mssromWhenever I read a work by Bart D. Ehrman I find myself suddenly interested in textual criticism. Daniel B. Wallace in an article titled “Challenges in New Testament Criticism for the Twenty-First Century” (JETS 52/1 [March 2009] 79-100) credited Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why as reviving interest in this field of study. I can see why!

There are a few web resources that have brought this field of study back to the forefront of people’s minds once again as well. (1) The “Evangelical Textual Criticism” blog has made textual criticism a “bloggable” topic. (2) The Codex Sinaiticus being placed online for anyone and everyone to view (see here). (3) The Gospel of Judas website by National Geographic allows you to learn a lot about this document by viewing online as well as download high definition pdf documents of the codex.

According to Wallace in the aforementioned article (p. 91) there is an effort underway by the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) and the INTF “to take high-resolution digital photographs of all extant Greek NT MSSS and post the images on the Internet”. I wonder what this will do for the field of NT criticism and textual criticism. It will be interesting to see how this “democratizes” such a previously exclusive area of scholarship.