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Type of site | Digital library |
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Owner | John Bruno Hare |
Created by | John Bruno Hare |
URL | www |
Commercial | No |
Registration | None |
Launched | March 9, 1999 |
The Internet Sacred Text Archive (ISTA) is a Santa Cruz, California-based website dedicated to the preservation of electronic public domain religious texts.
The website was first opened to the public on March 9, 1999, by John Bruno Hare (1955–2010), in Santa Cruz, California. [1] [2] Hare started building the website from his home in the late 1990s, as "an intellectual challenge". At the time, he was working as a software engineer with a dot-com company, and started by scanning over 1,000 public domain books on religion, folklore and mythology. [3] [4] The reason for its founding was the promotion of religious tolerance through knowledge. [5] [6] Its texts are organized into 77 different categories. The maintenance costs for the website — which as of 2006 [update] received anywhere from five hundred thousand to two million visits a day — are funded by sales of the website on DVD, CD-ROM, or USB flash drive for monetary donations. [1]
The Internet Sacred Text Archive lists three general links, World Religions, Traditions, and Mysteries. The first leads to the texts of the Abrahamic religions, as well as secondary sources describing them. The second leads to indigenous religions, including transcriptions of oral myths. The third leads to Nostradamus's writings, descriptions of Atlantis, and pagan texts. The main page has a site map that is organized alphabetically. [7]
The Easter Bunny is a folkloric figure and symbol of Easter, depicted as a rabbit—sometimes dressed with clothes—bringing Easter eggs. Originating among German Lutherans, the "Easter Hare" originally played the role of a judge, evaluating whether children were good or disobedient in behavior at the start of the season of Eastertide, similar to the "naughty or nice" list made by Santa Claus. As part of the legend, the creature carries colored eggs in its basket, as well as candy, and sometimes toys, to the homes of children. As such, the Easter Bunny again shows similarities to Santa and Christmas by bringing gifts to children on the night before a holiday. The custom was first mentioned in Georg Franck von Franckenau's De ovis paschalibus in 1682, referring to a German tradition of an Easter Hare bringing eggs for the children.
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term 'humanities' referred to the study of classical literature and language, as opposed to the study of religion or 'divinity.' The study of the humanities was a key part of the secular curriculum in universities at the time. Today, the humanities are more frequently defined as any fields of study outside of natural sciences, social sciences, formal sciences, and applied sciences. They use methods that are primarily critical, speculative, or interpretative and have a significant historical element—as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of science.
Dievturība is a contemporary continuation of the ethnic religion of the Latvians from what it was before Christianization in the 13th century. Some scholars call it a neopagan movement, despite being systematized before 1940, and hence rendering the term "neopaganism" irrelevant. Adherents call themselves Dievturi, literally "Dievs' keepers", "people who live in harmony with Dievs". Dievturība is mainly rooted in Latvian folklore, folk songs and Latvian mythology.
Demonology is the study of demons within religious belief and myth. Depending on context, it can refer to studies within theology, religious doctrine, or occultism. In many faiths, it concerns the study of a hierarchy of demons. Demons may be nonhuman separable souls, or discarnate spirits which have never inhabited a body. A sharp distinction is often drawn between these two classes, notably by the Melanesians, several African groups, and others. The Islamic jinn, for example, are not reducible to modified human souls. At the same time these classes are frequently conceived as producing identical results, e.g. diseases.
Religious philosophy is philosophical thinking that is influenced and directed as a consequence of teachings from a particular religion. It can be done objectively, but it may also be done as a persuasion tool by believers in that faith. Religious philosophy is concerned with the nature of religion, theories of salvation, and conceptions of god, gods, and/or the divine.
Elaine Pagels, née Hiesey, is an American historian of religion. She is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Pagels has conducted extensive research into early Christianity and Gnosticism.
Yazidism, also known as Sharfadin, is a monotheistic ethnic religion that originated in Kurdistan and has roots in pre-Zoroastrian Iranian religion, directly derived from the Indo-Iranian tradition. Its followers, called Yazidis, are a Kurdish-speaking community.
Religions are represented on the Internet in many ways. There are sites which attempt to cover all religions, traditions, and faiths, such as Patheos, Religious Tolerance, and Beliefnet. There are also sites that are specific to a religious tradition. Many sites are discussion groups, others host theological debates, and some provide advice concerning religious doctrine. Some sites aim to provide a religious experience facilitating prayer, meditation, or virtual pilgrimages. People also leverage search engines to investigate aspects of religion. Some religious websites are translated into several languages. For example, JW.ORG features content in over 1,000 languages.
Open Library is an online project intended to create "one web page for every book ever published". Created by Aaron Swartz, Brewster Kahle, Alexis Rossi, Anand Chitipothu, and Rebecca Hargrave Malamud, Open Library is a project of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization. It has been funded in part by grants from the California State Library and the Kahle/Austin Foundation. Open Library provides online digital copies in multiple formats, created from images of many public domain, out-of-print, and in-print books.
Celtic neopaganism refers to any type of modern paganism or contemporary pagan movements based on the ancient Celtic religion. One approach is Celtic Reconstructionism (CR), which emphasizes historical accuracy in reviving Celtic traditions. CR practitioners rely on historical sources and archaeology for their rituals and beliefs, including offerings to spirits and deities. Language study and preservation are essential, and daily life often incorporates ritual elements. While distinct from eclectic pagan and neopagan witchcraft traditions, there is some overlap with Neo-druidism.
Open-source religions employ open-source methods for the sharing, construction, and adaptation of religious belief systems, content, and practice. In comparison to religions utilizing proprietary, authoritarian, hierarchical, and change-resistant structures, open-source religions emphasize sharing in a cultural Commons, participation, self-determination, decentralization, and evolution. They apply principles used in organizing communities developing open-source software for organizing group efforts innovating with human culture. New open-source religions may develop their rituals, praxes, or systems of beliefs through a continuous process of refinement and dialogue among participating practitioners. Organizers and participants often see themselves as part of a more generalized open-source and free-culture movement.
New Advent is a Catholic website that provides online versions of various works connected with the Church.
ABC-Clio, LLC is an American publishing company for academic reference works and periodicals primarily on topics such as history and social sciences for educational and public library settings. Since 2021, ABC-Clio and its suite of imprints are collectively imprints of British publishing house Bloomsbury Publishing.
Digital Medievalist is an academic project and community-building organization for those who are interested in the use of computers and computational techniques in the academic field of medieval studies, a sub-field of digital humanities.
Chronicling America is an open access, open source newspaper database and companion website. It is produced by the United States National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The NDNP was founded in 2005. The Chronicling America website was publicly launched in March 2007. It is hosted by the Library of Congress. Much of the content hosted on Chronicling America is in the public domain.
The Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library is a large-scale digital library project, hosted and maintained by the University of Alicante in Alicante, Spain. It comprises the largest open-access repository of digitised Spanish-language historical texts and literature from the Ibero-American world. When officially launched in 1999, the BVMC was the first digital archive of Spanish-language texts on the internet, initially reproducing some 2,000 individual works by 400 of the most significant authors in Spanish, Latin American literary and Hispanic Africa. By 2005–2006 the number of registered and available works had reached over 22,000.
Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives is an academic anthology edited by the American religious studies scholar Michael F. Strmiska which was published by ABC-CLIO in 2005. Containing eight separate papers produced by various scholars working in the field of Pagan studies, the book examines different forms of contemporary Paganism as practiced in Europe and North America. Modern Paganism in World Cultures was published as a part of ABC-CLIO's series of books entitled "Religion in Contemporary Cultures", in which other volumes were dedicated to religious movements like Buddhism and Islam.
Devin J. Stewart is a scholar of Islamic studies and Arabic language and literature. He is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Middle eastern and South Asian studies at Emory University. His research interests include Islamic law, the Qur'an, Islamic schools and branches and varieties of Arabic.
The World Religions and Spirituality Project publishes academic profiles of new and established religious movements, archive material related to some groups, and articles that provide context for the profiles. It is referenced by scholars, journalists, and human rights groups to provide a scholarly representation of threatened communities.
The Media History Digital Library (MHDL) is a non-profit, open access digital archive founded by David Pierce and directed by Eric Hoyt that compiles books, magazines, and other print materials related to the histories of film, broadcasting, and recorded sound and makes these materials accessible online for free. The MHDL both digitizes physical materials and acquires digital copies from outside libraries, archives, collectors, and other collaborators. Most of the material in its more than 2.5 million pages is in the public domain and therefore free for all to use with no restrictions.