Christianity
Christianity
The Scriptures
Hypertext Bible Index
The King James Bible
The Vulgate (Latin Bible)
The Apocrypha
Bible Commentary
The Complete Sayings of Jesus
by Arthur Hinds, int. by Norman Vincent Peale [1927]
Read everything Jesus says in the New Testament in one sitting.
Gnosticism, etc.
There is now a separate Gnosticism Index.
Pistis Sophia
Translated by G.R.S. Mead [1921].
Corpus Hermeticum
Translated by G.R.S. Mead
The Hymn of Jesus, Echoes from the Gnosis
tr. by G.R.S. Mead [1907].
Gnostic John the Baptizer
Selections from the Mandæan John-Book, tr. by G.R.S. Mead [1924].
Note: While the Mandaeans are not Christians, this text is important for the study of Gnostic beliefs — editor.
The Book of Giants
A fragmentary Manichaean text.
Apocrypha Arabica
by Margaret Dunlop Gibson [1901]
Early Christian
The Gospel of Thomas [ca. 200 C.E.]
The Lord’s Prayer
Hail Mary (Ave Maria)
The Apostles’ Creed
Nicene Creed
The Athanasian Creed
Works of St. Augustine
The Confessions of Saint Augustine (401 C.E.)
by St. Augustine, tr. by Edward Bouverie Pusey [1909-14]
Writings of the Early Church Fathers
Thanks to the Christian Classics Ethereal Library
The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite (ca. 400 C.E.)
by Dionysius the Areopagite, tr. by John Parker [1897]
A very early Christian mystic writer with Neoplatonist influences.
Eastern Churches
The Book of the Bee
Edited and translated by E. A. Wallis Budge [1886]
A Nestorian Christian sacred history.
The Book of the Cave of Treasures
translated from the Syriac by E. A. Wallis Budge [1927]
The Kebra Nagast
tr. by E. A. Wallis Budge [1922]
The legendary history of Ethiopia.
Mediaeval, Renaissance and Reformation
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England (731)
by Bede, ed. by A.M. Sellar [1907]
Works of St. Anselm (b. 1033 d. 1109)
by St. Anselm of Canterbury, tr. by Sidney Norton Deane [1903]
A medieval Italian scholar who originated the ontological argument for the existence of God.
The Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise (1128)
Tr. by Anonymous, edited by Israel Gollancz and Honnor Morten [1901]
The tragic romance of two top Christian intellectuals in 12th century France.
The Story of My Misfortunes: The Autobiography of Peter Abelard
Tr. by Henry Adams Bellows [1922]
The Writings of St. Francis of Assisi (b. 1181 d. 1226)
by Paschal Robinson [1905]
Includes the Canticle of the Sun, a moving prayer of praise to “Brother Sun, Sister Moon.”
The Little Flowers of St. Francis
Trans. by W. Heywood [1906]
The legends of St. Francis and the early Franciscans.
Summa Theologica (1265-1274)
by St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. by The Fathers of the English Dominican Province [1948]
An encylopedia-length work which deals with every concievable aspect of Catholic theology.
The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage
by Jan van Ruysbroeck, (b. 1293 d. 1381) tr. by C. A. Wynschenk Dom, ed. by Evelyn Underhill [1916]
Writings of an influential Flemish Christian mystic.
The Divine Comedy (1306-21)
by Dante Alighieri, tr. by Henry F. Cary, [1888]
The Cloud of Unknowing (ca. 1400)
by Anonymous, ed. by Evelyn Underhill [1922]
Meditations of an anonymous 14th century Christian mystic.
Imitation of Christ (ca. 1418)
by Thomas a Kempis, tr. by William Benham [1886]
A contemplative classic of Christian mysticism.
The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola (composed 1522-1524, published 1548)
by St. Ignatius of Loyola, tr. by Elder Mullan [1909]
A plan of contemplation to be carried out over about a month, by the founder of the Jesuits.
Texts of Martin Luther (b. 1483 d. 1546)
Texts of John Calvin (b. 1509 d. 1564)
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs by John Foxe [ca. 1560]
Synod of Dordrecht [1618-9]
Heidelberg Catechism
The Second Helvetic Confession
Church Order
(Reformed Churches of the Netherlands) [1618-9]
Liturgy of the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands
Westminster Shorter Catechism [1674]
The Westminster Confession of Faith
Westminster Larger Catechism
The Works of Stephen Charnock
by Stephen Charnock [1629-1690]
Theological works of an important Puritan Divine.
Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained
by John Milton [1667 and 1671]
Pilgrim’s Progress
by John Bunyan [1678] The classic Christian allegory of spiritual redemption.
Bunyan
by James Anthony Froude [1901]
A biography of the author of Pilgrim’s Progress.
Angelus Silesius
Selections from The Cherubinic Wanderer
trans. with intro. by J. E. Crawford Flitch [1932]
Alexandrines: translated from the “Cherubinischer Wandersmann”,
Julia Bilger [1944]
The Interior Castle
or, The Mansions, by St. Teresa of Avila [1921]
A roadmap to mystical union with God.
Ordinary of the Mass
[1921] [Latin and English]
The core text of the Catholic liturgy, in parallel Latin and English.
Modern
Unitarian Christianity
By William Ellery Channing [1819]
New England Primer
[1843]
Evidence from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ
by William Miller [1842]
Miller predicted that Jesus would return in 1844.
The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ
by Anne Catherine Emmerich [1843]
The primary source for the movie ‘The Passion of the Christ.’
The Great Controversy
by Ellen G. White [1858]
One of the earliest documents of the movement which became the Seventh-day Adventists.
Notes on the Book of the Revelation
by John Nelson Darby [1876] (2nd ed.)
The Man of Sorrows
by John Nelson Darby [no date (pre-1882)]
Hymns of the Eastern Church
by J. Neale [1884] (5th ed.)
A rich selection of Byzantine hymns.
Shaker documents
The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ
by Nicolas Notovitch, trans. by J. H. Connelly and L. Landsberg [1890]
Did Jesus spend his lost years in India?
The Baltimore (Catholic) Catechism [1891]
Lives of the Saints
by Alban Butler, John Gilmary Shea (Benziger Bros. ed.) [1894]
400 Catholic Saints’ days from around the year
The Didache
by Charles H. Hoole [1894]
A very early Christian apocryphal text.
Jesus An Essene
by Edward Planta Nesbit [1895]
Was Jesus a member of the group which cached the Dead Sea Scrolls?
The Doctrine of the Last Things
by W.O.E. Oesterley [1908]
Eschatology for everyone.
The Seeming Unreality of the Spiritual Life
by Henry Churchill King [1908]
Jesus, the Last Great Initiate
by Edouard Schuré, tr. by F. Rothwell [1908]
The historical context of Jesus, and the esoteric significance of his teachings.
Folk-lore of the Holy Land
by J. E. Hanauer [1909]
Moslem, Christian and Jewish tales from old Palestine.
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy [1910]
John Wesley’s Place in History
by Woodrow Wilson [1915]
The Book of Revelation
by Clarence Larkin [1919]
The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ
by Levi H. Dowling [1920]
The Gist of Swedenborg
by Julian K. Smyth and William F. Wunsch [1920]
The Political Aspects of S. Augustine’s ‘City of God’
by John Neville Figgis [1921]
Human Nature in the Bible by William Lyon Phelps [1922]
Pageant of the Popes
by John Farrow [1942]
Two thousand years of papal history in one continuous narrative.
The Trial of Christ
by David K. Breed [1948]
Could Jesus have been acquitted on a technicality?
The Theological Declaration of Barmen
[1934]
The (Episcopal) Book of Common Prayer
[1979]
External Sites
The community of Christian etext redactors is very active, and transcriptions of public domain books on the topic are abundant. The following are archives of public domain etexts about Christianity and related topics, which contain much more material than we have room or bandwidth for at this site. Some of these are:
Christian Classics Ethereal Library This is probably the largest general purpose archive of Christian texts.
Additional Early Church Fathers at the Tertullian Project website. This dovetails with the ‘Early Church Fathers’ collection at CCEL.
The Unbound Bible has the best collection of downloadable Bible data files anywhere. Highly recommended.
The Gnostic Society A collection of shorter texts on Gnosticism. Also has a collection of Dead Sea Scroll translations.
The Catholic Encyclopeda This is a project to put online this huge work from 1913.
Quaker Heritage Press publishes etexts of rare and out-of-print Quaker documents.
Restoration Movement Texts. Primary texts of a 19th century American religious movement, predecessor of Churches of Christ, the Christian Churches, and the Disciples of Christ, among other groups.