Newsletter Highlights - October 2023

I can’t mention everything that has gone on, but here are some of the highlights:

• The project that the CNTR submitted to the Lightsys Code-a-Thon went very well as 4 students from Cedarville University wrote a Python program to find Scripture quotations in the writings of various church fathers. This is not as easy as it sounds because it has to be able to find them with any variant readings or even new variant readings. This should be a valuable asset as I prepare to add that kind of data to the CNTR database.
• Andrew Case interviewed me in his “Working for the Word” weekly podcast. We discussed a few aspects of the CNTR project and the importance of using open licenses.
• The CNTR provided free printed evaluation copies of the Statistical Restoration Greek New Testament with the Universal Apparatus which was piloted in a class this fall taught by Rob Plummer at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS). This provided valuable feedback from the students towards creating a finished product mentioned below.
• The CNTR held some callout meetings for those who indicated that they wanted to help out with various aspects of the project. So far, ten people have volunteered and several of them have already done work that has been added to the project. If you are interested in helping out too, just let me know.
• The entire CNTR website was improved with a new homepage, improved transcription viewing, the ability to add church father data, and most importantly, it works much better now for mobile. My favorite new feature is the ability to filter down to a diplomatic transcription. The URLs for linking to individual pages was also changed, so be sure to update your software if you are linking to it. A lot of work had to be done under the hood to carry all of that out, so please let me know if you see any problems.
• The popularity of the CNTR project continues to grow organically, primarily by word-of-mouth. The website has double in traffic over the past six months and is now averaging over 4000 hits a day.

The biggest news is that the Statistical Restoration (SR) Greek New Testament has now been published by GlossaHouse (https://glossahouse.com/products/statistical-restoration-greek-new-testament-srgnt) and can also be purchased on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I make no profit from the sale of the book and it is provided at the publisher’s cost as a convenience to the user who wants to have a hard copy. The SR text had already been released under an open license and can be downloaded for free on github (https://github.com/Center-for-New-Testament-Restoration/SR). I believe it was God’s providence that provided GlossaHouse as a publisher. It is quite inexplicable, but one week after we worked out an agreement, the SR was up and available for sale on their website. It is hard to find anyone who is willing to publish an open licensed work, because anyone else could do the same, and probably no one else who is willing to provide one at cost. As a comparison, most Greek New Testament’s sell in the range of $45 - $60, but GlossaHouse is providing the SR at $14.99. Not only that, but GlossaHouse has given the CNTR its own series and wants to publish other works from the CNTR.

Just as a refresher, the SR is the first computer-generated Greek New Testament and is based on the earliest manuscript witnesses using an algorithmic statistical model to simulate a reasoned-eclecticism approach, weighing both external and internal evidence in an objective manner. This provides a consistently-weighed text without theological bias that is both scientifically inspectable and reproducible. For those who have been waiting for more details, the technical paper on how it was created is slated to be published in TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism, which is supposed to be due out sometime in November.