eNewsletter
Please find below a number of websites and references to various religions. If you find that a link is bad, please let the Reference staff know. These resources are scholarly, many are from university research centers, and all should be considered reputable sources.
Comparative Religion | Buddhism | Christianity/Bible | Hinduism | Islam/Islamic Studies | Judaism
Comparative Religion
ATLA Websites on Religion offers growing, selective, annotated collection of web resources for the study of religion, curated by the American Theological Library Association. World Religions, Biblical Literature, and Sacred Texts (besides Judeo-Christian scriptures).
Internet Sacred Text Archive is a freely available archive of electronic texts about religion, mythology, legends and folklore, and occult and esoteric topics. Texts are presented in English translation and, where possible, in the original language. The site has one of the largest collections of transcriptions of complete books on Native American, Pacific, African, Asian and other traditional people’s religion, spiritual practices, mythology and folklore. While many of these pre-20th century books are flawed due to orientalist or colonialist biases, they are also eye-witness accounts by reliable observers, typically at the moment of contact.
The Hermetically Open Archive contains more than 25,000 occult texts covering “Hermetics, Rosicrucians, Theosophy, alchemy, mysticism, Gnosis and Western Esotericism, Sufism, Kabbalah, Anthroposophy, Catharism, Freemasonry, Manichaeism, Judaica, the Grail, Esotericism, and comparative religion.” From Amsterdam’s Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica (the Ritman Library).
Buddhism
buddhanet – Buddhist education and information network, through the Buddha Dharma Education Association.
Access to Insight – readings in Theravada Buddhism “dedicated to providing accurate, reliable, and useful information concerning the practice and study of Theravada Buddhism, as it has been handed down to us through both the written word of the Pali canon and the living example of the Sangha.”
Study Buddhism – “an extensive source of authentic Buddhist teachings, presented in a down-to-earth and practical way….[the]aim is to make the wisdom of Tibet available and accessible to our modern world….the next generation of The Berzin Archives, founded in 2001 by Dr. Alexander Berzin, a Buddhist teacher, translator and practitioner with more than 50 years of experience.”
Tibetan and Himalayan Library – “publisher of websites, information services, and networking facilities relating to the Tibetan plateau and southern Himalayan regions. THL promotes the integration of knowledge and community across the divides of academic disciplines, the historical and the contemporary, the religious and the secular, the global and the local. In addition to more typical academic projects, THL promotes participatory knowledge that is created by and benefits local communities, while including contributors from all walks of life around the world. Data includes text, audio-video, images, maps, immersive objects, reference works, and interpretative essays.” Developed in part through the University of Virginia.
Christianity/Bible
Christian Classics Ethereal Library – “An excellent resource for electronic texts: the Bible, commentaries, hymns, sermons, Early Church Fathers (38 vols.), and many texts from the history of Christianity.”
Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (CAL) The CAL is a text base of the Aramaic texts in all dialects from the earliest (9th Century BCE) through the 13th Century CE, currently with a database of approximately 3 million lexically parsed words, and an associated set of electronic tools for analyzing and manipulating the data, whose ultimate goal is the creation of a complete lexicon of the language.” Contains Targumim and Peshitta of OT texts, as well as Syriac translations of the New Testament.
Hinduism
Sanatana Dharma Hinduism – “is dedicated to providing quality information on Hinduism and related religions that originated in India, without belittling other religions. We aim to represent mainstream Hinduism for Hindus all over the world, not just a particular community, caste or nation. We focus on the essential principles, beliefs and practices of Hinduism, not a particular version or variety, as found in the ancient scriptures. . . . we want to present the richness and diversity of Hinduism without aligning ourselves to any particular sectarian movement, guru tradition or practice.”
Islam and Islamic Studies
Judaism
Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon – A new dictionary of the Aramaic language…by an international team of scholars, with headquarters at the Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati….[to] cover all dialects and periods of ancient Aramaic, one of the principal languages of antiquity…especially for the Jewish and Christian religions.”
Shamash: the Jewish network. Shamash is the oldest and best known Jewishly oriented service accessible through the Internet. Shamash serves the full spectrum of Jewish religious, educational, cultural, communal, and social service organizations interested in using technology to share information and deliver services to the Jewish community worldwide.”