New manuscripts digitized by the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) have just been added to our searchable collection. These include 10 manuscripts from the National Library of Greece (NLG) in Athens, the site of our ongoing digitization project for 2015–16.
These images have now become part of our growing searchable library, which gives everyone free access to the best available digital images of New Testament manuscripts.
New manuscripts digitized by the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) have just been added to our searchable collection. These include 10 manuscripts from the National Library of Greece (NLG) in Athens, the site of our ongoing digitization project for 2015–16.
These images have now become part of our growing searchable library, which gives everyone free access to the best available digital images of New Testament manuscripts.
New manuscripts digitized by the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) have just been added to our searchable collection. These include 10 manuscripts from the National Library of Greece (NLG) in Athens, the site of our ongoing digitization project for 2015–16.
These images have now become part of our growing searchable library, which gives everyone free access to the best available digital images of New Testament manuscripts.
New manuscripts digitized by the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) have just been added to our searchable collection. These include 10 manuscripts from the National Library of Greece (NLG) in Athens, the site of our ongoing digitization project for 2015–16.
These images have now become part of our growing searchable library, which gives everyone free access to the best available digital images of New Testament manuscripts.
If you are planning on doing Christmas shopping this year on Amazon, please consider using the link above. By clicking on the Amazon logo, CSNTM will get a portion of your purchase at no additional cost to you!
The link will take you to Amazon, you can shop as normal, and Amazon will give a portion of anything purchased during that shopping session to CSNTM.
New manuscripts digitized by the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) have just been added to our searchable collection. These include 10 newly-discovered manuscripts from the National Library of Greece (NLG) in Athens, the site of our ongoing digitization project for 2015–16. Dr. Daniel B. Wallace made the discoveries during his preparation of each manuscript for digitization. They are listed according to their NLG shelf number, as they have not yet been assigned a Gregory-Aland number. They cannot be confirmed as new discoveries without further investigation (i.e. they could be missing sections from extant New Testament manuscripts). The contents of these discoveries were recently presented at an annual scholarly meeting by CSNTM's Research Manager, Robert D. Marcello.
We have also added images for 9 manuscripts that are now in our digital library. Many of these are older images from microfilm. However, we want to make sure to make as many available as possible, even if high-resolution digital images are not currently available.
These images have now been added to our growing searchable collection, which gives everyone free access to the best available digital images of New Testament manuscripts.
New manuscripts digitized by the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) have just been added to our searchable collection. These include 10 new manuscripts from the National Library of Greece in Athens, the site of our ongoing digitization project for 2015–16.
We have also added images for 12 manuscripts that are now in our digital library. Many of these are older images from microfilm.
These images have now been added to our growing searchable collection, which gives everyone free access to the best available digital images of Greek New Testament manuscripts.
All images are available at the CSNTM Library
Since we began our work in 2002, a core part of our mission has been to make it possible to view and study New Testament manuscripts from anywhere in the world. We have worked toward this by traveling around the globe and capturing beautiful digital images of some of the most important extant manuscripts. Today, we are taking another step forward by making it easier than ever for you to access manuscripts. We’re launching the new CSNTM.org.
Here are some of the features that you can expect to find now and in the coming weeks:
Please share our new site with colleagues and friends, so more and more people can continue to utilize CSNTM’s library, which is free for all and free for all time. We sincerely hope that you enjoy using the site. It represents a giant leap forward in accomplishing our mission to bring ancient New Testament manuscripts to a modern world.
29 October 2015
Andrew K. Bobo and Robert D. Marcello
Many visitors to the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts' (CSNTM) website are familiar with the front end of the digitization process. We travel across the world—this past summer we were in Athens, Greece for three months—taking our equipment with us to photograph manuscripts page by page. What most people do not realize is the amount of work that continues after an image is taken, the part of the process we refer to as “post-production.”
The post-production process of safely storing our data has developed rapidly over the past decade with the advent of newer and better technologies for every stage of the digitization process. The quality of digital cameras has increased exponentially, and so has the size of each image file. As we planned to switch to 50 megapixel cameras last summer, we knew we would significantly increase our storage needs as we increased the quality of every image. We archive files in RAW, JPEG, and TIFF formats. So a single manuscript page digitized with the newest cameras requires more than 425 MB of storage space. Because we have recently committed to capture 150,000 images in 15 months, this demanded a more robust way to manage our data.
The Center purchased and installed a professional-grade server system, which tripled the capacity of our previous server. The system can be scaled to hold over 600 TB of data, ensuring that CSNTM has room to grow for the next decade of expeditions. The new server runs a RAID6 backup protocol. This process is designed to automatically rewrite all data to multiple locations within the system, and would allow for two individual drives to fail without any data loss. The new server also gives us remote access to our holdings, allowing us to run maintenance processes and gain access to our data from anywhere in the world.
The entire process of finding, installing, and maintaining a new server would not have been possible without bringing in some outside help. CSNTM was fortunate to be connected with The Core Technology Group, an IT consultancy based in the Dallas area. They quickly understood our organization’s mission and data storage needs, helping us find a server setup that would be cost-effective, reliable, and scalable in the long-term. They have also answered dozens of emails and phone calls from us along the way.
Finally, CSNTM has found new ways to archive our images in additional locations and formats. Aside from our new server, we also purchased an LTO tape drive and several LTO tape cartridges. In the past, CSNTM used gold-plated DVDs for the purpose of additional backups, but with the rapid expansion of the size of our images, this backup method has become unwieldy and inefficient. It would take thousands of DVDs to store the massive number of images we plan to take during the next few years. LTO tapes, on the other hand, each hold more than 2 TB of data, only cost about $30 each, and last up to 30 years. We are creating multiple LTO tape backups for every image in our collection, in both RAW and TIFF formats, in order to conform with archival best practices.
Preservation begins with capturing beautiful images, but it doesn’t end there. With our new backup protocols, we will be processing over 60,000 images during the next few months. Each image will be converted and stored in three different formats, on two different media, and in three different locations. Though we aren’t in the field digitizing, the work continues as we safely archive our data for generations to come.
Robert D. Marcello
28 September 2015
After months of hard work and planning, the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) recently completed phase 1 of the National Library of Greece (NLG) expedition. The NLG is one of the top five locations for New Testament manuscripts in the world. During this trip, the Center was able to digitize 135 Greek New Testament manuscripts. Almost 30 people were sent over to Athens, rotating out over the course of three months. Throughout the time there, the Greek financial crisis hit hard. Banks closed, individuals could only withdraw 60 Euros a day from ATMs, and tensions soared. However, the teams continued their work. In fact, during some of the hottest months of the year, they continued to work without any air conditioning. In spite of all of this, each member of the team knew that they were a part of something much bigger than themselves, and as a result, they had to press on.
Pressing on is exactly what happened. In spite of all of the obstacles, CSNTM digitized over 62,000 images. These images are in the process of post-production where they will all be evaluated, added to CSNTM’s archives and website, and made available to you! This undertaking is intense, and CSNTM ensures that each image remains backed up and preserved for future generations. In fact, some of the manuscripts that have been digitized are new discoveries, and some others include significant finds! The Center will be making announcements when these new manuscripts are made available online.
CSNTM wants to thank the Director of the library, Dr. Tsimboglou, and his staff for their partnership in this important collaboration to preserve a fraction of the National Library’s treasures. We also want to thank everyone who partnered with CSNTM to make this amazing opportunity a reality. Without you, it could have never happened, and because of you, irreplaceable New Testament manuscripts have now been digitally preserved for years to come! We look forward to completing this project and thank you for your continued support to complete this massive project.
CSNTM's Executive Director has posted an exciting new blog providing an update of the expedition to the National Library of Greece and a newly discovered manuscript. Also, CSNTM has been featured in some leading Greek newspapers for our work at the National Library.
Click here to read all about Dr. Wallace's update!
Matthew Wilson
16 March 2015
The National Library of Greece (NLG) holds one of the five largest repositories of Greek New Testament manuscripts in the world. Ancient Greece dates back thousands of years, and most consider it the birthplace of Western culture. In fact, the rise of Greek culture resulted in its language becoming the lingua franca of the first century, and it was this language in which the books of the New Testament were originally written. As a result, the most important witnesses to the text of the New Testament are ancient Greek manuscripts and it is the mission of CSNTM to digitize them.
Press Release
2 March 2015
In the summer of 2013, the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) digitized the Greek biblical papyri housed at the Chester Beatty Library (CBL) in Dublin, Ireland. The Chester Beatty collection includes some of the earliest and most important Greek biblical manuscripts in the world. In addition to these biblical manuscripts, CSNTM also digitized several extra-biblical Greek papyri that are part of the CBL collection.
For the first time, images of two of these extra-biblical Chester Beatty manuscripts have now been made available:
1) The Apocryphon of Jannes and Jambres the Magicians
Jannes and Jambres is an apocryphal work. Its text is fragmentary and dated from the 3rd-4th century.
2) Enoch and Melito
Enoch is an extra-biblical work. Melito is an early Christian homily. The text is from the 4th century.
These texts are uniquely significant, as they contain an early witness to rare works for which only a handful of copies have survived, and in the case of Jannes and Jambres, this is the only Greek manuscript known to exist.
Visit the manuscript page to view these new images from Dublin.
Also, if you would like to make more resources like this available, please consider donating to CSNTM!
Daniel B. Wallace
26 February 2015
I don’t know how many handwritten Greek New Testament manuscripts (MSS) I’ve had the privilege of looking at in the last two or three decades. It’s at least in the hundreds and probably more than a thousand by now. And presently, I am looking at quite a few more at the National Library of Greece in Athens. CSNTM will be shooting all the NT manuscripts here in 2015 and 2016. That’s about 300 manuscripts with almost 150,000 pages of text. It’s a daunting task! And all of these images will be available at CSNTM. They will be free for all, and free for all time.
I’ve been pondering an aspect about NT manuscripts that I thought would be good to share with others. It has to do with commentaries. You see, many of our biblical manuscripts have commentaries written by church fathers included within the codex. Scholars are aware of about one dozen such manuscripts in which the NT text is written in majuscules or capital letters. Majuscules are what all of our oldest NT manuscripts are written in. Beginning in the ninth century, scribes began to write in minuscule, or cursive, letters. Minuscule manuscripts could be written much more rapidly and in a more compact space than their capital letter counterparts. By the twelfth century, virtually all the Greek NT manuscripts were minuscules. Quite a few of these later MSS included commentaries.
Over the years, I’ve examined such commentary MSS to prepare them for digitization. And here’s what I have discovered.
These MSS come in a variety of formats. Probably the most common one is for the text to be in larger script and centered on the page, with commentary wrapping around it on three sides (top, bottom, and outside of the leaf). Another format is to have the biblical text in one color of ink with the commentary in a different color. The color of ink for the biblical text is almost always a more expensive ink; one or two MSS even use gold ink for the scriptures. A third format is to have the NT written in capital letters and the commentary in minuscule. And finally, some MSS have an introductory symbol to the biblical text such as an asterisk or simple cross to set it off from the commentary.
Below are images of some examples of these varieties:
Biblical text centered and in larger script with wrap-around commentary
Gold letters for scripture, red letters for commentary
Press Release
12 January 2015
On January 7, the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts’ Executive Director, Dr. Daniel B. Wallace, and Research Manager, Robert D. Marcello traveled to Athens to meet with the Director of the National Library, Filippos Tsimboglou. After meeting with the Director last September to begin discussions of a collaboration, they worked out final negotiations and signed a contract for CSNTM to digitize all the New Testament manuscripts of the National Library. This is a historic collaboration between one of the five largest repositories of Greek New Testament manuscripts and the world’s leading institute in digitizing Greek New Testament manuscripts. Approximately 300 manuscripts with 150,000 pages of text will be digitized over the next two years. CSNTM is excited to be working with Dr. Tsimboglou and his staff on this strategic undertaking.
Robert D. Marcello
6 January 2015
In July of 2014 the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) traveled to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to digitize their New Testament Papyrus of Paul’s letters (P46). The CSNTM team consisted of Daniel B. Wallace, Robert D. Marcello, and Jacob W. Peterson. This was part of a combined project which will virtually reunite P46 since it is housed in two separate locations. The University was gracious to allow CSNTM to digitize their portion of the manuscript, and our staff was able to work with the University’s preservation department, which is known around the world for their work in papyrological preservation. A special thanks goes to Dr. Brendan Haug, the archivist of the Papyrology Collection and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Classical Studies, for his willingness to participate in this project and for his hospitality.