Newsletter Highlights - March 2023

The biggest news is the addition of the beta version of the Universal Apparatus to the CNTR website (https://greekcntr.org/apparatus/index.htm). This was a long time in coming as people have been awaiting its arrival since I presented it at the 2021 Society of Biblical Literature and the 2021 Bible Translation conferences. The CNTR apparatus provides several improvements not normally found in other apparatuses:

  • Uses one simplified set of symbols that are easier to understand.
  • Can work with any base text instead of being tied to a specific text.
  • First complete apparatus to show all variants for all early witnesses (most only show about 10% of them).
  • Always shows both positive and negative witnesses.
  • Displays partial matches for readings affected by lacuna.
  • Includes major critical texts (which can be filtered out if not desired).
  • Includes interlinear information (by hovering) so that the average user can get an idea of what they mean.
  • Utilizes variant unit boundaries automatically determined by a computer algorithm.
  • Created directly from the raw manuscript data to help eliminate errors.

This beta version is still a work in progress and therefore remains restricted by copyright for now, but when it is ready for production it will be released under an open license.

In other news, I made a presentation entitled, “Considerations for Statistical Reconstruction of the Original Orthography of the New Testament” in the Biblical Lexicography section of the 2022 Society of Biblical Literature conference in Denver that was well received. Some of that technology had been applied to the Statistical Restoration Greek New Testament (SR) that was released last year (https://github.com/Center-for-New-Testament-Restoration/SR). That marks the 5th paper I presented at SBL meetings in the period of one year.

Also, the upcoming Lightsys Code-a-Thon has accepted a project from the CNTR to programmatically identify scripture quotations in the writings of the church fathers. This will not be an easy task for the students as they will be looking for quotations, incorporations, and allusions with different possible spellings and trying to match any of the possible variants from any Greek text. I eagerly look forward to see what they can come up with!

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