Franciscan Studies, Theology, and Applied Ethics

Gives users access to searchable, fast-loading, high-resolution images of the scrolls, as well as short explanatory videos and background information on the texts and their history.

Engine which searches the full text of several versions (in several languages) of the Judeo-Christian Bible.

Online archive of sacred texts from many of the world's religions. Scroll down the left side and click on a tradition.

Tufts University's digital library project, containing materials related to: Greece & Rome, Renaissance, 19th century America and more. Access to Greek and Latin lexica.

This site has thousands of full-text articles on Religious Studies, but its focuses are Christianity and sociology.

Ancient leather and papyrus scrolls first discovered in 1947 in caves on the NW shore of the Dead Sea. MORE

Book of the Bible, literally meaning "second law," last of the five books (the Pentateuch or Torah) ascribed by tradition to Moses. Deuteronomy purports to be the final words of Moses to the people of Israel on the eve of their crossing the Jordan to take possession of Canaan. MORE

Prophetic book of the Bible. It is a collection of prophecies from a 300-year period attributed to Isaiah, who may have been a priest. MORE

Christian name for the Hebrew Bible, which serves as the first division of the Christian Bible (see New Testament). MORE

From The New Encyclopedia of Judaism
The first five books of the BIBLE, known in Hebrew as the ḥumash (from the root ḥ-m-sh, meaning “five”) or the TORAH. It would appear that the division into these five books had already been made long before the destruction of the Second Temple. MORE

In Judaism, elaborately decorated and dressed Torah scroll housed in the ark in every synagogue. The scrolls are handwritten in Hebrew on vellum (calf, lamb, or kid skin) by a scribe who has trained for seven years. MORE

In Judaism, the first five books of the Tenakh, or Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament). MORE

From The New Encyclopedia of Judaism
The term “Ashkenazi Hasidism” denotes several groups of Jewish scholars who flourished in Germany in the second half of the 12th century and the first half of the 13th and created new concepts in Jewish thought, mysticism, and ethics. MORE

Members of a small Jewish religious order, originating in the 2d cent. B.C. MORE

Jewish religious movement founded in Poland in the 18th cent. by Baal-Shem-Tov. Its name derives from Hasidim. Hasidism, which stressed the mercy of God and encouraged joyous religious expression through music and dance, spread rapidly. Baal-shem-tov taught that purity of heart is more pleasing to God than learning.

Liberal Jewish movement. Reform communities vary, but tend to question the authority of the Talmud (Jewish laws). MORE

One of the two major geographic divisions of the Jewish people, consisting of those Jews whose forebears in the Middle Ages resided in the Iberian Peninsula. MORE

The rise of the Zionist movement in the late 19th cent. was influenced by nationalist currents in Europe, as well as by the secularization of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, which led many assimilated Jewish intellectuals to seek a new basis for a Jewish national life. MORE