The Internet Sacred Texts Archive

Find Religious Information About All World Religions Online, Free

Nov 11, 2009

The Internet Sacred Texts Archive offers its visitors a chance to view ancient, rare, and holy texts from across the world, all without leaving their home.

One of the great uses of the internet is the free distribution of information. Much of this information is difficult to access for people living in rural or isolated locations, or for people with disabilities. The internet allows anyone, regardless of economic or other limitations, to find the information they need. The Internet Sacred Texts Archive is part of this knowledge sharing system.

Sacred Texts No Longer Hidden or Hard to Find

Religious ignorance is often encouraged by a lack of accessibility to accurate sources of information. Many people living in small communities don't have a copy of the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita in their local library. Some books are too precious or obscure to be widely distributed. But the information contained in these texts is a crucial component of world history and world religious thought.

The internet is a perfect form for disseminating sacred texts to encourage religious tolerance. The Sacred Texts archive takes advantage of this, offering hundreds of texts covering all religions, traditions, and spiritual paths, as well as other related topics like folklore or superstition.

The site is run by a handful of volunteers, and has a simple mission – to allow everyone to access the important books of each faith, so they can read them first hand. They also are making an effort to provide more historically accurate and honest information on native cultures, which has been lacking on the internet since it's beginning.

Only Public Domain Texts Can be Added to the Archive

Unfortunately, the archive isn't as complete as some people would prefer, due to copyright restrictions. Only works in the public domain, who's copyright have expired, can be archived. Works still within their copyright terms can appear on the site with the author and publisher's permission. However, few copyright holders have given the site that permission.

The organizers of the site spend as much as they can afford to buy rare and disappearing texts to add to the archive. To help cover those costs, as well as the costs of hosting the massive amount of data contained in all of those books, they sell copies of the archives on DVD and various collections, such as magic and mystery texts. They even sell a full feature interactive Bible disk at a much lower price than any other DVD Bible found online.

A Boon to Researchers and the Religion Seeker

Unlike many sites offering religious information online, the Sacred Texts Archive doesn't paraphrase or condense information, but instead simply offer unaltered texts from scholars, religious authorities, and researchers. They do translate some of the works, but they make all attempts to be as accurate as possible.

One big problem with the majority of religious information available online is the inaccuracy or misrepresentation of many non-Western belief systems. Often these sites are authored by people with little to no experience or knowledge of the religion they are writing about. In the worst cases, these sites are authored by people with a specific intent to disseminate incorrect information about certain religions.

When seeking information about a specific belief system, it's best to go as directly to the source as one can. A book about Tibetan Buddhism written by the head of a monastery in Tibet is much more likely to be an accurate representation of that faith that a website authored by someone who has never practiced Buddhism or visited Tibet.

Some of the texts offered at the archive can be downloaded in a .zip file, while others can only be read online. Either way, the information is easy to access, and free of cost. The information can even be used for build information websites or for other projects, since almost all of the texts are public domain.

Read the Bible, Koran, Talmud, or Torah Online for Free

The Internet Sacred Text Archive may not be fancy or as interactive as many modern websites are, but it serves an important purpose. It allows anyone with an internet connection to read sacred and historical texts that they may otherwise not have access to. By encouraging the free sharing of this information, it works against religious intolerance and ignorance.

The copyright of the article The Internet Sacred Texts Archive in Religious Tolerance is owned by Jessica Kolifrath. Permission to republish The Internet Sacred Texts Archive in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.