ECM Revelation intro material coming online

Reading the Preface to the ECM Revelation volume, I would like to note that it says the following (p. xii):

The edition is published both electronically and in print. Both media have their own advantages. The text and its apparatuses are electronically linked to third-party data (relevant to paratexts, etc.), and we encourage discussion online (e.g. in the NTVMR forum).

The cooperation with the publisher, the German Bible Society, went smoothly and shows a way forward: The German Bible Society, represented by Dr. Florian Voss, agreed to comply with the DFG’s request for “open access” of all the project outputs. The edition of the text (part 1 of the edition) will be included into the NTVMR. The publisher plans to make PDFs of the introduction to the text volume, as well as all of the Supplementary Material and Study volumes available online one year after the publication. For this we are very grateful.

ECM Revelation (photo credit)

The part in bold is really significant. Unless I am mistaken, this is the first ECM volume to put this extra material online. To give you a sense of what we’re talking about, the four volumes that make up ECM Revelation amount to some 2000 pages! Granted, some of this is duplicate (German and English), but actually, quite a bit is only in one of those two languages. So this is a LOT of material. For anyone working on the text of Revelation, these materials will be a tremendous resource.

Perhaps most importantly, putting the Introduction online means that, for the first time, the digital ECM is truly usable for someone without the print edition. Why do I say this? Because the introduction explains how the apparatus works. Without it, there really is no way, beyond mere intuition, of knowing some of the key ins-and-outs of the ECM digital apparatus. For those with the print edition, this is no problem. Once you learn to use the print apparatus, the online one makes sense. But I have often wondered how I could recommend the ECM digital edition to someone without the print edition’s introduction. This seems to be my answer and I am very glad to have it.

Exactly when in 2025 and exactly where these PDFs will be online, I don’t know. But I will try to let you know as soon as I know. Or perhaps one of our readers can leave the answer in the comments.

The problem with digitizing our discipline

There is much rejoicing about the benefits of computer technology for the humanities in general and for New Testament textual criticism in particular. I too rejoice as I suspect you do. Who among us is not thrilled, for example,  by the ease of access to so many manuscript images or by the wonderful NTVMR or by the fact that the texts of our modern Greek New Testaments are all freely available online?

But here I want to sound a warning about computer technology. We all know how fast technology changes. Probably none of you have a flip phone any more or use floppy disks to save your work (although I know Maurice has some truly old school tech he still works with still). Technology changes rapidly, usually for the better. But therein lies the problem. Technology changes rapidly. That means that tools that were great five or ten years ago may be difficult or even impossible to use now.

This is one of my fears about digital critical editions. The new digital ECM may be great now, but will it be great in ten years? Maybe, but how do we know? We can’t, because we don’t know the future. There is always talk of future-proofing our digital work. But let us be honest: that is a myth. When I worked on the CBGM, there were parts of the software for the Catholic Letters that only ran  on Mac OS 9. What happens when the computer running that defunct operating system dies?

Nor is the internet the solution. Look, for example, at the genuinely wonderful Codex Sinaiticus website. When it came out in 2008, it was the baddest manuscript viewer in town. You could zoom in and out, switch to raking lighting, and even select words from the transcription and watch them be highlighted right there in the image—it was great. And most of it still is great.

But when I use the site in Chrome now, look at what happens.

The zoom disappears in Chrome

The zoom function does not even show up. I have to move my mouse around until it turns into a hand and then I have to guess how far I am zooming in because there is no visual measurement.

Things are better in Microsoft’s Edge browser, but still a little off.

The zoom is not quite right in Edge, but it is usable

Compare this to Tischendorf’s facsimile of 01 which, as a technology, works just as well today as it did on the day it came off the press in 1863. Obviously, the website for 01 has major advantages over Tischendorf’s facsimile. There is no question about that. But that is not my point. My point is that the usability of Tischendorf’s edition has aged less in 150 years than the Sinaiticus website has in 15! Will the Sinaiticus website work at all in 30 years? 50? 100? Who knows.

What I do know from designing websites for the last 17 years is that there is no way to guarantee that a site built today will still be usable in 10 or 15 years. And usually, the more bells and whistles a site has when it’s built, the worse it ages. Part of this is a matter of funding. It is easier to fund an exciting new digital project than to maintain or update an old, flagging one. But I do not see that changing any time soon.

So the problem remains and it is serious one we all need to think more about in our mad dash to digitally revolutionize our discipline. Are there still things that are better in analog than digital? If so, what are they? Are there things that can be done digitally but shouldn’t be? How can we ensure that our best digital work is still accessible in 100 years time? These are just some of the questions we need to ask ourselves.

Digital ECM Acts now online

Last night in Boston many of us experienced an eschatological moment, as Holger Strutwolf called it, when he officially launched the digital ECM for Acts. 

This is the culmination of much work and means that the ECM is now both print and digital. The new digital edition can be accessed at http://ntvmr.uni-muenster.de/nt-transcripts.

The interface for the new digital ECM for Acts

If you’re familiar with the ECM, the layout will be familiar. There are features in the interface for commenting on the variant unit and a link that will take you to the local stemma and coherence modules for said variant unit. There is also an option to see the unedited collation data, a list of patristic citations (fuller than in the print edition as I understand it), the Vetus Latina collations, and a nice feature which tells you how many conjectures have been offered for the variant unit and a link that will take you to the data in the Amsterdam Database of New Testament Conjectural Emendation.

One thing the online edition does not have is the material in parts 2 and 3 of the ECM Acts which cover supplementary material and the special studies. The exception to that is that Klaus Wachtel’s textual commentary is included (where available) when you click on the comment button for a variant unit.

Well done to Holger and the team!