Drew Maust has recently gone through the tedious process of getting the aforementioned SBLGNT into a format appropriate for the Amazon Kindle. There is also an epub version available. You can download it here.
Dec 312010
Pick it up here.
HT: David Stark (as usual)
That didn’t take long. The aforementioned new critical Greek New Testament has now been published in a variety of formats. You can start downloading here.
Here’s the really cool bit. Because they are providing the text in plain text, as well as other formats like PDF and XML, people have the freedom to play around with this stuff. What does that mean? It means you are not limited to Logos software (though that is available, and they have promised a free download for Logos on the iPhone). You can, for example, load a PDF onto Apple’s iBooks, and I’m sure a Kindle version is just around the corner.
And, within a couple of hours, Michael Hanel has already got a working copy running in Bibleworks, so grab that here.
For those who want to play around with the text for further distribution, you can find the license terms here. They are pretty lenient.
This is awesome stuff!
Yes you read that right. And if you are a regular follower of Nerdlets you can appreciate why this is significant. Up to this point there are no up-to-date critical editions of the Greek NT that are digital, freely available, and web/font friendly.
The announcement comes from Mike Holmes, the editor of this GNT, at Evangelical Textual Criticism. The text is being produced in partnership with Logos Bible Software and the Society of Biblical Literature. The details are available here.
Some highlights:
- Free
- Digital and Print Editions will be available
- Unicode (this is important. For an introduction to Unicode, and why it is important in biblical studies, see here.)
- Semi-open, liberal licensing? You be the judge. I am basing that on this paragraph: “In addition to granting professors and students permission to use the SBLGNT freely in their writings, the End-User License Agreement encourages the development of new electronic and print products based on the SBLGNT through a liberal permission and licensing policy.” That seems to follow the same pattern as other SBL rescources, like there fonts, which are freely distributed, and which users are allowed to modify and distribute as they desire. It would be helpful to get clarity on this, though. Perhaps one of the Creative Commons licenses should be selected for it? This one seems appropriate.
In short, this is all kinds of awesome. Thanks to Mike, SBL, and Logos!
David Stark at New Testament Interpretation reports on the (still beta) roll-out of Biblia.com, an excellent web resource for Biblical Studies. Check out the full report here, or if you’d just like to see the goods, check that out here.
Apr 202010
The always interesting Phil Gons has a wonderful guide to blogging in Greek and Hebrew. You can find that here.
Looks like he is prioritizing Gentium as a Greek font, which is also my font of choice. And if you don’t know how to type in (Unicode) Greek and Hebrew, make sure you check out this post.
- Image via Wikipedia
There is a new Unicode Polytonic Greek font available for all you font collectors out there. Rod Decker has the details and download instructions. His post is so complete, there is not much need for me to add to it.
The basic idea: this font supports a very wide range of characters—Hebrew glyphs, for example–but is not as professional looking as (my still-standing recommendation) Gentium (or GentiumAlt).
If you are clueless regarding this discussion, but want to better understand fonts and right way to type in Greek, start with this post by yours truly.
Jul 062009
The full set of images and text from Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest complete copy of the entire NT, is now online. Check out their webpage. The interface is pretty slick, allowing you to change lighting options, zoom in and out, and bookmark and print pages. It also includes a transcription and translation. Anyone interested should definitely check this out.
Update: The always intriguing ReadWriteWeb has also posted a story on this, with a little analysis and some extra technical details. Read that here.
Jun 182009
Every once-and-a-while I have an edifying experience in the course of grading. It’s rare, but it happens. In the course of reading over Luke 8:10, which my Greek students had to translate for their exam, I was forced to ask (and answer) a basic question. The question is begged by the Greek, but not by the English. Here is the verse:
Ὑμῖν δέδοται γνῶναι τὰ μυστήρια τῆς βασιλείας τοῦ θεοῦ, τοῖς δὲ λοιποῖς ἐν παραβολαῖς,
The question is: What has been left out of the second phrase, which is an incomplete idea? What has been elided from τοῖς δὲ λοιποῖς ἐν παραβολαῖς? Or, to put the same question another way: what are Jesus’s parable about? Are they morality tales? Proverbial remarks? Timeless truths?
The answer lies in the parallel between the two clauses, and, in particular, between their prominent datives (notice that the datives come first in each clause).
So the first phrase is “to you”, that is, to the disciples (and those who trust in the traditions they teach: Jude 20-23). The second phrase is about “the others.” The first phrase lacks a propositional phrase, the second a direct object. So the disciples are given something, but the others, though given the same thing, receive it through an indirect medium, the parable.
So what are Jesus’s parable about? If you had to put the central message of Jesus’s parable into a few words, what would those words be?
The answer lies in the question posed by the second clause of our Greek sentence. What is given to the others ἐν παραβολαῖς? The answer: τὰ μυστήρια τῆς βασιλείας τοῦ θεοῦ.
Mysteries about God’s Kingdom.
Jun 172009
Copies of Westcott/Hort and Tischendorf have long been available online in digital form. Tragelles’s Greek New Testament predates both of these and is now available as a digital (Unicode!) text. Even better: the text is open licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license, which means you can use it, modify it, and distribute it to your heart’s content; just don’t try to make money off it!
You can download the digital text here. More information is available here and here.
Michael Hanel already has a Bibleworks version ready for download here. And this is a great candidate for an eBook, so I will begin working on that soon (hopefully).
