Stephen C. Carlson announces on his blog that his very useful (<– my words!) Synoptic Problem Home Page is changing its name and location. The remodeled and updated Synoptic Problem Website is powered by Blogger, which means, among other things, than anyone can subscribe to its site feed and read it with an online aggregator like Bloglines.

Looks good! This is another example of the recent trend to blend “traditional” websites with blogs. This phenomenon seems to blur the differences between both approaches. Maybe from now on we’ll need some new term to refer to this “hybrid” kind of sites. Suggestions are welcome.

One of the most interesting online projects dealing with the Greek New Testament, still under development, is, IMO, the New Testament Transcripts Prototype. This is a brief description of the project taken directly from their website:

New Testament Transcripts features important Greek manuscripts of the New Testament as transcribed by the Institute for New Testament Textual Research at the University of Münster, Westphalia, Germany. The site is being prepared in collaboration with Scholarly Digital Editions (Leicester, UK) and is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Bonn, Germany).

The books currently available are the Four Gospels, 1-3 John, and Jude. There are some very nice things that make this project stand out. Beyond the welcome addition of a newer and fuller Apparatus, the possibility of reading transcripts of some of the most important manuscripts is quite exciting. Besides, the text is color coded for
different purposes, which add to the overall usefulness of the tool. This is all summed up in the following paragraph:

This apparatus is based on the new transcripts. It lists every single variation found in these transcripts. If you click on a manuscript number, you are taken to the transcript of that manuscript. Red color
indicates that the letters were supplied by the editors; they are not found in the manuscript. Red numbers indicate the number of characters that would fit in the space available. Underdots indicate that the characters can’t be identified with certainty in the manuscript. Green links indicate that corrections have been made to the manuscript.
Clicking on green links brings up small windows telling you about alterations by later hands.

The downside is that the Printed Ed. View (NA27) is no longer available, and the same can be said of the fully accented NA27 text and critical apparatus. I do not know if that is simply a temporary situation, but I certainly liked it
better the way it used to be displayed before. For comparison purposes, you can check out the older version and reach your own verdict. Also, in my experience (and here your mileage may vary), Safari (Mac OS X) did a much better job at
displaying and navigating the site than IE for Windows (IE 6, Win XP Pro). Whatever the browser you use, you will need to download the TITUS Cyberbit Basic font (available here) in order to properly display the Greek characters and special symbols. The is also an online Guide which, unfortunately doesn’t help much, since it applies to the previous version of the Digital Nestle-Aland Prototype (still available here), and needs to be updated.

In conclusion, it’s nice to see this online project slowly taking shape. Now I just hope that, after all the rough edges are gone, it will eventually make its way into some of the Bible software programs we all use and like so much. Questions and comments about the NT Transcripts Prototype are welcomed, and there is an email address at the bottom of the homepage where you can send them.

No, I’m not. I promise! There is an electronic Klingon Bible available. You can read all about it here. Non-Trekkies be warned! Ah, and don’t forget to take a look at the KLV English/Klingon Lexicon. No comment.

A few years ago, Robert Harris wrote an article entitled Evaluating Internet Research Sources. Given the general INTERNETization of our modern society, and GOOGLEization of recent research methods, I think it’s probably a good idea to be reminded of the need for some critical thinking/discerning judgment.
You can find just about anything on the net. But there’s a lot of inaccurate and misleading information out there. How are we to discriminate between good and bad sources? Read the article. It won’t harm you.

Jim Davila, over at PaleoJudaica, posts some very sensible comments about certain copyright issues brought up by the recent 2004 SBL Seminar Papers that were made recently available. Mark Goodacre and Stephen Carlson also make some useful follow-up comments.

The whole problem seems to arise from the interpretation given to this sentence: “Because these papers represent works in progress, they should not be quoted or otherwise cited without permission from the author.” Jim thinks, and I agree, that it is important to challenge such interpretation of copyright regulations, and concludes: “If copyright really worked the way the writer of that paragraph quoted above seems to think it does, the Blogosphere couldn’t enjoy the vigorous interchange of ideas which characterizes it.”

It seems to me that there are two different questions involved here: one is the legitimate right to receive credit where credit is due, and to be treated with “academic courtesy” (as Stephen puts it). The other, less understandable, IMO, is the fear I perceive on the part of some to open up one’s thoughts and ideas, so that others may discuss them and interact with them in public forums such as blogs. I wholeheartedly agree with the first concern, but find the second unacceptable. This is the Internet, and if you don’t want any feedback, any interaction, any criticism, any review, simply don’t post. It’s as simple as that. BTW, I hope Mark Goodacre’s questions prove to be unfounded – though I think he’s got a good point – when he asks: “Is there an implied distinction working here between proper publication = print and temporary, work in progress = web? Is this the end of an era?”

Incidentally, I don’t mean to open Pandora’s Box here, but I’m afraid copyright laws are a necessary evil. Perhaps not many people dare say so in public, but I know for a fact that many think this way. Furthermore, I’m sad to see that they are sometimes (mis)used in a way than hinders academic exchange and research, and seriously detracts from the potential of Internet-based communication. This is one of the main reasons, I think, that accounts for the increasing popularity of the open-source movement/ideal.

Okay. Now you are free to have your say and ignore, agree, or disagree with all the above. You may quote at will. I only ask that you do not misrepresent what I’ve just said. And yes, this is also a work in progress. I may change my mind on the subject