All NT manuscripts and fragments; at your fingertips

I wouldn't know where to post this to be honest, and I have no idea if anyone has ever posted about this before, but this here is great news for everyone involved in NT studies. They call themselves csntm.org, or to be more precise «The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM), under the umbrella of The Center for the Research of Early Christian Documents (CRECD)»

==> www.csntm.org...

Their mission is to photograph and catalogue, transcribe and make available on their site— ALL New Testament manuscripts, papyri, parchments and pieces of biblical writing from the smallest fragment or minuscule to complete codices. They plan to have photographed ALL these manuscripts and bits and pieces by the end of 2016, and lots is already made available on their site. This is what Internet is made for, guys. The world's greatest fragment collection at your fingertips. I can't wait to get my hands on this material and start digging.

Another great site I've come to dig lately is codexsinaiticus.org... where the complete Codex Sinaiticus LXX is photographed and transcribed. So plenty great news for everyone into NT research!

Very interesting. I'm glad to hear about this. Thanks for posting. Can't wait to dig into this.


a reply to: Utnapisjtim

a reply to: Woodcarver

Like I said there already a bunch of stuff made available there. Go to www.csntm.org... and scroll down, there's plenty. Not all these different catalogued bits and pieces have pictures, but many do, and some have links to pics of these writings. I can't yet imagine what sort of magic to be unraveled from such a database when complete. So much material. A translators' dream. I love it! Water in the wilderness!

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

Who is doing the translation, if any?
I can gaze at ancient things all day long, but if the symbols mean nothing to me, I have to rely on someone else to translate. And because I am bilingual (in a Latin-based language), I have often translated things. I used to read bi-lingual newspapers to compare the translations....
to get the proper "tone" across is more than just using words. One must have a command of the idiomatic use of language also.

I'll look at it, though...thanks for the thread!!

originally posted by: BuzzyWigs
a reply to: Utnapisjtim

Who is doing the translation, if any?

No translations as far as I can see, just the boring old Greek and the odd Syriac and Coptic or Aramaic. What these people intend to do is to transcribe the material, that is, turn the old Greek from the leaves and fragments and turn them into computer text in a database.

I can gaze at ancient things all day long, but if the symbols mean nothing to me, I have to rely on someone else to translate.

You can make some pretty great discoveries just by knowing the alphabet involved, armed with how to analyse the structure and syntax of the sentences, looking up words in a few lexicons, there is so much material of relevance published for bible research that as a hobby concerned you can end up doing nothing else. It's fun as hell too.

And because I am bilingual (in a Latin-based language), I have often translated things. I used to read bi-lingual newspapers to compare the translations....
to get the proper "tone" across is more than just using words. One must have a command of the idiomatic use of language also.

Indeed, and I assume the ancients would spend quite a bit of their time laughing had they been beamed up here, while listening to people express their languages today. Morphology, syntax and all the other stuff belonging to how to speak and understand a language properly is a life long and beyond enterprise I'm afraid. Sometimes, luckily, there has been done so much research that all you have to do is revisit the evidence. And the site linked to in the opening post serves all that evidence, as is. Great!

I'll look at it, though...thanks for the thread!!

Do so, and I hope you'll discover the fun world of deciphering and storing all these ancient bits and pieces.

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

Thank you!!! This is so exciting! I'm so looking forward to checking out it in depth...

I just received a new book I ordered with early Christian Ethiopian manuscripts and their translations, so I need to get through that first. But then I'll be off to explore these websites!

a reply to: Boadicea

And how about this? The vaults of the Vatican, opened up for everyone:

www.mss.vatlib.it...

For anyone who'd know what he was looking for. But you'd might end up with stuff like this:

digi.vatlib.it... a fully digitised copy of some other copy you can dig out from the archives. The prophets of old would give their right hand for some of this material, I'm sure. This is lovely stuff.

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

This is lovely stuff.

It is indeed -- thank you!

I just love this stuff. I used to make such a nuisance of myself at the library. Then I got the internet and I was in bookworm heaven! I still love my books, and for some things, only a real book that I can hold in my hands will do. But the internet has definitely earned its place!

a reply to: Boadicea

Like, here, I was surfing a few minutes in the digitised bookcases over at the Vatican, and suddenly I stumble across a complete Latin Bible.

Biblia sacra latine. Vetus et Novus Testamentum cum prologis et argumentis s. Hieronymi et aliorum.

That's something along the lines of...

— The Holy Bible in Latin. Old and New Testaments with foreword and commentaries by Hieronomus & al
==> digi.vatlib.it...

And this one here is a gem. A prophecy of popes from the Dark Ages. Complete with drawings:

Prophetiae de papis. Joachim de Flore.

Or....

Prophecies of the popes by Joachim de Flore, a man of the Church c. 1132-1202
==> digi.vatlib.it...

These are from the Latin section, and there's a bunch of other languages and categories. Everything is easily indexed and lets you zoom in pretty close, and it works fairly well too. A bit slow perhaps, but given the size of the database, they are excused I guess. Not a blinding lot though, they have plenty more than this stacked away inside their vaults. The Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana here has a total of 2633 manuscripts scanned, tagged and published if we are to believe what the horse says on the index page: www.mss.vatlib.it...

Then again. 2633 manuscripts made available is still more than one could hope for in one fix. Especially considering the Vatican is involved. This is all pretty awesome, in just a few years plenty source material has been made available for anyone to snoop around in. The re is the Vatican site above, and there is the Codex Sinaiticus site codexsinaiticus.org... and the csntm.org... site (The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts) which promises more than anyone could dare dream of. And then we have British Library with plenty digitised stuff: www.bl.uk...

— Please, if you have links to more sites with digitised ancient manuscripts, post them here.

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

As much as I'd like to return the favor, I don't have much, but you might like this:

Public Domain Archive and Reprints Service - PublicDomainReprints.org

This is an experimental project focused on reprinting public domain books. Our service helps you search for public domain books available from various digital archives on the Internet. We also help users search for existing reprints of public domain books, as well as arrange for reprinting of books not yet available in hard copy via print on demand services.

This is where I found the book of Ethiopian manuscripts I referenced above: "Legends of Our Lady Mary the Perpetual Virgin and her Mother Hanna: Translated from the Ethipoic Manuscripts Collected by King Theodore at Makdala and now in the British Museum." I was actually just expecting one manuscript that I was aware of via excerpts I read in various books, etc. I was very pleasantly surprised when the book came to find that the book has several other manuscripts as well. I was very impatient waiting for the book to arrive, and when my daughter-in-law asked what book I had ordered, before I could even answer my son said, "It's a nerdy book. You know how Mom is!"