British Library digitises ancient texts including 1,000-year old Hebrew Bible

Ancient religious texts including a 1,000-year old Hebrew Bible have been digitised and made available online for free by the British Library after help from a British Jewish philanthropist.

The collection, called ‘Discovering Sacred Texts,’ is an extraordinary selection of manuscripts, books, scrolls and scriptures that allows anyone with an internet connection to explore the sacred texts of the world’s major faiths.

Among the offerings is a lavishly-decorated scroll of the Buddhist Lotus Sūtra from Japan, written in gold and silver ink on indigo-dyed paper, dating back to 1636, and the earliest surviving copy of the complete New Testament, Codex Sinaiticus, dating from the 4th century.

Also included is the Ramayana, an epic poem from the sage Valmiki, composed in Sanskrit in the middle of the first millennium, and the Ma’il Qur’an, one of the earliest Qur’ans in the world, dating back to the 8th century.

The new website includes more than 250 digitised collection items, teachers’ resources, short films and articles written by academics, faith leaders and curators. Many of the newly-digitised texts are being made available online for the first time.

It features the six most-practised faiths in the UK, those being Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism, as well as a number of other faiths including the Baha’i Faith, Jainism and Zoroastrianism.

The project has been co-sponsored by Dangoor Education, and Jewish philanthropist David Dangoor said he was “delighted” to have helped.

“The British Library, as one of the great libraries of the world, is expanding and redefining the role of a library in the digital age,” he said. “Millions of people around the world will be able to see and understand the impact of many of the documents and texts that have helped shape the cultures of the world we live in today.”

https://www.bl.uk/sacred-texts