Guides: REL 301 Christianity and Culture: Primary Sources

Primary Literature Resources Found Online

Digital Scriptorium
An image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that unites scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research. Presently viewable on the DS website are records for 5,300 manuscripts and for 24,300 images.
Internet Sacred Text Archive
Open source full text sources of scripture and religious texts from any world religions
Codex Sinaiticus
Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important books in the world. Handwritten well over 1600 years ago, the manuscript contains the Christian Bible in Greek, including the oldest complete copy of the New Testament.

What is a Primary Source

A primary source is "first-hand" information, sources as close as possible to the origin of the information or idea under study. Primary sources are contrasted with secondary sources, works that provide analysis, commentary, or criticism on the primary source. In literary studies, primary sources are often creative works, including poems, stories, novels, and so on. In historical studies, primary sources include written works, recordings, or other source of information from people who were participants or direct witnesses to the events in question. Examples of commonly used primary sources include government documents, memoirs, personal correspondence, oral histories, and contemporary newspaper accounts.

Primary Sources at Pepperdine

Special Collections and University Archives at Pepperdine includes many primary sources relevant to religion research. Examples include 19th-century religious periodicals and books, early printed Bibles from as early as 1560, a facsimile of the Codex Sinaiticus, and correspondence and documents from notable individuals associated with Pepperdine University and the Churches of Christ.

To use these resources, see the Special Collections and University Archives website, or contact lucy.perrin@pepperdine.edu or kelsey.knox@pepperdine.edu.

Primary Sources in the Databases

Early English Books Online (Includes TCP Phase I) This link opens in a new window
Access to 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. Primary sources such as prayer books, pamphlets, proclamations, almanacs. Includes first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the turmoil of the English Civil War.
It contains over 100,000 of the 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgraves's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640), Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700), and the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661). The Text Creation Partnership (TCP), is in the process of creating SGML coding for the full text of 25,000 EEBO works, so users can search the full ASCII text of the documents and view both the text and the correspondin original page images.
Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment This link opens in a new window
Documents the relationships among peoples in North America from 1534-1850. The collection focuses on personal accounts, such as diaries and letters, to provide a unique perspectives from all of the protagonists, including traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials, both men and women.
North American Immigrant Letters/Diaries This link opens in a new window
Access to personal narratives such as letters, diaries, pamphlets, autobiographies, and oral histories, including several thousand indexed and searchable pages of Ellis Island Oral History interviews. Collection starts around 1840 and extend to the present, focusing heavily on the period from 1920 to 1980. Includes more recent waves of immigrants from Latin America and Asia.