New Blog on NT Critical Texts

Greg Paulson and Katie Leggett have a new website that ETC readers will be interested in. It’s called Critical Texts and is described as “the personal academic blog of Dr. Gregory S. Paulson and Dr. Katie Leggett, offering a creative space for reflection on critical texts in the field of Greek New Testament textual criticism.” 

Students new to the subject will find links to some helpful articles from other sites answering question like “What is the Kurzgefasste Liste?,” or “What is the NTVMR?,” and, everyone’s favorite, “What is the latest tally of NT manuscripts?” (answer: 5,711 as of 2 days ago). Of course, we have addressed that question here before. Greg has also put together a video introducing the new UBS6. 

This may also be a good time to note that their website reminded me that a third edition of the printed Kurzgefasste Liste is scheduled for later this year. We’ll look forward to that. In the meantime, add this new website to your reading list, or just check out the blogroll in the right column of this website—yes, we still have a blogroll. Who says blogs are dead?

New Website on Bible History

Over at the Text & Canon Institute, we’ve been working for most of 2021 on a new website to help people understand how we got the Bible. I’m happy to say that this week it went live. It’s aimed primarily at laypeople, students, and pastors and we designed it very intentionally with these groups in mind. To help them find what fits their particular needs and interests, all the content can be easily filtered by category, reading level, and author. The topics cover everything from text to canon to translation and some things in between. At launch, we have 15 articles with hopes of publishing about two a month. If you want to get those when they’re published, be sure to subscribe.

One question I’ve had this week is how the new site compares to this great blog. Personally, I plan to keep writing for both and see them as different venues. At ETC I can get right down in the weeds, be less polished, and can assume a lot more knowledge on the part of the reader. The TCI website, on the other hand, is a place to help the uninitiated understand why TC (among others things) matters and answer their questions without assuming much prior knowledge (for example).

Let me highlight one article in particular for this audience. Maurice Robinson presented on the Spirit’s role in TC a few years back at ETS and we have published a revised version of it here. In it, he argues that a discussion of God’s activity is absent from most modern discussions about TC even though it used to be fairly common. He wants to bring it back into the discussion and argues that we should avoid the extreme of abandoning scientific textual criticism on the one hand and excluding God’s role altogether on the other hand. 

Since we don’t have a comments feature on the new site, maybe we could open a discussion of MAR’s article here.

P.S. I hope you find my favorite page on the new site.

Commenting

For months now I have not been able to comment on this here blog using Google Chrome (PC). I’ve mostly just used other browsers or just refrained from commenting as much. But recently several other people have noted that they’ve been having trouble too, but some with different browsers.

So, with the irony of the request noted, would readers be willing to leave a comment and let me know which browsers/OS you are having trouble with? I don’t know if I can fix it, but more info will help me look for a solution. 

Five millionth visitor

Congratulations to us for our five millionth* visitor.

Celebrations in various parts of the world are happening as I type.

* Of course maybe we’ve had more, or fewer, visitors. I personally have little idea as to how this was counted. 

UP-DATE: One of my students (Ben Lucas), who was in my office for an interesting discussion of the use of the OT in Hebrews, claimed to be the five millionth visit(or)** so I gave him a relevant old book to celebrate:

** I’m sure that now that the actual five millionth person has been identified, the anonymous trolls will admit their error.

New Website for the International Greek New Testament Project (IGNTP)

A brand new website of the International Greek New Testament Project (IGNTP) was launched this morning – the web address is the same www.igntp.org.

The complete redesign was done by no other than our talented co-blogger Peter Gurry who is not only a textcritic but also a professional web designer.

The old website has served since 2007, receiving thousands of visits from across the world, according to Hugh Houghton, the IGNTP officer who maintains the website on a regular basis.

CSNTM Launches New Website

Today, the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) launched their new and vastly improved website at CSNTM.org. Here are some of the features that are announced on the vastly improved website now and in the coming weeks:

• New Manuscripts – We will be adding 10-20 new manuscripts to our website weekly for the next few months. These will be from the National Library of Greece in Athens (our ongoing project for 2015–16), as well as previously unposted images from hundreds of manuscripts and rare books in our collection.

• New Look – We have revamped our entire website to make it both simpler and richer in content. We have new content, which narrates how we go about digitizing and archiving manuscripts. We also explain what goes into our extensive training program that enables our teams to work quickly while capturing high-quality images.

• New Viewing Environment – The website is equipped with a new viewer, which makes it easier than ever to navigate manuscripts and view our stunning new images.

• New Usability – Our new site is also designed to work perfectly with mobile devices and tablets, enabling you to view manuscripts or to access other resources quickly, whenever you need them.

• New Search Features – The website is now outfitted with an extensive search functionality. Searches can be performed at the manuscript level, allowing you to find manuscripts that meet certain criteria (e.g., date, contents, material, location). They can also be performed at the image level, which allows you to find specific features within a manuscript. For instance, we now have a Jump to Book option that allows you to find the beginning of each book that a manuscript contains. Also, one can search tagged manuscripts for verse references. Every place, for example, in which John 1.1 is tagged will automatically populate when the verse is searched.

• New Search Database – The search database holds tags for each manuscript and individual image. As our team continues tagging our growing collection, the search function will become more comprehensive each week. But the task is daunting. We want your help for the tagging! If interested, you can reach us via our contact page.

Housekeeping note

In our constant pursuit of excellence in the fulfilment of the mission of our blog it would be really helpful to have posts from all our blog members once in a while. Here are some suggestions if you are not feeling inspired (which would seem to apply to quite a few of us):

• here is something interesting I thought/observed/noticed/made up/found on Wikipedia
• here is an article/book/video that I wrote/read/found on the internet
• here is a book review I wrote 
• here is something I heard about and wanted some help in thinking through
• here is a summary and a couple of critical comments on a recent journal article
• here is a photo and discussion of one of my favourite books, something interesting in my personal library
• here is a different blog discussing something interesting/wrong/stupid/correct on textual criticism
• here is a footnote on some point of textual criticism
• here is a bibliography I used for a lecture the other day - helpful to everyone and you may get some suggestions
• here is a picture of my cat, Bible, lecture notes, favourite manuscript
• here is another reason to prefer the longer/shorter reading at Mark 1.1
• here is a video of my lecture to three hundred students
• here is how I learnt to do that cross-out thingy with letters
• here is a Taylor Swift song that is relevant to textual criticism
• here is a picture of Australia beating England at cricket (perhaps better to save that for a more unusual event, like four text critics playing croquet or something)
• here is a definition of “evangelical” for use by evangelical textual critics
• here is a definition of “textual” for use by evangelical textual critics
• here is a definition of “criticism” for use by evangelical textual critics
• here is a definition of the word “is”
• here is something of genuine comedic value which is more likely to make you laugh than cry
• here is something you can only do with a computer that is of interest to textual criticism
• here is something you can only do without a computer that is of interest to textual criticism
• here is something about the Old Testament
• etc.

Space them out - not all at once (you can schedule posts into the future, kind of spooky I know)

Just a note that there are around one hundred posts for this blog that are still in the “draft” state. You may well have some treasures hidden away in there. I have done a little bit of checking some of the ones under my name and either up-dating them for posting or deleting them. In a month or two I will probably do a more ruthless cull. Be warned. I can’t stand untidiness in any form.

Conjectural Emendation: Yea or Nay?

I am testing the polling function on the new design and thought I would start with something that came up last night at the ETC blog dinner: conjectural emendation (discussed before on this blog).

Do you approve of conjectural emendation for the New Testament?

New Look

As you can see, we are trying a new look on the blog. Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Testing New Blog Features

I am trying out some new features on the ETC blog, one of which is a search box in the right sidebar. I tried it out by writing "GA" in the box and it returned a whole bunch of entries about MSS (GA = Gregory-Aland). Try it out for yourself and feel free to comment.

Codex Sinaiticus On-line: Initial Thoughts

The initial stage of the on-line Sinaiticus project is (as already noted) here. The initial stage includes all the leaves currently in Leipzig (43 leaves = 86 pages), comprising portions of 1 Chronicles, 2 Esdras, Esther, Tobit, Jeremiah, and Lamentations. In addition from the British Library portions we have Psalms and Mark’s Gospel, as well as additional BL leaves of the books mentioned above. A complete list of available pages (with links) is here.

There are some great things about this web-site:

1. The web site is very clear, and it is easy to navigate to get to a particular passage. You can choose what to have displayed (image, transcription, translation, conservation notes).


2. The photos are excellent. Very zoomable, excellent detail etc. The raking light option is helpful for whole pages (esp lining techniques etc.) - although these are not, as far as I can see, zoomable. [22.8.08: good news these images are zoomable now.]


3. The extra information (when available) is generally interesting. (I confess to being most interested in the photos and the conservation notes.)
4. Having all the Leipzig pages is very valuable, since the preservation of the Leipzig pages has long been talked about as a problem. It is also possible to compare the images from London with the images from Leipzig. For example, Quire 34, folio 8 verso (1 Chron 10:11 - 11:22) is in the British Library; while Quire 35, folio 1 recto (1 Chron 11:22 - 12:18) is in the Leipzig University Library. The technical people have done a great job in ensuring precisely the same standards for photos taken in different places at different times. It just looks like you move from one page to the next. The Leipzig pages may not have fared so well in terms of preservation, but they are easily readable and the magnification works fine. (There is a bit more difference to be observed if you compare Quire 37 folio 3 verso (Tobit 1:7 - 2:2; Leipzig); with Quire 37 folio 4 recto (Tobit 2:2 - 3:5; London) - the Leipzig sheet is greyer with much less colour and definition, I can’t say whether this is a preservation issue or has some other cause).

Some things I have been a little frustrated with so far (perhaps some of you can work out whether/how these things can be done):

1. I wish there was an option to see larger pictures without all the other stuff - at the lowest magnification I somehow can’t even get a whole page at once (on either of my two large screens - perhaps I need a giant screen?). I would like to have a whole screen option for the pictures (the fullscreen button on the left helps only a little).


2. You can’t seem to get whole openings, i.e. eight columns, to get the (intended?) perspective of the codex. Well you can by having two windows at once, but they won’t sync.


3. The only way to get front and back of a page up at the same time is to open two windows, but they (obviously) also don’t stay in sync. I wanted to do this to check bleed-through options in some of the less clear pages (e.g. Mark 16). That is probably pretty hard to programme.


4. It would be nice to be able to get access to the raw photos for some playing around in Photoshop - that would help with some readings, with bleed through, etc. At this stage the images are all protected and packaged - you get access on their terms. Fair enough for the BL et al at this stage, but hopefully there might be ways to get access to the photographs at some point in the future.


5. The print option doesn’t work at all for me, and doesn’t give you much control over what part of the image or at what magnification you want.


6. I can’t seem to find out any details about the digital photography. The web-site says: “To make sure that the images produced were consistent, common standards and imaging practices were established across all venues by the Technical Standards Working Party. The recommendations included equipment (cameras, camera software, lighting, lenses, etc.) and processes (setup, colour profiling, etc.).” So you can find out who was on the TSWP, but you can’t find out what the technical standards actually are. Seems curious.


7. Something similar could be said about the “Conservation” aspect. The web-site seems to say that although one of the aims of the project was “to devise a strategy that protected the leaves from any possible harm and preserved them for the future” this has not actually happened as yet, since “Conservation treatment of leaves was strictly limited to what was required to stabilise them for imaging.” Meanwhile the team produced an “internationally-agreed terminology for describing and analysing the physical features of a manuscript and, together with the images made available by the project, has produced a model for conservators and scholars around the world” - but again, as yet I can’t see that anyone can get access to this “terminology”.

Hopefully some of these are slated for later iterations of the web-site.

What this blog is about

Hi all! This is P.J. Williams here. You can find out about me on: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/divinity/williams/index.shtml

Essentially what I’m wanting to do is to create a blog for those who wish to discuss textual criticism of the Old or New Testament from an evangelical perspective. There are many textual critics out there who are evangelicals and here I am trying to create a forum for us to discuss ideas together.

I want this forum to be robust in two ways: first, it is not going to be embarrassed about believing that the Bible is true and that the Bible is made up of particular words which come from God. Secondly, it is going to be a place where we discuss textual criticism based on a familiarity with the issues involved. If you haven’t read the New Testament in Greek or the Old Testament in Hebrew then it isn’t going to be appropriate for you to take part.

The blog will not generally try to justify the historic evangelical perspective that says that the inspired text of the Bible is Greek for the NT and Hebrew (or Aramaic) for the OT. Justifications may emerge within this group, but it will be more profitable to those involved if we take this as our basis.

Typically people divide into those who are interested in doctrine and those who are interested in history and texts. Here I hope we can see that there need be no division between these groups.

One thing that needs to be said is that evangelical textual criticism is not synonymous with textual criticism carried out by individuals who are evangelical. Evangelical textual criticism is textual criticism which is governed by the principles of evangelicalism. Thus while, for instance, there are some individuals who are undoubtedly evangelical who hold that an English translation of the Bible is superior to what is found in all the Greek manuscripts of the NT, since their position is in conflict with the historic evangelical position that locates the authority of the NT in the Greek they may be evangelical, but their textual criticism is not.

One further characteristic of evangelical textual criticism will also be the manner in which we engage in discussion. All who claim the name ‘evangelical’ need to show the characteristics which should accompany our faith.

I hope that I can have a relatively light touch in steering this blog, and would respectfully request that those who post to it have regard for the principles outlined above.