bahaiwritings

The Bahá'í Writings in JSON format with supporting JSON Schema and meta-data.

Note that this repository used to host the web app now at bahai-browser; this repository has been reserved for the Bahá'í Writings and texts only.

See the web app in action, see some videos introducing the app, or see the repository for the web app.

Although the TextBrowser project for which this repository includes content is open sourced under the MIT license (as is the specific JSON formatting (and schema and meta-data files) of this repository), the contents of this data repository are under their own licenses and their copyright is retained. The usage terms of the Baha'i Writings are described at http://www.bahai.org/legal. The Qur'an and Bible translations (Rodwell/Sale and the King James) as well as the notes of Sale and Rodwell are in the public domain. The Baha'i translation cross-references are under the MIT license. Lights of Guidance is under its own copyright as is the Collins bibliography.

Installation

npm install bahaiwritings

Note that the schema files to which the included schema files belong are at https://github.com/bahaidev/textbrowser-data-schemas/tree/main/schemas.

To-dos

1. Specific works

   1. Hidden Words

      1. Wiki links to Bahai9.com

   2. Aqdas

      1. Passages translated/excerpted by Shoghi Effendi

      2. For index, add links to other entries, serving as cross-reference

   3. Qur'an and Bible

      1. Re-build based on formatted copies so as not to lose visual distinguishability, e.g., Sale's many superscripts, etc.

      2. Parse an Arabic Qur'án into Rodwell's verses and all of the Rodwell/Sale and Bahá'í references into traditional versing

      3. There is a good amount of invalid XHTML in the JSON databases for the Qur'an and Bible (links w/o quotes) that would ideally be replaced (Tidy script?) as well as the XHTML and link locations in the Iqan copy (would just be nice to be clean and polyglot-friendly for any XHTML5 uses)

      4. Integrate from https://bahai-library.com/lippitt_bible_bahai_index.

   4. Collins

      1. Need to split Collins into own repo? (or describe terms)

      2. Upload newer Collins and fix any bugs in formatting.

      3. Add Collins language metadata for each field

      4. Lower priority: If implementing combining of fields, add Collins for this.

      5. Add any other reasonable browse_options

   5. Other works

      1. Encode more Writings into TextBrowser JSON

Testing

You will first need to run npm install.

The syntax used in the tests currently only works in a modern browser. Note that this may lock up your terminal as the validator must load and process all of the files (including child files):

npm test

You can also run the browser tests via npm start (from http://127.0.0.1:8082/test/). Note, however, that this may lock up the browser as there are many files to load.

Background

For background of this project, see TextBrowser's History section.

Justification

While there was a letter from the international governing body of the Bahá'í Faith (online at http://bahai-library.com/uhj_interlinear_writings_cta), suggesting that interlinear publications are not necessary for the Bahá'í Writings, I do not think that this guidance pertains to our project for the following reasons:

• The context appears to be more about official print publications which would need to justify resources being spent on such specialized text versions. The original question refers to Publishing Trusts and the response speaks of "all other readers" (besides those comparing with the Persian/Arabic originals) being distracted, whereas online, there are minimal (and non-official) resources being spent to provide the works, so there is no concern for distraction of other readers (and those using our TextBrowser-based tool can indeed selectively disable any column they wish).

• Besides allowing those already familiar with English (or other translations) and Arabic/Persian, to confirm the original meaning, the availability of such interlinear tools allows for comparison by language learners who, although as per the letter, learning the original language is not required in the Bahá'í Faith, the learning of the original is very much praised as evident in the quotations at https://bahai9.com/wiki/Persian and https://bahai9.com/wiki/Arabic.

• Our software tool is not confined to displaying translations multilinearly. For example, the version of the Qur'án herein included also provide notes which can be viewed interlinearly (from translators whose works were, at least for the time when translations into English were not as abundant, recommended for use or study by Bahá'ís), and study of such notes was even recommended by Shoghi Effendi. More such non-translation fields, including automated ones, are planned. And the tool can even be used for viewing merely the paragraph number and a single language of text. (While the notes of Rodwell were not recommended, and are indeed often antagonistic or skeptical of His Holiness Muhammad, they are provided largely for the sake of Biblical cross-references, and can be selectively omitted from view.)