Sacred Editors

Sacred Editors: Lost Texts

This volume uncovers the stories of sacred texts that were burned, buried, banned—or simply forgotten. From the ashes of Nalanda to the hard drives of digital monks, it examines how destruction, neglect, and reinvention have shaped every scripture we call holy. What we’ve lost still speaks—and what we remember is always edited.

Sacred Lost Book Cover

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Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Prologue: The Fragile Sacred

    3. Part I: When Sacred Memory Burns – Catastrophic Destruction

  3. Chapter 1: The Burning of Nalanda (Buddhism)
  4. Chapter 2: The Scrolls That Would Not Die (Judaism)
  5. Chapter 3: The Fire That Standardized Faith (Islam)
  6. Chapter 4: When the Temples Fell (Hinduism)
  7. Chapter 5: Cinders of the Canon (Christianity)
  8. Chapter 6: Margins and Majorities (Smaller Faiths)
  9. Interlude A: The Faithful Foes Who Saved Each Other's Texts
  10. Chapter 7: Capstone – What the Fire Couldn’t Decide

    11. Part II: The Quiet Extinctions – Gradual Abandonment

  11. Chapter 8: The Texts We Let Die
  12. Chapter 9: The Transforming Tongue—What Translation Saves and Alters
  13. Interlude B: Buried Treasure—The Archaeology of Rediscovery
  14. Chapter 10: Capstone – The Long Forgetting

    15. Part III: Digital Salvation and Digital Apocalypse

  15. Chapter 11: Scripture in the Cloud—The New Monastery
  16. Chapter 12: The Coming Digital Dark Age
  17. Chapter 13: Future-Proofing the Sacred
  18. Interlude C: Who Owns Sacred Memory?
  19. Chapter 14: Capstone – Cloud Altars and Fragile Code

    20. Part IV: Reckoning with Loss – Identity, Ethics, and Imagination

  20. Chapter 15: Keeper Testimonies
  21. Chapter 16: Scholar Roundtable – What Communities Imagine They’ve Lost
  22. Chapter 17: Capstone – The Sacred That Might Have Been
  23. Conclusion: Between Memory and Materiality

    24. Appendices

  24. Appendix A: Timeline of Major Textual Destructions and Recoveries
  25. Appendix B: Recovered Texts by Faith, Region, and Discovery Method
  26. Appendix C: Technologies of Resurrection: From Palimpsests to AI
  27. Appendix D: Digital Preservation Toolkit for Religious Communities
  28. Appendix E: Sacred Texts at Risk Today
  29. Appendix F: Key Scholars, Institutions, and Community Projects
  30. Appendix G: Glossary: Religious, Digital, and Archival Terms