World religions texts

The API hosts public domain texts of the world’s religions. Each one is numbered the way people cite it and linked to the Urantia paragraphs closest in meaning. Most of them belong to the religions that Paper 131, “The World’s Religions”, summarizes.

Text	Religion	Translation	Passages	Paper 131
Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book 6	Cynicism	R. D. Hicks, 1925	105 sections	131:1
Discourses 3.22, “On the Calling of a Cynic”	Cynicism	W. A. Oldfather, 1928	22 blocks, sections 1 to 109	131:1
The Dhammapada	Buddhism	F. Max Muller, 1881	414 verses (423 numbers)	131:3
The Bhagavad Gita	Hinduism	Annie Besant, 4th edition, 1922	18 chapters, 701 verses	131:4
Shinto Oracles	Shinto	W. G. Aston, 1905	15 oracles	131:7
The Tao Te Ching	Taoism	James Legge, 1891	81 chapters, 236 paragraphs	131:8
The Analects	Confucianism	James Legge, 1861	20 books, 499 chapters	131:9
The Meaning of the Glorious Koran	Islam	Marmaduke Pickthall, 1930	114 surahs, 6,236 verses	none
The Japji	Sikhism	Max Arthur Macauliffe, 1909	40 passages	none

The Paper 131 column names the section headed with the religion. Paper 131 has no section headed Islam or Sikhism. Diogenes Laertius wrote a biography of the Cynics, not scripture, and the Epictetus text is one chapter of Epictetus’s Discourses. For Judaism and Christianity, use the Bible endpoints. Zoroastrianism and Jainism are planned.

List the texts

curl https://api.urantia.dev/scriptures

Each entry names its translator, year, source, and license, and notes says how the text is numbered or selected:

{
  "id": "dhammapada-muller-1881",
  "slug": "dhammapada",
  "religion": "Buddhism",
  "title": "The Dhammapada",
  "translator": "F. Max Muller",
  "year": 1881,
  "refPrefix": "Dhp",
  "urantiaSection": "131:3",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2017",
  "license": "Public domain in the United States",
  "divisionLabel": "chapter",
  "unitLabel": "verse",
  "passageCount": 414,
  "refLevels": 1,
  "notes": null
}

GET /scriptures/{corpus} returns one text with its chapters (books, for the Analects) and the first and last reference of each. The corpus can be the slug, the id, or the ref prefix: bhagavad-gita, bhagavad-gita-besant-1922, and bg are the same.

Get passages

# One verse
curl https://api.urantia.dev/scriptures/bhagavad-gita/2.47
# A range, up to 50
curl https://api.urantia.dev/scriptures/bg/2.47-49
# A whole chapter
curl https://api.urantia.dev/scriptures/tao-te-ching/25
# Dhammapada verse 183
curl https://api.urantia.dev/scriptures/dhammapada/183

{
  "id": "dhammapada-muller-1881:Dhp 183",
  "ref": "Dhp 183",
  "division": 14,
  "divisionTitle": "The Buddha (The Awakened)",
  "text": "Not to commit any sin, to do good, and to purify one's mind, that is the teaching of (all) the Awakened."
}

References:

Bhagavad Gita: chapter and verse, BG 2.47
Koran: surah and verse, Quran 2.255, in the standard count of 6,236 verses
Analects: book and chapter, Analects 15.23
Diogenes Laertius: book and section, DL 6.20. Each section also names the life it belongs to, such as Diogenes
Tao Te Ching: chapter and paragraph, TTC 25.1. Ask for 25 to get the whole chapter
Epictetus: book, chapter, and section, Epictetus 3.22.45. Oldfather numbers every fifth section, so each passage covers up to five sections, and 3.22.47 returns Epictetus 3.22.45-49. Ask for 3.22 to get the whole chapter
Dhammapada: the verses are numbered straight through the book, so Dhp 183 is verse 183, not chapter 183. Muller combines a few pairs of verses, such as Dhp 58-59. Asking for either number returns the pair
Japji: Japji 0 is the opening (the Mul Mantar), Japji 1 to Japji 38 are the pauris, and Japji 39 is the closing slok
Shinto oracles: Oracle 1 to Oracle 15. Aston does not number them, so the numbers follow his order, and each oracle carries its shrine as its title

refLevels on each text says how many numbers a full reference has. The prefix is optional, and 2:47 works the same as 2.47.

Urantia paragraphs for a passage

curl https://api.urantia.dev/scriptures/dhammapada/5/urantia-parallels

Returns the passage, the chunk that holds it, and the 10 closest Urantia paragraphs. A chunk is a group of short passages of about one Urantia paragraph in length. A Tao Te Ching chunk is one whole chapter.

{
  "data": {
    "chunk": {
      "id": "dhammapada-muller-1881:Dhp 3",
      "reference": "Dhp 3-5",
      "text": "... For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule."
    },
    "urantiaParallels": [
      {
        "standardReferenceId": "140:3.15",
        "paperTitle": "The Ordination of the Twelve",
        "text": "“I say to you: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who despitefully use you. ...",
        "similarity": 0.38,
        "rank": 3
      }
    ]
  }
}

Passages for a Urantia paragraph

Add scriptureParallels to include on any single-paragraph endpoint:

curl 'https://api.urantia.dev/paragraphs/131:8.3?include=scriptureParallels'
curl 'https://api.urantia.dev/paragraphs/2:5.1?include=bibleParallels,scriptureParallels'

The response gains a scriptureParallels array: the 3 closest chunks from each text, 27 in all, grouped by text in the order of the list. Each entry carries its corpus (title, religion, translator, year), the chunk reference and text, and the similarity and rank. It also works with format=rag.

Search by meaning

curl -X POST https://api.urantia.dev/scriptures/search/semantic \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"q":"do your duty without attachment to results","limit":5}'

Searches every text, or one with "corpus": "bhagavad-gita". Each result carries its top Urantia paragraphs; set urantiaParallelLimit from 0 to 10 (default 3).

How the links are made

The links are semantic parallels, not curated ones. Each chunk and each Urantia paragraph is embedded with OpenAI’s text-embedding-3-large, and the closest pairs are stored in both directions. A link means “close in meaning by this model”. It does not claim that two teachings are the same. Use the links as starting points for reading, and as context for AI agents. As a check, we asked whether each text finds its own religion’s section of Paper 131. For the Dhammapada, the Gita, the Tao Te Ching, and the Analects, 69% to 93% of the chunks have that section in their top 10 Urantia paragraphs. 60% of the Shinto oracles have 131:7 in their top 10. By chance it would be well under 1%. For a study that compares Paper 131 with earlier anthologies of world scripture, see Matthew Block’s source studies.

Sources

Text	Source
Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book 6	Wikisource, Hicks translation
Discourses 3.22	Wikisource, Oldfather translation
The Dhammapada	Project Gutenberg 2017, from Sacred Books of the East, volume 10
The Bhagavad Gita	Wikisource, Besant 4th edition
Shinto Oracles	Wikisource, Aston, Shinto: The Way of the Gods, chapter 14. The oracles come from the Wa Rongo (1669)
The Tao Te Ching	Project Gutenberg 216, from Sacred Books of the East, volume 39
The Analects	Project Gutenberg 4094
The Meaning of the Glorious Koran	Project Gutenberg 16955, which prints three translations side by side. Only Pickthall’s is used
The Japji	Wikisource, Macauliffe, The Sikh Religion, volume 1

The text keeps the translator’s own words and spelling, including the parentheses that Muller, Legge, and Pickthall use for words they added. Page headers, footnotes, and the Chinese and Sanskrit lines are not included. Aston’s own summaries of oracles he does not quote are not included either.

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World religions texts

List the texts

Get passages

Urantia paragraphs for a passage

Passages for a Urantia paragraph

Search by meaning

How the links are made

Sources

​List the texts

​Get passages

​Urantia paragraphs for a passage

​Passages for a Urantia paragraph

​Search by meaning

​How the links are made

​Sources

List the texts

Get passages

Urantia paragraphs for a passage

Passages for a Urantia paragraph

Search by meaning

How the links are made

Sources