New open access journal

Hallesche Beitrage zur Orientwissenschaft

This academic journal published by the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (frequently in monograph format) covers a wide range of topics and countries (ancient history, archives, religions, Middle Eastern studies etc.) There is a great deal of content that might be of interest to students of the study of religions


It is currently available as a digitized open-access texts from Vol.1 (1979) to Vol.44 (2007).
The current link address is via the AWOL (Ancient World Online blog)

Christianity in the Middle East: manuscripts blog

HMML Chronicle is  new blog has just been launched by Dr Adam McCollum, Lead Cataloger of Eastern Christian Manuscripts at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (St. John's University, Minnesota). The blog will discuss manuscripts and the languages, literature, and history of Christianity in the Middle East.
See also the Hill Museum's main website for more information on the collections (including material in Arabic, Armenian, Syriac and Ge'ez), and links to articles, images and exhibition reports.

Coptic Church Review: open access journal

The Coptic Church Review is available as an open-access journal from 1994-2004. The journal is a Coptic Orthodox publication, published in the USA by the Society of Coptic Church Studies.
Link via the AWOL blog (Ancient World Online) or directly from the Coptic Church Review site

Excavations at pre-Islamic Christian site in the UAE

Archaeological excavations on Sir Bani Yas Island in the UAE have revealed the remains of a Christian monastery dating from circa 600 AD. Read a report on the historical significance of the site, and view a slide-show of photographs of the excavations from the online version of the UAE newspaper, The National

New bibliographic database: theses on Mission studies and Non-Western Christianity

Click on link below to explore this database:

Researching World Christianity: doctoral dissertations on Mission since 1900

Bibliographic database of research-level theses (PhD, ThD, D.Min, D.Miss etc.) on Mission studies and Christianity outside the West, compiled by the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, with Yale Divinity School Library. Content has been expanded from lists published in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research between 1983 and 2003, and now covers over 6,000 titles dating back to 1900 and can be searched by subject, keyword, author, title etc. Results give a brief abstract and publication details only.

Faith-based search engines

A feature from ReadWriteWeb, a technology blog founded in 2003 to analyse the internet industry.
Curt Hopkins asks "What would Jesus search?" and looks at how three faith-orientated search engines - NPR Report, I'm Halal (Islamic), SeekFind (Christian) and Jewogle (Jewish) - treat a set of pre-defined search terms.

Updated research guide launched on the BLE

Just posted on the BLE - an updated in-depth guide to researching topics in the study of Religions, using bibliographic and full-text databases, and other electronic resources in SOAS and beyond. This also contains tips on internet research, managing your references and maintaining current awareness.
Go to the Library Information Skills pages of the BLE, look under Religions and the Research Guides tab