SJSU Research Guides: Humanities: Primary Sources

Gateways to Sacred Texts (Online)

From Primitives to Zen
A compilation of texts from all world religions, from the myths of the Australian aborigines to the legends of African, Amerind, Polynesian, Greek, Indian, Near Eastern, and Japanese peoples.
Internet Sacred Text Archive
Digital Collections (Bavarian State Library)
Links to digitized manuscripts and manuscript collections (scroll down to find texts relevant to Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Asian religions)
Bibliotheca Religiosa IntraText
Full-text digital library offering books and corpora as lexical hypertexts on Creative Commons License
The British Library’s Online Gallery
Scroll through the list of digitized texts and manuscripts to find those relevant to religious studies
Humanistic Texts
Includes a wide variety of religious and non-religious texts preceded by useful introductions

Books in the King Library:

Ballou, Robert O., ed. The Bible of the World. New York: The Viking Press, 1939. [King 6th Floor BL70 .B5]
Dye, James W. & William H. Forthman, compilers. Religions of the World; Selected Readings. New York, Appleton Century Crofts, 1967. [King 6th Floor BL29 .D9]
Gaer, Joseph. The Wisdom of the Living Religions. New York: Dodd, Mead,1956. [King Reference 2nd Floor BL 29 .G27]
Miller, John & Aaron Kenedi, eds. God's Breath: Sacred Scriptures of the World. New York: Marlowe & Co., 1999. [King Nonfiction 3rd Floor 291.82 God's]
Pye, Michael. Comparative Religion; An Introduction through Source Materials. New York: Harper & Row, 1972. [King 6th Floor BL29 .P9 1972b]

Online (web):

Online (SJSU):

Leaman, Oliver, ed. Eastern Philosophy: The Key Readings. London: Routledge, 2000.

Books in the King Library:

The Pali Canon [Theravada Buddhist Scriptures]. Oxford: Pali Text Society, 1997-2005. [King Ethnic Studies Reference 5th Floor BQ1332.E54 D38 1997]
Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, 12 vols. New York: Parke, Austin & Lipscomb, 1917. [King Reference 2nd Floor PJ 408 .S3]

Online (web):

Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics (all the content on this site is potentially primary in nature, but see especially the link to Historic Church Documents)
sermonindex.net (access Christian sermons in video, text, or audio formats)
BibleGateway.com (a tool for reading and researching scripture online; provides advanced searching capabilities, which allow readers to find and compare particular passages in scripture based on keywords, phrases, or scripture reference)
Christian Classics Ethereal Library (writings by the Church Fathers and other classic Christian writings)
The Dead Sea Scrolls at the Gnostic Society Library
Book Illuminations from the Reichenau Monastery (Bavarian State Library)
The Bible [Latin Vulgate], with King James translation

Books in the King Library:

Bettenson, Henry Scowcroft. The Early Christian Fathers; A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Clement of Rome to St. Athanasius. London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1956. [King 6th Floor BR63 .B4]
Charles, R. H., ed. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English. 2 Vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968. [King Reference 2nd Floor BS1692 1968]
Pritchard, James B., ed. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969. [King Reference 2nd Floor BS1180 .P83 1969]
Richardson, Cyril Charles. Early Christian Fathers. Philadelphia: Westminister Press, 1953. [King 6th Floor BR60 .R5]

Online (web):

Books in the King Library:

Abdel Haleem, M.A.S., trans. The Qur'an. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. [King 6th Floor BP109 2004]
Ali, A. Yusuf, trans. The Holy Qur'an. Indianapolis: American Trust Pubns. for the Muslim Student's Association of the United States and Canada, 1977. [King 6th Floor BP109 1977x]
Khalifa, Rashad, trans. Quran: The Final Testament. Tucson: Islamic Productions, 1989. [King Reference 2nd Floor BP109 .K44 1989]
Sells, Michael, trans. Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations. Ashland, OR: White Cloud Press, 1999. [King Nonfiction 3rd Floor 297.1226 Quran]

Online (web):

Books in the King Library:

The Dead Sea Scriptures, with introd. and notes by Theodor H. Gaster. Garden City, N.Y. Anchor Books, 1976. [King Reference 2nd Floor BM487 .A363]
Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures [The new JPS translation according to the traditional Hebrew text]. Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society, 1985. [King Reference 2nd Floor BS895 .J4 1985a]
The Talmud [Talmud Bavli]: the Steinsaltz Edition. Commentary by Adin Steinsaltz. New York: Random House, 1989- [King Reference 2nd Floor BM499.5 .E4 1989]