels. The existence of such texts is even mentioned at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke. Many non-canonical gospels were also written, all later than the four canonical gospels, and like them advocating the particular theological views of their various authors. In modern scholarship, the Synoptic Gospels are the primary sources for reconstructing Christ's ministry. The Acts of
7366-407: The New: but yet they are not discordant, for the New is the fulfilling of the Old, and in both there is the same testator, even Christ, who, having suffered death for us, made us heirs of His everlasting kingdom, the people of the Jews being deprived and disinherited. As the prophet Jeremiah testifies when he speaks such things: "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new testament to
7493-429: The Ottoman Empire all spoke Persian, such as Sultan Selim I , despite being Safavid Iran's archrival and a staunch opposer of Shia Islam . It was a major literary language in the empire. Some of the noted earlier Persian works during the Ottoman rule are Idris Bidlisi 's Hasht Bihisht , which began in 1502 and covered the reign of the first eight Ottoman rulers, and the Salim-Namah , a glorification of Selim I. After
7620-459: The Persian language can be divided into the following three distinct periods: As a written language , Old Persian is attested in royal Achaemenid inscriptions. The oldest known text written in Old Persian is from the Behistun Inscription , dating to the time of King Darius I (reigned 522–486 BC). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran , Romania ( Gherla ), Armenia , Bahrain , Iraq , Turkey, and Egypt . Old Persian
7747-425: The Persian language, a language historically called Dari, emerged in present-day Afghanistan. The first significant Persian poet was Rudaki . He flourished in the 10th century, when the Samanids were at the height of their power. His reputation as a court poet and as an accomplished musician and singer has survived, although little of his poetry has been preserved. Among his lost works are versified fables collected in
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#17328454131017874-401: The Persian model: Ottoman Turkish , Chagatai Turkic , Dobhashi Bengali , and Urdu, which are regarded as "structural daughter languages" of Persian. "Classical Persian" loosely refers to the standardized language of medieval Persia used in literature and poetry . This is the language of the 10th to 12th centuries, which continued to be used as literary language and lingua franca under
8001-487: The Perso-Arabic script. Persian was the first language to break through the monopoly of Arabic on writing in the Muslim world , with Persian poetry becoming a tradition in many eastern courts. It was used officially as a language of bureaucracy even by non-native speakers, such as the Ottomans in Anatolia , the Mughals in South Asia, and the Pashtuns in Afghanistan. It influenced languages spoken in neighboring regions and beyond, including other Iranian languages,
8128-428: The Sasanian Empire (224–651). However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known as pārsīk , commonly called Pahlavi), which was spoken by the people of Fars and used in Zoroastrian religious writings. Instead, it is descended from the dialect spoken by the court of the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon and the northeastern Iranian region of Khorasan , known as Dari. The region, which comprised
8255-427: The Sassanids (who were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). While Ibn al-Muqaffa' (eighth century) still distinguished between Pahlavi (i.e. Parthian) and Persian (in Arabic text: al-Farisiyah) (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date. "New Persian" (also referred to as Modern Persian)
8382-407: The Seljuks, the Sultanate of Rum , took Persian language, art, and letters to Anatolia. They adopted the Persian language as the official language of the empire. The Ottomans , who can roughly be seen as their eventual successors, inherited this tradition. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire. The educated and noble class of
8509-441: The area of Lake Urmia in the records of Shalmaneser III . The exact identity of the Parsuwash is not known for certain, but from a linguistic viewpoint the word matches Old Persian pārsa itself coming directly from the older word * pārćwa . Also, as Old Persian contains many words from another extinct Iranian language, Median , according to P. O. Skjærvø it is probable that Old Persian had already been spoken before
8636-424: The attainment by every true seeker of the object of his quest; demonstrates the validity, the sublimity and significance of the Báb 's Revelation; acclaims the heroism and detachment of His disciples; foreshadows, and prophesies the world-wide triumph of the Revelation promised to the people of the Bayán ; upholds the purity and innocence of the Virgin Mary ; glorifies the Imams of the Faith of Muhammad; celebrates
8763-419: The authors of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke used as sources the Gospel of Mark and a hypothetical Q document to write their individual gospel accounts. These three gospels are called the Synoptic Gospels , because they include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes in exactly the same wording. Scholars agree that the Gospel of John was written last, by using
8890-440: The authors of the Gospels do not identify themselves in their respective texts. All four gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are anonymous works . The Gospel of John claims to be based on eyewitness testimony from the Disciple whom Jesus loved , but never names this character. The author of Luke-Acts claimed to access an eyewitness to Paul ; this claim remains accepted by most scholars. Objections to this viewpoint mainly take
9017-436: The authorship of which was debated in antiquity, there was little debate about Peter's authorship of this first epistle until the 18th century. Although 2 Peter internally purports to be a work of the apostle, many biblical scholars have concluded that Peter is not the author. For an early date and (usually) for a defense of the Apostle Peter's authorship see Kruger, Zahn, Spitta, Bigg, and Green. The Epistle of Jude title
9144-523: The blindness and perversity of the divines and doctors of every age; cites and elucidates the allegorical passages of the New Testament , the abstruse verses of the Quran , and the cryptic Muhammadan traditions which have bred those age-long misunderstandings, doubts and animosities that have sundered and kept apart the followers of the world's leading religious systems; enumerates the essential prerequisites for
9271-592: The book is the substantive discourse and deals with specific proofs, both theological and logical, of the mission of the Báb. One of the best-known passages of this part is known as the "Tablet of the True Seeker". While Baháʼu'lláh had claimed to have received a revelation some ten years earlier in the Síyáh-Chál (lit. "black pit"), a dungeon in Tehran , he had not yet openly declared his mission. References to his own station in
9398-457: The code fas for the dialects spoken across Iran and Afghanistan. This consists of the individual languages Dari ( prs ) and Iranian Persian ( pes ). It uses tgk for Tajik, separately. In general, the Iranian languages are known from three periods: namely Old, Middle, and New (Modern). These correspond to three historical eras of Iranian history ; Old era being sometime around the Achaemenid Empire (i.e., 400–300 BC), Middle era being
9525-512: The collapse of the Sassanid state, Parsik came to be applied exclusively to (either Middle or New) Persian that was written in the Arabic script . From about the 9th century onward, as Middle Persian was on the threshold of becoming New Persian, the older form of the language came to be erroneously called Pahlavi , which was actually but one of the writing systems used to render both Middle Persian as well as various other Middle Iranian languages. That writing system had previously been adopted by
9652-506: The drawing up of his Antitheses, centres in this, that he may establish a diversity between the Old and the New Testaments, so that his own Christ may be separate from the Creator , as belonging to this rival God, and as alien from the law and the prophets . By the 4th century , the existence—even if not the exact contents—of both an Old and New Testament had been established. Lactantius ,
9779-459: The epistle to the Hebrews, based on its distinctive style and theology, which are considered to set it apart from Paul's writings. The final book of the New Testament is the Book of Revelation , also known as the Apocalypse of John. In the New Testament canon, it is considered prophetical or apocalyptic literature . Its authorship has been attributed either to John the Apostle (in which case it
9906-490: The existence and oneness of a personal God , unknowable, inaccessible, the source of all Revelation , eternal, omniscient, omnipresent and almighty; asserts the relativity of religious truth and the continuity of Divine Revelation; affirms the unity of the Prophets , the universality of their Message, the identity of their fundamental teachings, the sanctity of their scriptures, and the twofold character of their stations; denounces
10033-683: The expression "New Testament" refers to a Christian new covenant that Christians believe completes or fulfils the Mosaic covenant (the Jewish covenant) that Yahweh (the God of Israel) made with the people of Israel on Mount Sinai through Moses , described in the books of the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. While Christianity traditionally even claims this Christian new covenant as being prophesied in
10160-632: The extent of its influence on certain languages of the Indian subcontinent. Words borrowed from Persian are still quite commonly used in certain Indo-Aryan languages, especially Hindi - Urdu (also historically known as Hindustani ), Punjabi , Kashmiri , and Sindhi . There is also a small population of Zoroastrian Iranis in India, who migrated in the 19th century to escape religious execution in Qajar Iran and speak
10287-444: The five as a single corpus of Johannine literature , albeit not from the same author. The gospel went through two or three "editions" before reaching its current form around AD 90–110. It speaks of an unnamed "disciple whom Jesus loved" as the source of its traditions, but does not say specifically that he is its author; Christian tradition identifies this disciple as the apostle John , but while this idea still has supporters, for
10414-450: The following phylogenetic classification: New Testament The New Testament ( NT ) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon . It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus , as well as events relating to first-century Christianity . The New Testament's background, the first division of the Christian Bible, is called the Old Testament , which is based primarily upon
10541-621: The form of an apocalypse , a "revealing" of divine prophecy and mysteries, a literary genre popular in ancient Judaism and Christianity. The order in which the books of the New Testament appear differs between some collections and ecclesiastical traditions. In the Latin West, prior to the Vulgate (an early 5th-century Latin version of the Bible), the four Gospels were arranged in the following order: Matthew, John, Luke, and Mark. The Syriac Peshitta places
10668-484: The form of the following two interpretations, but also include the claim that Luke-Acts contains differences in theology and historical narrative which are irreconcilable with the authentic letters of Paul the Apostle . According to Bart D. Ehrman of the University of North Carolina , none of the authors of the Gospels were eyewitnesses or even explicitly claimed to be eyewitnesses of Jesus's life. Ehrman has argued for
10795-562: The formation of many modern languages in West Asia, Europe, Central Asia , and South Asia . Following the Turko-Persian Ghaznavid conquest of South Asia , Persian was firstly introduced in the region by Turkic Central Asians. The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties. For five centuries prior to
10922-471: The formation of the Achaemenid Empire and was spoken during most of the first half of the first millennium BCE. Xenophon , a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BCE, which is when Old Persian was still spoken and extensively used. He relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like
11049-566: The fourteenth letter of Paul, and affirmed this authorship until the Reformation . The letter to the Hebrews had difficulty in being accepted as part of the Christian canon because of its anonymity. As early as the 3rd century, Origen wrote of the letter, "Men of old have handed it down as Paul's, but who wrote the Epistle God only knows." Contemporary scholars often reject Pauline authorship for
11176-521: The guidance, the benefit and salvation of all mankind. Well may it be claimed that of all the books revealed by the Author of the Baháʼí Revelation, this Book alone, by sweeping away the age-long barriers that have so insurmountably separated the great religions of the world, has laid down a broad and unassailable foundation for the complete and permanent reconciliation of their followers. The Kitáb-i-Íqán
11303-461: The house of Israel and the house of Judah, not according to the testament which I made to their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; for they continued not in my testament, and I disregarded them, saith the Lord." ... For that which He said above, that He would make a new testament to the house of Judah, shows that the old testament which was given by Moses
11430-461: The language of the Persians. Related to Old Persian, but from a different branch of the Iranian language family, was Avestan , the language of the Zoroastrian liturgical texts. The complex grammatical conjugation and declension of Old Persian yielded to the structure of Middle Persian in which the dual number disappeared, leaving only singular and plural, as did gender. Middle Persian developed
11557-444: The late second century, the four narrative accounts of the life and work of Jesus Christ have been referred to as "The Gospel of ..." or "The Gospel according to ..." followed by the name of the supposed author. The first author to explicitly name the canonical gospels is Irenaeus of Lyon , who promoted the four canonical gospels in his book Against Heresies , written around 180. These four gospels that were eventually included in
11684-414: The least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more. The word covenant means 'agreement' (from Latin con-venio 'to agree' lit. 'to come together'): the use of the word testament , which describes the different idea of written instructions for inheritance after death, to refer to the covenant with Israel in the Old Testament,
11811-581: The major Catholic epistles (James, 1 Peter, and 1 John) immediately after Acts and before the Pauline epistles. The order of an early edition of the letters of Paul is based on the size of the letters: longest to shortest, though keeping 1 and 2 Corinthians and 1 and 2 Thessalonians together. The Pastoral epistles were apparently not part of the Corpus Paulinum in which this order originated and were later inserted after 2 Thessalonians and before Philemon. Hebrews
11938-534: The martyrdom, and lauds the spiritual sovereignty, of the Imam Husayn ; unfolds the meaning of such symbolic terms as " Return ," " Resurrection ," " Seal of the Prophets " and " Day of Judgment "; adumbrates and distinguishes between the three stages of Divine Revelation; and expatiates, in glowing terms, upon the glories and wonders of the " City of God ," renewed, at fixed intervals, by the dispensation of Providence, for
12065-557: The mid-to-late second century, contemporaneous with the publication of the first New Testament canon. Whether the Gospels were composed before or after 70 AD, according to Bas van Os, the lifetime of various eyewitnesses that includes Jesus's own family through the end of the First Century is very likely statistically. Markus Bockmuehl finds this structure of lifetime memory in various early Christian traditions. The New Oxford Annotated Bible claims, "Scholars generally agree that
12192-432: The middle-period form only continuing in the texts of Zoroastrianism . Middle Persian is considered to be a later form of the same dialect as Old Persian. The native name of Middle Persian was Parsig or Parsik , after the name of the ethnic group of the southwest, that is, "of Pars ", Old Persian Parsa , New Persian Fars . This is the origin of the name Farsi as it is today used to signify New Persian. Following
12319-525: The most widely spoken. The term Persian is an English derivation of Latin Persiānus , the adjectival form of Persia , itself deriving from Greek Persís ( Περσίς ), a Hellenized form of Old Persian Pārsa ( 𐎱𐎠𐎼𐎿 ), which means " Persia " (a region in southwestern Iran, corresponding to modern-day Fars ). According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the term Persian as
12446-461: The nationalist movement of the time. The academy was a key institution in the struggle to re-build Iran as a nation-state after the collapse of the Qajar dynasty. During the 1930s and 1940s, the academy led massive campaigns to replace the many Arabic , Russian , French , and Greek loanwords whose widespread use in Persian during the centuries preceding the foundation of the Pahlavi dynasty had created
12573-495: The necessity of protecting the Persian language against foreign words, and to the standardization of Persian orthography , were under the reign of Naser ed Din Shah of the Qajar dynasty in 1871. After Naser ed Din Shah, Mozaffar ed Din Shah ordered the establishment of the first Persian association in 1903. This association officially declared that it used Persian and Arabic as acceptable sources for coining words. The ultimate goal
12700-414: The next period most officially around the Sasanian Empire , and New era being the period afterward down to present day. According to available documents, the Persian language is "the only Iranian language" for which close philological relationships between all of its three stages are established and so that Old, Middle, and New Persian represent one and the same language of Persian; that is, New Persian
12827-713: The northern part of Greece). Vardar Yenicesi differed from other localities in the Balkans insofar as that it was a town where Persian was also widely spoken. However, the Persian of Vardar Yenicesi and throughout the rest of the Ottoman-held Balkans was different from formal Persian both in accent and vocabulary. The difference was apparent to such a degree that the Ottomans referred to it as "Rumelian Persian" ( Rumili Farsisi ). As learned people such as students, scholars and literati often frequented Vardar Yenicesi, it soon became
12954-529: The official language of the Achaemenid kings. Assyrian records, which in fact appear to provide the earliest evidence for ancient Iranian (Persian and Median) presence on the Iranian Plateau, give a good chronology but only an approximate geographical indication of what seem to be ancient Persians. In these records of the 9th century BCE, Parsuwash (along with Matai , presumably Medians) are first mentioned in
13081-475: The phrase New Testament several times, but does not use it in reference to any written text. In Against Marcion , written c. 208 AD, Tertullian writes of: the Divine Word, who is doubly edged with the two testaments of the law and the gospel . And Tertullian continues later in the book, writing: it is certain that the whole aim at which he [ Marcion ] has strenuously laboured, even in
13208-496: The post-resurrection appearances, but the emptiness of the tomb implies a resurrection). The word "gospel" derives from the Old English gōd-spell (rarely godspel ), meaning "good news" or "glad tidings". Its Hebrew equivalent being "besorah" (בְּשׂוֹרָה). The gospel was considered the "good news" of the coming Kingdom of Messiah , and the redemption through the life and death of Jesus, the central Christian message. Starting in
13335-563: The preceding epistles. These letters are believed by many to be pseudepigraphic. Some scholars (e.g., Bill Mounce, Ben Witherington, R.C. Sproul) will argue that the letters are genuinely Pauline, or at least written under Paul's supervision. The Epistle to the Hebrews addresses a Jewish audience who had come to believe that Jesus was the Anointed One (Hebrew: מָשִׁיחַ—transliterated in English as "Moshiach", or "Messiah"; Greek: Χριστός—transliterated in English as "Christos", for " Christ ") who
13462-462: The preface to the Acts of the Apostles references "my former book" about the ministry of Jesus. Furthermore, there are linguistic and theological similarities between the two works, suggesting that they have a common author. The Pauline epistles are the thirteen books in the New Testament traditionally attributed to Paul of Tarsus . Seven letters are generally classified as "undisputed", expressing contemporary scholarly near consensus that they are
13589-679: The present territories of northwestern Afghanistan as well as parts of Central Asia, played a leading role in the rise of New Persian. Khorasan, which was the homeland of the Parthians, was Persianized under the Sasanians. Dari Persian thus supplanted Parthian language , which by the end of the Sasanian era had fallen out of use. New Persian has incorporated many foreign words, including from eastern northern and northern Iranian languages such as Sogdian and especially Parthian. The transition to New Persian
13716-484: The previous ones and, often in veiled terms, prophesying the advent of the next one. Since the questioner is a Muslim, Baháʼu'lláh uses verses from the Bible to show how a Christian could interpret his own sacred texts in allegorical terms to come to believe in the next religion. By extension, the same method of interpretation can be used for a Muslim to see the validity of the claims of the Báb. The second and longer part of
13843-631: The region during the following centuries. Persian continued to act as a courtly language for various empires in Punjab through the early 19th century serving finally as the official state language of the Sikh Empire , preceding British conquest and the decline of Persian in South Asia. Beginning in 1843, though, English and Hindustani gradually replaced Persian in importance on the subcontinent. Evidence of Persian's historical influence there can be seen in
13970-589: The reign of Sultan Ghiyathuddin Azam Shah is described as the "golden age of Persian literature in Bengal". Its stature was illustrated by the Sultan's own correspondence and collaboration with the Persian poet Hafez ; a poem which can be found in the Divan of Hafez today. A Bengali dialect emerged among the common Bengali Muslim folk, based on a Persian model and known as Dobhashi ; meaning mixed language . Dobhashi Bengali
14097-585: The relationship both to broader " pagan " society, to Judaism, and to other Christians. [Disputed letters are marked with an asterisk (*).] The last four Pauline letters in the New Testament are addressed to individual persons. They include the following: [Disputed letters are marked with an asterisk (*).] All of the above except for Philemon are known as the pastoral epistles . They are addressed to individuals charged with pastoral oversight of churches and discuss issues of Christian living, doctrine and leadership. They often address different concerns to those of
14224-568: The same list first. These councils also provided the canon of the Old Testament, which included the deuterocanonical books. There is no scholarly consensus on the date of composition of the latest New Testament texts. John A. T. Robinson , Dan Wallace , and William F. Albright dated all the books of the New Testament before 70 AD. Many other scholars, such as Bart D. Ehrman and Stephen L. Harris , date some New Testament texts much later than this; Richard Pervo dated Luke–Acts to c. 115 AD , and David Trobisch places Acts in
14351-524: The signs of the appearance of the promised one in writing to Baháʼu'lláh. The 200 pages (in original languages) of the Kitáb-i-Íqán were written in the course of at most two days and two nights in reply about January 15, 1861. The Kitáb-i-Íqán was probably the first work of Bahá’u’lláh published in print. A lithographed edition was published by relatives of the Báb (the Afnáns ) in Bombay , India , around 1882 by
14478-657: The site of a flourishing Persianate linguistic and literary culture. The 16th-century Ottoman Aşık Çelebi (died 1572), who hailed from Prizren in modern-day Kosovo , was galvanized by the abundant Persian-speaking and Persian-writing communities of Vardar Yenicesi, and he referred to the city as a "hotbed of Persian". Many Ottoman Persianists who established a career in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul ) pursued early Persian training in Saraybosna, amongst them Ahmed Sudi . The Persian language influenced
14605-561: The standard Persian of Tajikistan, has been officially designated as Tajik ( тоҷикӣ , tojikī ) since the time of the Soviet Union . It is the name given to the varieties of Persian spoken in Central Asia in general. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa for the Persian language, as its coding system is mostly based on the native-language designations. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses
14732-741: The standard Persian. The Hazaragi dialect (in Central Afghanistan and Pakistan), Herati (in Western Afghanistan), Darwazi (in Afghanistan and Tajikistan), Basseri (in Southern Iran), and the Tehrani accent (in Iran, the basis of standard Iranian Persian) are examples of these dialects. Persian-speaking peoples of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan can understand one another with a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility . Nevertheless,
14859-478: The use of Farsi in foreign languages. Etymologically, the Persian term Farsi derives from its earlier form Pārsi ( Pārsik in Middle Persian ), which in turn comes from the same root as the English term Persian . In the same process, the Middle Persian toponym Pārs ("Persia") evolved into the modern name Fars. The phonemic shift from /p/ to /f/ is due to the influence of Arabic in
14986-412: The work of Paul: Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon. Six additional letters bearing Paul's name do not currently enjoy the same academic consensus: Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus. The anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews is, despite unlikely Pauline authorship, often functionally grouped with these thirteen to form
15113-430: The Ḥasaní Zívar Press. It was first translated into English in 1904, one of the first works of Baháʼu'lláh to appear in English. Shoghi Effendi re-translated the work into English in 1931. The Kitáb-i-Íqán consists of two parts. The first part of the book deals with the foundational discourse that divine revelation is progressive and religions are related to one another, with each major monotheistic religion accepting
15240-578: Was already complete by the era of the three princely dynasties of Iranian origin, the Tahirid dynasty (820–872), Saffarid dynasty (860–903), and Samanid Empire (874–999). Abbas of Merv is mentioned as being the earliest minstrel to chant verse in the New Persian tongue and after him the poems of Hanzala Badghisi were among the most famous between the Persian-speakers of the time. The first poems of
15367-468: Was not perfect; but that which was to be given by Christ would be complete. Eusebius describes the collection of Christian writings as "covenanted" (ἐνδιαθήκη) books in Hist. Eccl. 3.3.1–7; 3.25.3; 5.8.1; 6.25.1. Each of the four gospels in the New Testament narrates the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth (the gospel of Mark in the original text ends with the empty tomb and has no account of
15494-586: Was patronised and given official status under the Sultans of Bengal , and was a popular literary form used by Bengalis during the pre-colonial period, irrespective of their religion. Following the defeat of the Hindu Shahi dynasty, classical Persian was established as a courtly language in the region during the late 10th century under Ghaznavid rule over the northwestern frontier of the subcontinent . Employed by Punjabis in literature, Persian achieved prominence in
15621-604: Was predicted in the writings of the Hebrew Scriptures. The author discusses the superiority of the new covenant and the ministry of Jesus, to the Mosaic Law Covenant and urges the readers in the practical implications of this conviction through the end of the epistle. The book has been widely accepted by the Christian church as inspired by God and thus authoritative, despite the acknowledgment of uncertainties about who its human author was. Regarding authorship, although
15748-600: Was taught in state schools, and was also offered as an elective course or recommended for study in some madrasas . Persian learning was also widespread in the Ottoman-held Balkans ( Rumelia ), with a range of cities being famed for their long-standing traditions in the study of Persian and its classics, amongst them Saraybosna (modern Sarajevo , Bosnia and Herzegovina), Mostar (also in Bosnia and Herzegovina), and Vardar Yenicesi (or Yenice-i Vardar, now Giannitsa , in
15875-453: Was the usual Hebrew word used to refer to pacts, alliances and covenants in general, like a common pact between two individuals, and to the one between God and Israel in particular, in the Greek world diatheke was virtually never used to refer to an alliance or covenant (one exception is noted in a passage from Aristophanes ) and referred instead to a will left after the death of a person. There
16002-484: Was to prevent books from being printed with wrong use of words. According to the executive guarantee of this association, the government was responsible for wrongfully printed books. Words coined by this association, such as rāh-āhan ( راهآهن ) for "railway", were printed in Soltani Newspaper ; but the association was eventually closed due to inattention. A scientific association was founded in 1911, resulting in
16129-471: Was variously incorporated into the Corpus Paulinum either after 2 Thessalonians, after Philemon (i.e. at the very end), or after Romans. Luther's canon , found in the 16th-century Luther Bible , continues to place Hebrews, James, Jude, and the Apocalypse (Revelation) last. This reflects the thoughts of the Reformer Martin Luther on the canonicity of these books. It is considered the books of
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