The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) will soon launch a new Digital Manuscript Collection online interface—perhaps the most significant advancement in our history—and we need your help with our beta test.
Our first goal is to achieve parity with our current manuscript interface. That is to say, we need to ensure that everything available in the current viewer is accessible and navigable in this new interface.
Perhaps a little context will help.
For more than twenty years, the current database and manuscript interface served us and our community of colleagues very well. It gave unprecedented access to newly acquired high-resolution images of ancient New Testament witnesses—with a significant limitation. We could only publish Greek language documents that had a Gregory-Aland number assigned to them.
A little more than two years ago, however, we began receiving requests for other kinds of New Testament resources including manuscripts in Coptic, Arabic, and Syriac. While we began digitizing these artifacts, our current system offered no way to store and display the images—at least in any meaningful way.
Our current system also limited our ability to publish other kinds of resources that scholars find useful, like printed editions (Stephanus’ 3rd edition, Wettstein’s 1730, etc.), unpublished manuscripts (like Legg’s unpublished edition of Luke’s Gospel or MS98 at Lambeth Palace Library), or the annotations, papers, and correspondence of past scholars (Tishchendorf, Geerlings, or the IGNTP.)
So, we set out to design a new database from the ground up and then apply everything we’ve learned from our current online manuscript interface. The result is a new platform upon which to grow, and we are thrilled with the result so far. This new system will eventually include:
- New Testament manuscripts in Greek, Coptic, Arabic, and Syriac languages, with the ability to include others as the needs of the scholarly community evolve;
- printed New Testament editions;
- collections of unpublished manuscripts, papers, correspondence, collations, etc.;
- other ancient Christian literature that may prove helpful to New Testament research (Patristic works, liturgical sources from the Byzantine church, lexica, etc.)
But, first things first. Our first step is to replace what currently exists and then grow from there.
Will you help us?
Begin by creating an optional account and start exploring! Navigate to collections.csntm.org, click “Login” in the top right corner, select “Register,” and follow the prompts to create your profile.