Abstract

This study provides an analysis of two written texts belonging to the religious register from a linguistic perspective, The Holy Bible, 1611 Edition, and The Buddha Replies to the Diva-The Teacher, compiled from ancient records by Carus, which were added in the annexes. It starts with a short introduction dealing with conceptual delimitations with special focus on such concepts as register and religious register. The linguistic comparative analysis follows Biber and Conrad’s pattern (2009), describing the linguistic features encountered in the two discussed/analysed texts, focusing on those traits particular to one text or another and eventually emphasizing the non-linguistic features of both texts. Our study explores the vocabulary features, content word classes, derived words, verb features, pronoun features, main clauses and subordinate clauses. The study ends with a few personal conclusions regarding the importance of linguistic resources and linguistic choices which are mainly affected by the way language, although defined by rules, is by no means static; it evolves over time.