Newsletter Highlights - March 2026

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ! A lot has transpired since my last newsletter, so it is time to give you another update about what has been going on at the Center for New Testament Restoration (CNTR):

• The work on updating and modernize the code base has been completed and the entire website was updated along with some other improvements. A number of bugs were fixed so that the mobile experience is a lot better too. Now I need to revise the Technical Reference document, which has long been out of date.
• A comparing tool was added to the website (https://greekcntr.org/comparing/index.html) that allows any two manuscripts to be compared either semantically or phonetically. Semantical differences are differences in meaning indicated by lexeme or morphology, not differentiating different word forms within the same lexeme. Phonetical differences are differences in pronunciation, not differentiating common spellings that would have sounded similar. This feature had been requested for many years, and I finally got around to adding it.
• A translation tool was added to the website (https://greekcntr.org/translation/index.html) to display parallel translations for multiple languages. So far it only contains a few free and open English and Spanish translations, but volunteers will be adding other languages soon. Some people are producing Bible translations directly from my website, so this will help those who can benefit from the gateway language strategy.
• A feature to synchronize the collation, apparatus, and translation pages has been added as a button on the toolbar so that if you select a verse in one window, it will bring up the same verse in the other window. I use the feature all of the time now, so I expect others will benefit from it as well.
• The CNTR now has an advisory board (https://greekcntr.org/leadership/index.html) consisting of Fredrick J. Long from Asbury Theological Seminary, Robert L. Plummer from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Todd Price from Pioneers. We are looking to add one or more advisory board members, so let me know if someone in particular comes to mind. There are also two official staff members consisting of Roark Enters with communications and William Dunkin with the lexicon project. Talks are also continuing with Asbury Theological Seminary about hosting the infrastructure of the project. All these are steps in preparation towards handing the project off to the next generation.
• On March 14, I spoke on “A New Greek/English Lexicon of the New Testament” at the Midwest Regional Meeting for Biblical Studies in  Notre Dame, IN. And then a week later on March 21, I spoke on “The Decreasing Influence of the ECM in the Church” at the Evangelical Theological Society Midwest Regional Meeting in Grand Rapids, MI. The latter presentation is interesting in that I was curious to see what would happen if I submitted such a proposal to the CSNTM Text & Manuscript Conference, but it is really no surprise that the establishment there was not open to hearing a contrary viewpoint. So instead, I submitted the proposal to the ETS Midwest Regional meeting and it was accepted there and received a lot of positive freeback.
• The CNTR keeps becoming more and more popular averaging over 20,000 hits a day. According to some website trackers, the CNTR has been the number one website for textual criticism, but I don’t put a lot of stock in such numbers. The CNTR currently has 18 active volunteers working on a wide range of projects which is again part of the vision of keeping the project going long after I am gone.

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!