The Internet Sacred Text Archive (ISTA) is a

Santa Cruz, California Santa Cruz (Spanish for "Holy Cross") is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, in Northern California. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 62,956. Situated on the northern edge of Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz is a pop ...

-based

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...

dedicated to the preservation of electronic

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...

religious texts.

History

The website was first opened to the public on March 9, 1999 by John Bruno Hare (July 8, 1955 – April 27, 2010), in

. Hare started building the website from his home in the late 1990s, as "an intellectual challenge". At the time, he was working as a software engineer with a

dot-com company A dot-com company, or simply a dot-com (alternatively rendered dot.com, dot com, dotcom or .com), is a company that does most of its business on the Internet, usually through a website on the World Wide Web that uses the popular top-level domain ". ...

, and started by scanning over 1,000 public domain books on religion, folklore and mythology. The reason for its founding was the promotion of religious tolerance through knowledge. Its texts are organized into 77 different categories. The maintenance costs for the website—which received anywhere from five hundred thousand to two million visits a day—are funded by sales of the website on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...

, or

USB flash drive A USB flash drive (also called a thumb drive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable and much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than . Since firs ...

for monetary donations.

The Internet Sacred Text Archive lists three general links, World Religions, Traditions, and Mysteries. The first leads to the texts of the Abrahamic religions, as well as secondary sources describing them. The second leads to indigenous religions, including transcriptions of oral myths. The third leads to

Nostradamus Michel de Nostredame (December 1503 – July 1566), usually Latinised as Nostradamus, was a French astrologer, apothecary, physician, and reputed seer, who is best known for his book ''Les Prophéties'' (published in 1555), a collection o ...

's writings, descriptions of

Atlantis Atlantis ( grc, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, , island of Atlas (mythology), Atlas) is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works ''Timaeus (dialogue), Timaeus'' and ''Critias (dialogue), Critias'' ...

, and pagan texts. The main page has a site map that is organized alphabetically.

References

External links

The Internet Sacred Text Archive
* {{Authority control 1999 establishments in California American digital libraries Companies based in Santa Cruz County, California Internet properties established in 1999 Preservation (library and archival science)

History

Contents

See also

References

External links