Research Guides: Christianity: Find Primary Sources

Sacred Texts and Early Writings

Bible in English This link opens in a new window
Offers twenty versions of the Bible, including William Tyndale's New Testament, Pentateuch and Jonah translations.
Language: English

New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard version with the Apocrypha. 4th ed.

Cambridge Digital Library - Christian Works
Biblical manuscripts of all kinds from the Cambridge Library collection including complete texts of the Scriptures, or smaller compilations such as Gospel books for private or liturgical use, exemplified by the Book of Deer, a Scottish pocket Gospel book generally dated to the first half of the tenth century.

Past Masters Full Text Humanities This link opens in a new window
Why search here? Access to full text of scholarly editions in literature, philosophy, and theology, plus correspondence of selected authors.
Content type: Books, correspondence
Language: English

Codex Sinaiticus
Manuscript contains the Christian Bible in Greek, including the oldest complete copy of the New Testament

Digital Loeb Classical Library This link opens in a new window
Greek and Latin Classical literature is represented here with up-to-date texts and accurate English translations including works of the Church Fathers.
Including epic and lyric poetry, tragedy, comedy, history, travel, philosophy, oratory, medical writers, mathematicians, and Church Fathers.
Language: Ancient Greek, Latin, English
Keywords: classics ancient
Patrologia Latina This link opens in a new window
The database contains the complete Patrologia Latina, including all prefatory material, original texts, critical apparatus and indexes
Online access to 1st ed. of Jacques-Paul Migne's text (1844-1855) and indexes (1862-1865).
Language: Latin
Keywords: Christianity Classics
Early English Books Online This link opens in a new window
Contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700.
In addition to English, sources in Latin, Algonquian languages, and many others are included. New content is added once per year.
Language: English
Making of the Modern World This link opens in a new window
Includes primary sources that trace the development of the modern western world through the lens of trade and wealth. Includes materials about religious studies from last half of the 15th century to the mid-19th century.
Additionally, there are sources discussing the history of the working class, the history of slavery and colonization, the labor movement, as well as other topics that relate to and challenge capitalism.
Language: English, French, Spanish, German, Latin, Italian, and other European languages.

Commentaries

Anchor Bible
- One of the most authoritative multi-volume commentaries of the bible. Print copies in Claremont Colleges Library and Denison

Primary Sources in Library Catalogs

The circulating book collection is also a source for primary sources. These can be found in the following ways:

1. Search by author to find books we have by a particular author, politician, journalist or another type of historical witness

2. Conduct an advanced keyword search in the library catalog and then limit by publication year under “limit your search”)

3. Conduct an advanced keyword in Library Search and then limit to the word "sources" in the subject field (by using the dropdown menu), for example:

"civil war" in the keyword field

"religio*" in the subject field (the asterisk is a truncation symbol yielding religion, religions, religious, religiosity)

"sources" in the subject field.

Results often link to a Library of Congress Subject subheading “sources” which is sometimes used to designate primary source collections of different kinds — as in:

United States History Civil War, 1861-1865 Religious aspects Sources.