Newsletter Highlights - August 2025

I have been diligently working on several things behind the scenes, so it is time to take a break and give you an update about some of the things going on at the Center for New Testament Restoration (CNTR):

•  The work to modify the database to be able to add the early foreign versions of the New Testament to the website, such as the Latin Vulgate and the Peshitta, has now been completed. The work of getting some transcriptions and aligning them to the collation, however, will still take several months. The volunteer who was going to do that fell seriously ill, so pray with us for his full recovery so that the next phase of that project can continue.
• The biggest undertaking since my last update was the new update of the CNTR Website. JavaScript and HTML standards have changed greatly in the 20+ years since I started, so an entire rewrite was in order. All of the CNTR code base is being modernized, and I made my first use of web components in the website. Many of the changes you won’t notice at all, but the most notable additions are the manuscript transcribing tool, the character transcoding tool, and the addition of variant/subvariant patterns to the collation. Here is what I say about the variant patterns on the About page: "The variant patterns shown at the bottom are determined by objective criteria unrelated to scribal motive and may not always be intuitively obvious. These variant patterns are then combined on the basis of dependency to form larger variant units displayed in the apparatus. Such patterns are not necessarily caused by the processes implied by their names and the order of the layers shown does not imply that is the order in which the variants occurred." You may have to wait a while until I get around to publishing a paper to explain the scientific basis for what that all means, but I thought it would be better to get it out there for those who wanted to start making use of it. I also fixed several bugs, while probably introducing a few new ones, so let me know if you spot any errors.
• The CNTR continues to be on the cutting edge as manuscripts P129, P131, P135, and 0326 have now been added to the website. Like many of the other CNTR manuscripts, they are the first and only publicly available electronic transcriptions. The P129 and P135 transcriptions have been released before they have even been published in a journal! Special thanks to the transcription team with kudos in particular to Javier Salazar of Instituto Criteria in Venezuela who did a lot of the heavy lifting, and Adam Kubias who did a lot of the checking.
• Volunteers continue to do excellent work behind the scenes on the lexicon project, but more volunteers are needed. If you know of others who might be interested in participating please let me know. The CNTR project continues to rely more and more on work from volunteers which is part of the plan to keep the project going for future generations long after I am gone.

If you want to catch me in person, I will be doing some seminars on textual criticism at the Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, IN on November 11-12, and will be presenting at the annual Evangelical Theological Society meeting in Boston, MA on November 20. Well, that is some of the news from the CNTR. As always, all praise and glory are given to the Lord Jesus Christ for all that has been accomplished!