Book450 BCE
Buddhist Suttas
Anonymous
Includes the Buddha's first sermon, setting out suffering, its cause, its cessation and the eightfold path as the structure the rest of the teaching builds on.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeEntry
Humanities
Religion & Theology
Belief systems as historical, textual and social realities — studied, not preached.
10 fields · 92 topics · 88 curated works
Fields within Religion & Theology
Comparative Religion
9Patterns across traditions — myth, ritual, sacred text and ethics compared, and what the category of religion holds.
Foundations & Overviews · Definitions of Religion · Myth & Cosmology · Ritual · Sacred Texts Compared
Judaism
10Text, law and a long diasporic history.
Foundations & Overviews · Hebrew Bible · Talmud & Rabbinic Literature · Jewish Law & Halakha · Second Temple Judaism
Christianity
11The largest tradition, and its many internal divisions.
Foundations & Overviews · New Testament Studies · Historical Jesus · Early Church · Church Councils & Creeds
Islam
10Scripture, law and the shape of a civilisation.
Foundations & Overviews · The Quran · Hadith · Sharia & Fiqh · Sunni Traditions
Hinduism & Indian Traditions
9A family of traditions rather than a single system.
Foundations & Overviews · Vedas & Upanishads · Bhagavad Gita · Schools of Vedanta · Bhakti Movements
Buddhism
10A tradition organised around a diagnosis of suffering.
Foundations & Overviews · Life of the Buddha · The Four Noble Truths · Theravada · Mahayana
East Asian & Indigenous Traditions
9Traditions that fit poorly into Western categories of religion.
Foundations & Overviews · Confucian Religious Practice · Daoist Religion · Shinto · Chinese Folk Religion
Scripture & Textual Criticism
8How sacred texts are dated, compared and edited.
Foundations & Overviews · Manuscript Traditions · Textual Criticism Method · Canon Formation · Translation of Sacred Texts
Mysticism & Contemplative Practice
7The experiential side, across traditions.
Foundations & Overviews · Contemplative Prayer · Meditation Traditions · Ascetic Practice · Mystical Experience
Religion, Society & Secularism
9Belief as a social force — secularisation, fundamentalism, religious freedom, and the argument with science.
Foundations & Overviews · Secularisation Debates · Religion & Politics · Fundamentalism · New Religious Movements
Reading in Religion & Theology
88A way in
Start here
No prior grounding assumed.
Buddhist Suttas
Anonymous · 450 BCE
Includes the Buddha's first sermon, setting out suffering, its cause, its cessation and the eightfold path as the structure the rest of the teaching…
+14 more at this level
Then
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
The Analects
Confucius · 450 BCE
Short recorded exchanges on ritual, duty and character that became the operating ethic of East Asian public life for two millennia.
+33 more at this level
Go deeper
Primary sources and full treatments.
The Guide for the Perplexed
Maimonides · 1190
Reconciles Aristotelian philosophy with Jewish scripture by arguing that almost everything said of God must be read negatively.
+38 more at this level
12 of 88 works
Book300 BCE
The Jataka, or Stories of the Buddha's Former Births
Anonymous
Hundreds of birth-stories in which the future Buddha, in earlier lives as animal, king or ascetic, embodies the virtues the tales use to teach ethics to audiences unable to follow technical doctrine.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeEntry
Book632
The Meaning of the Glorious Koran
Anonymous
Islam's central scripture, understood by Muslims as the literal word of God revealed to Muhammad over twenty-two years and arranged not chronologically but roughly by chapter length.
link failing as of 17 Sept 2026FreeEntry
Book1150
Treatise on Response and Retribution
Anonymous
A popular morality tract teaching that spirits record every human deed and dispense fortune or misfortune accordingly, the single most widely circulated text of Chinese folk-religious Daoism.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Book1264
Al-Arba'in al-Nawawiyya
Al-Nawawi
Forty-two hadith selected as together covering the essentials of the religion, still memorised as a basic curriculum across the Sunni world.
link checked 17 Sept 2026FreeEntry
Book1418
The Imitation of Christ
Thomas à Kempis
Instructs a Christian to systematically renounce worldly attachment and self-will in favour of imitating Christ's own humility, and for centuries was the most widely read devotional book in Christianity after the Bible.
about 4 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Book1450
Songs of Kabir
Kabir
Verse by the fifteenth-century weaver-poet insisting God is found through direct devotion within the heart, and mocking the external ritual of Hindu and Muslim orthodoxy alike.
about 65 minutes to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Book1548
The Spiritual Exercises
Ignatius of Loyola
A structured four-week programme of prayer and self-examination meant to help a retreatant discern God's will for their own life, which became the disciplinary core of Jesuit formation.
about 4 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026FreeEntry
Book1879
The Light of Asia
Edwin Arnold
A Victorian narrative poem retelling the Buddha's life and renunciation, credited with introducing Buddhism to a mass Western readership more than any prior scholarly account.
about 2.5 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026FreeEntry
Book1890
The Golden Bough
James George Frazer
Argues that magic, religion and science are successive stages of one evolving attempt to control the world, and traces a single recurring myth of the dying and reviving king across cultures that never had contact with one another.
about 27 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Book1895
Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts
Frederic G. Kenyon
Surveys the manuscript evidence behind the Bible's text and argues the sheer quantity and age of surviving copies puts the New Testament's transmission on a far firmer footing than any other ancient book.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Book1910
The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth
R. A. Torrey & A. C. Dixon (eds.)
A series of pamphlets defending biblical inerrancy and core Protestant doctrines against higher criticism and theological modernism, whose title gave the twentieth-century fundamentalist movement its name.
link checked 17 Sept 2026