Online Gallery of Sacred Texts: British Library

The British Library's Online Gallery of  Sacred Texts is a terrific resource for studying the major world religions.  The site includes a wealth of material, some of which can be esaily adapted for lessons. Here are a couple of features of the site that I particularly like.

An interactive feature called "Sacred Stories" allows you to hear one or two major stories from each religion. For example, you can click on the Buddhist text and hear the story "The Elephant and the Blind Man" or the  "The Moneky King and the Spider."  If you click on the Sikhism text,  you can hear the story of "Malik Bhago and Lalo.

In another interesting feature, curators and other experts offer their opinions on some of the major texts.  For example, Susan Whitfield, director of the Dunhuang Project at the British Library, discusses the Diamond Sutra. William Dalrymple discusses marriage contracts of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last of the Mughal Emperors. You can read the transcripts of the curators on the different texts or you can listen to an audio version of their text.

   

 Another interesting interactive feature allows you to compare the Abrahamic faiths by clicking on different elements of the three faiths like worship, chronology, and ceremonies.

 

My thanks to my colleague, Jeff Feinstein, for sending me the link to this site.