Press Release
12 January 2015
On January 7, the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts’ Executive Director, Dr. Daniel B. Wallace, and Research Manager, Robert D. Marcello, traveled to Athens to meet with the Director of the National Library, Filippos Tsimboglou. After meeting with the Director last September to begin discussions of a collaboration, they worked out final negotiations and signed a contract for CSNTM to digitize all the New Testament manuscripts of the National Library. This is a historic collaboration between one of the five largest repositories of Greek New Testament manuscripts and the world’s leading institute in digitizing Greek New Testament manuscripts. Approximately 300 manuscripts with 150,000+ pages of text will be digitized over the next two years.CSNTM is excited to be working with Dr. Tsimboglou and his staff on this strategic undertaking.
The National Library of Greece in Athens
The project will begin in January 2015 with Dr. Wallace spending a significant amount of time in Athens, preparing the manuscripts for digitization. Then a team of 7–8 people from CSNTM will arrive in Athens to digitize the manuscripts. After the digitization work, the project will conclude with several months of post-production image processing. CSNTM, a Plano, Texas non-profit institute, has been digitizing manuscripts throughout the world since 2002.
Rob Marcello, Filippos Tsimboglou, and Dan Wallace at the NL Athens
This is the first expedition for CSNTM in which they are announcing ahead of time where and when they are going. The cost for the expedition, including equipment and follow-through, will be approximately $835,000. When the project is completed, all the images will be posted at http://www.csntm.org and will be accessible to everyone free of charge. If you would like to donate, please click here.