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Primary Sources

Classic / Ancient Near East

Ancient Near East / Classical - Print

Greek and Roman world: Primary documents in print 

Find them in the library:

And You Welcomed Me: Sourcebook on Hospitality in Early Christianity 

BV4647.H67 A53 2001

Christianity and the Roman Empire: Background Texts

BR167 .N69 2001

Christianity Through the Thirteenth Century 

BR162.2 .C487 1970

Christology after Chalcedon 

BT198 .T63 1998

Complete Works of Josephus 

DS116 .J67 1900Z

 

Woodcut by William Whiston
Wikimedia image. Public Domain

 

Donatist Martyr Stories: the Church in Conflict 

BT1370 .D6 1996

Early Jewish Liturgy: Sourcebook of Early Christian Liturgy 

BM660 .E25 2001

Evagrius of Pontus: the Greek Ascetic Corpus 

BR65.E92 E54 2003

From Irenaeus to Grotius: a Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought 

BR 115.P7 F746 1999     

Gnosticism: Source Book of Heretical Writings 

BT1390 .G586 1978

Gregory of Nyssa: the Letters 

BR65.G74 E5 2007

Marriage in the Early Church 

BR 195.M37 M37 1992

Notices of the Jews and Their Country by the Classic Writers of Antiquity

DS102 .G44 1972

Paganism and Christianity

BR128 .R7 P34 1992

Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity: a Sourcebook 

BR128.R7 L44 2000

Political Letters and Speeches (Saint Ambrose) 

BR1720.A5 A4 2005

St. Paul’s Corinth: Texts and Archaeology 

DF 261.C65 M87 1983

The Fathers of the Church 

BR67 .D7613 2007

The Jewish Temple: a Non-Biblical Sourcebook

BM655 .J49 1996

The Mass: Ancient Liturgies and Patristic Texts

BX2230.5 .H313 1967

Theological Anthropology 

BT701.2.B87 1981

Tradition, Scripture, and Interpretation 

BR 160.A2 T73 2006

Understandings of the Church 

BV598 .U54 1986

Many more print documents from the classical world can be found here

Antiquity / Classical World

  • Ancient History Sourcebook (Fordham University Internet History Sourcebooks Project)
    Covers from Human Origins to Early Christian Era sources.
  • Ancient Near Eastern Archives (ETANA Core Texts) 
    A collection of texts selected as valuable for teaching and research relating to ancient Near Eastern studies. 
  • The Asclepion (Ancient medicine)  
    The study of ancient medicine. Scroll down to see the Index. There is useful secondary material here, but choose "Texts and Articles" for source documents. 
  • Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy
    Choose the “Ancient Documents” box for a small collection of legal sources 
  • Byzantine Studies on the Internet (Fordham University)
  • Diotima: Materials for Study of Women in the Ancient World
    Small collections of Greek, Latin, and Egyptian source texts, plus some recommended links to other sites 
  • EAWC (Exploring Ancient World Cultures)
    EAWC has primary & secondary resources links to each of the “cultures” it focusses on: the Near East, India, Egypt, China, Greece, Rome, Early Islam, and Medieval Europe. In the first paragraph on this page find links to these areas, plus sub-links to Essays, Images, Web sites, and Primary texts in the sidebar. Also browse, or search: http://eawc.evansville.edu/eawcindex.htm
  • ETANA
    Scanned images of materials found in archaeological digs - hieroglyphs, cuneiform, and alphabets. Slow-loading, dead links.
  • Eyewitness to History
    The "ancient history" page on this site contains about two dozen brief documents, along with a short introduction. Egypt, Greece, and Rome (to Attila)
  • Hanover Historical Collection
    Choose the "Ancient Greece and Roman" link (there are ten pre-Socratic philosophers there) 
  • Internet Ancient History Sourcebook (Fordham University)
  • Internet Classics Library
    "Browse" the author list, or "Search" author, title, or keyword. Over 400 source documents. 
  • LacusCurtius: Into the Roman World
    Scroll down the screen past the Capitoline Wolf to find about fifty Greek and Latin "Source Texts".
  • Monsoon Winds to the “Land of Gold”
    A small collection of documents on the spice trade of the early Roman imperial period.
  • Peitho's Web
    English translations of the works of classical rhetoricians (Heraclitus, Empedocles, Horace, and others)
  • Perseus Digital Library
    The largest part of the Perseus collection is devoted to the classical world. Browse the “Greek and Roman” collection, or search by name or keyword.
  • Theoi Greek Mythology
    See images under the sidebar link "Galleries", and see texts on classical litertaure on the theme of mythology under "Classics Library". The site is also a reference guide to the topic.
  • Vindolanda Tablets Online
    An exhibition of wooden tablets found at the Roman fortress of Vindolanda near Hadrian's Wall in England, dating from the 2nd century AD. Administrative records, official reports, and personal records, in Latin transcription and English translation.
  • Wesley Center Online (Early Christian Church Documents)
    WCO is interested in religious writing from the Wesleyan tradition. But it contains documents of possible use to the historian on this "noncanonical literature" (i.e. non-Biblical literature)  page. Find works from the church fathers (e.g. Ignatius, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Eusebius) under the "Fathers of the Christian Church" link, and the historian Josephus under the "Works of Josephus" link. You might find that the content of the "Links to Related Sites" is wanting in substance.
    Torry Seland's similar page provides more links to documents from the Greco-Roman world. A number of Seland's links are to Daniel Stevensons's Internet Classics Archive - which is also worth looking at. The Internet Christian Library has a set of early church documents.

Early Christian Writings contains some sources from the 1st & 2nd centuries. Use the tabs at the top of the page: NT, Apocrypha, Gnostics, Fathers, Other. Or search by date here.

And finally, see the Early Church Fathers multi-volume set in several locations: Internet Sacred Text ArchiveChristian Classics Ethereal Library, or Catholic First.

File:Greek - Black-figure Amphora - Walters 48224 - Detail A.jpg

Black-figure Amphora, Anonymous (Greece)
Wikimedia Commons courtesy The Walters Art Museum
No changes made. CC License