It has been many years in the making, but the CNTR is now pleased to announce the beta version of the first computer-generated Greek New Testament, which for now I am going to call the “Statistical Restoration” (SR). The creation of the SR text offers a paradigm shift in the field of textual criticism, replacing the subjectivity of human editors with the use of objective statistical and computational methods. All the earliest manuscript evidence is fed directly to a computer program as raw data, which generates a Greek New Testament to reflect the most probable text based on statistical analysis and algorithms designed to mimic the processes of textual criticism, weighing both internal and external evidence.
The SR offers a number of significant advantages:
· Weighs the raw manuscript data consistently and objectively without human intervention based solely on scientific principles.
· Can be updated automatically whenever new witnesses are added.
· Automatically comes with morphological parsing, Enhanced Strong’s Numbers, English interlinear, and the Universal Apparatus.
· Will later be released under an open license for use by the global Church, after it moves from the beta stage into production.
A number of breakthroughs had to occur along the way in order to accomplish this feat, including the automatic determination of variant unit boundaries and their relationships to each other, the classification of homophones based on the orthographical-priority method, and rating the statistical reliability of manuscripts against the corpus of data. The scientific underpinnings for this are explained in six different papers which are planned to be submitted for publication, three of which have already been presented at the Society of Biblical Literature conferences. I won’t go into all of the details here, but more information about the SR text can be found in this overview video:
Note that this beta version of the SR text is subject to change as it is scrutinized by others for possible flaws. This version is about 1.5% different than the Nestle-Aland 28th edition, but some them are merely orthographical differences based on how I deal with phonology. Depending on the options used, it could be made to be less than 1% different, but the goal here was not to try to replicate any particular critical text, but rather to apply a scientific-based, data-driven approach derived from the raw data. It takes about two seconds for the program to generate one Greek New Testament, and the text was optimized by running batches of 1000 texts at a time with varying parameters.
The beta version is now visible on the CNTR website in the collation view: https://greekcntr.org/collation/index.htm. Try doing a hard refresh (Ctrl-F5) if you don’t see the updates. If you would like to help, I would welcome feedback about any places where you don’t think the computer got it right, based on the dataset that it is working from. Certainly, there are plans for the dataset to be expanded in the future.
Who is the Center for New Testament Restoration (CNTR)
https://greekcntr.org/overview/index.htm
The Center for New Testament Restoration (CNTR) was founded by Alan Bunning in 2013 to address an ongoing need to provide Christians with greater access to the Greek New Testament. For so long, the early Greek New Testament had been obfuscated from the average Christian because of incomplete data, restricted access, biased scholarship, financial barriers, and educational obstacles. The mission of the CNTR was to overcome these obstacles by providing free, accessible, accurate electronic Greek texts and materials using the principles of scientific textual criticism to encourage people to directly interact with the words of the New Testament. Not merely for the sake of academic head knowledge, but that many would ultimately apply this knowledge and be born again of the Spirit (John 3:3) by repenting of their sins (Acts 2:38) and receiving Jesus Christ as Lord of their lives (Rom. 10:9-10). The CNTR has absorbed the work of the Scientific Greek New Testament Interlinear project which was previously founded by Alan Bunning in 2003. A full description of the CNTR project can be found in the Project Description located under the Download option of the Resources menu.
Alan Bunning received his education in New Testament Greek from the Kensington Theological Academy under the tutelage of Dr. David R. Dilling, ThD, PhD. and received his D.Litt. degree for his work done in textual criticism. Alan is a born-again Spirit-filled evangelical Christian who believes in the inspiration, inerrency, and authority of the Bible. Alan has authored several Christian books including his latest apologetics book, “Rationality” as well as his popular book, “The Church”. He is also known for the record album he produced in the 1980’s entitled “Logfile”. Alan’s primary background, however, is in computer science and after working in the industry for many years, he became a college professor working as an Assistant Professor in Computer Information Systems at Ivy Tech Community College and then was a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at Purdue University. Alan retired from Purdue University in 2020 and now devotes his full time working as the Executive Director for the Center for New Testament Restoration.
What others are saying…
- “I will say again how valuable your collations have been to me, particularly as I’ve sought to reform spelling of the Greek NT. Your platform has the best way of displaying the data. Thanks for all your work.” – Peter Williams, M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., Principal of Tyndale House“Alan has used his skill in the knowledge of the Greek New Testament and his extraordinary computer skill to publish, collate, and compare every known manuscript of the New Testament from its origin through the fourth century. This is an incredible task that no one else has ever done or been able to do.” – David R. Dilling, Th.M., Ph.D., Kensington Academy
“Thank you for all of your work. I love your project, I use greekcntr.org all the time and am very grateful for your efforts to make it available.” – Todd Price, Ph.D., Project Coordinator, Unlocked Bible Greek New Testament
“I stumbled across your site and was VERY impressed. The logic of what you are doing is spot on, and the presentation is intuitive and accurate.” – David Instone-Brewer, Ph.D., Technical Officer & Senior Research Fellow in Rabbinics and New Testament, Tyndale House
“I believe the Lord is greatly honored by all the countless hours you have spent on your GNT work and expect it to bear incredible fruit in the long-term. It is a historical contribution to the eternal church of the Living God.” – Andy Hubert, creator of Biblearc, CEO Resourcing Education LLC - “…please accept my gratitude for your website. I have found it immensely useful in my research at Tyndale House.” – Patrick James, Ph.D., Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge