Sacred Texts

April 24, 2003 5:02 PM

The Internet Sacred Text Archive is an online archive of electronic texts about religion, mythology, and various esoteric topics. The site has many complete books from a wide variety of traditions, including the only (to their knowledge) comprehensive online translations of the Kalevala, Shinto texts, and the Upanishads. There's a lot of fascinating stuff here.
posted by homunculus (12 comments total)

Hmm. This "Moses" guy doesn't seem to be a reliable source. Perhaps we could have a little MeFi detective work?
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:40 PM on April 24, 2003

What, no Scientology?
posted by Blue Stone at 7:05 PM on April 24, 2003

I don't know about the others sections, but the content on (Tibetan) Buddhism is good (with nice texts from Sogyal Rinpoche, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and Dalai Lama, for example), and something very basic about Hinduism, with the classic sacred texts like Rig Veda, Mahabarata, Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads etc, with just one or two translations (I can't tell if they're the best versions, I've read different ones - and there are hundreds of translations of theses texts, believe me). I didn't click on all links, but in that area it looks like a reliable source to me.
posted by nandop at 7:37 PM on April 24, 2003

distributed proofreaders does books for them sometimes, so if you wanted to help out...
posted by rhyax at 7:39 PM on April 24, 2003

Very good find, I'm bookmarking this. Don't miss the section on Native American spiritual beliefs. It's not as complete as the other sections, but some of the stories that they do have are quite compelling. Some of them have a little too much of the anthropologist's take on the traditional stories, but they're worth a look anyway.
posted by Space Coyote at 8:19 PM on April 24, 2003

Great post, and an invaluable source of information.

Thanks, homunculus.
posted by hama7 at 8:28 PM on April 24, 2003

Thanks, homunculus.

My pleasure, hama7. Actually, I may have first come across it in one of your posts, so thank you too!

What, no Scientology?

Nothing on the Hot Tub Mystery Religion either. Go figure.
posted by homunculus at 8:51 PM on April 24, 2003

[this is good]

My litmus test for a religious database is the Baha'i Faith. They are usually missing or under-represented. This collection of works is most impressive, and with official sanction, no less.
posted by frykitty at 11:48 PM on April 24, 2003

Good stuff, thanks homunculus
posted by Tarrama at 1:23 AM on April 25, 2003

Don't miss the English folklore. The Australian section is good too.
posted by plep at 2:50 AM on April 25, 2003

Man, this is why I love Metafilter. A post like this is a thousand times better than any other IraqiFilter post.

Thanks Homunculus.
posted by Dantien at 1:49 PM on April 25, 2003

A post like this is a thousand times better than any other IraqiFilter post.

I get those out of my system elsewhere. Everything has its place.
posted by homunculus at 2:02 PM on April 25, 2003