Difference between revisions of "Non-CrossWire Text-Development Projects"

Revision as of 17:00, 6 September 2009

Introduction

The CrossWire Bible Society's purpose is to develop Bible software. Part of what makes great software is the availability of great content: Bibles, commentaries, dictionaries, atlases, and other books. CrossWire depends on the availability of great content produced by others--we generally do not produce our own original content.

Other projects around the Web have been started to produce electronic editions of texts that we would love to see incorporated into SWORD. The following are a list of links to such projects. Involvement in these projects does not usually require a great deal of technical expertise, so we strongly encourage people who want to help SWORD improve but who don't feel prepared to contribute by writing code to contribute their time and work to these projects.

Some of these projects have a limited scope (perhaps just one book) while others serve as repositories for massive collections of texts. All links are just suggestions. If you find additional projects or particular works being produced by those projects, please add them to the list.

Individual Works

• Elberfelder 1871 Retroprojekt: http://code.google.com/p/elberfelder1871/

• Cherokee New Testament: http://www.cherokeenewtestament.net/

• William Morgan's Welsh Bible (1620): http://kimkat.org/amryw/1_testunau/sion_prys_003_beibl_mynegai_1281k.htm

• Irish New Testament Project: http://www.biblebc.com/Projects/irish_new_testament_project.htm

• David Martin 1707 French Bible: http://www.martin1707.com/

• La Bible David Martin (1744 and 1855 editions compared) http://desmond.oshea.free.fr/

• The Codex Sinaiticus Project http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/
  This is an international collaboration to reunite the entire manuscript in digital form and make it accessible to a global audience for the first time. Drawing on the expertise of leading scholars, conservators and curators, the Project gives everyone the opportunity to connect directly with this famous manuscript. See also [1] for details of the intended complete electronic edition, using and developing software pioneered by Peter Robinson of the University of Birmingham.

• The Aleppo Codex http://aleppocodex.org/

• The Codex Argenteus Online http://w3.ub.uu.se/arv/codex/faksimiledition/

• Codex Marianus http://www.slav.helsinki.fi/ccmh/marianus.html

• Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859 edition http://haydock1859.tripod.com/

• The Christian Bible in Lojban http://www.lojban.org/texts/translations/drbible.html

• The Paris Psalter http://www.aug.edu/augusta/psalms/ (hosted by J. Richard Stracke, emeritus professor of English, Augusta State University)

• The English Hexapla 1841 http://bible.zoxt.net/hex/hex.htm – Greek New Testament according to Scholtz with 6 ancient English translations: Wiclif 1380, Tyndale 1534, Cranmer 1539, Geneva 1557, Rheims 1582, Authorised 1611

Collections

• Wikisource – http://www.wikisource.org/

• Catholic Encyclopedia 1913: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)
• Encyclopædia Brittanica 1911: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica

• Distributed Proofreaders – http://www.pgdp.net/c/

• Dat nie Testament (A Plattdeutsch NT) http://www.pgdp.net/c/project.php?id=projectID47a592c11081f&detail_level=3

• Project Runeberg – http://runeberg.org/

• Nordic (Scandinavian) literature (including some Bibles, etc)

• French Bibles, etc – http://456-bible.123-bible.com/

• Several historic Bibles and other important books have been digitized by the web-master, Yves Petrakian.

• The Matthew Poole Project – http://www.matthewpoole.net/

• The Project is dedicated to republishing the extensive literary efforts of the Reverend Matthew Poole (1624-79). The cornerstone of the project is the translation of Poole's massive Synopsis Criticorum (Synopsis of Interpreters), making it available in English for the first time. This is an ongoing translation project. The translation work is being undertaken by Pastor Steven Dilday. Pastor Dilday is an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Reformed Church serving in the Northern Virginia congregation. He holds a Ph.D. Degree in Puritan History and Literature from Whitefield Theological Seminary. This work was drawn to my attention by reading Victor Perry's review in The Banner of Truth magazine (issue 547, April 2009). So far the first 5 volumes have been translated. These are available in print through Lulu.com, or to purchase as downloads at much lower cost. There are some samples available as free downloads.

• Encyclopedia Puritannica – http://www.puritannica.com/

• The Encyclopedia Puritannica Project (EPP) is an federation of Christians committed to the orthodox truths of Scripture. We believe these truths to be well understood, articulated, and applied by the Puritans and other Reformed teachers, both past and present. Many of these works have been forgotten by the modern church and thus, have become practically inaccessible. It is our desire to see these works go forth to the nations once again. This project, begun in 1997, is dedicated to the accomplishment of this task. Our goal is to make faithful digital copies of these works available to Christians once again.

• West African Scripts Literature Ministry – http://www.westafricanscripts.com/

• National Yiddish Archive – http://www.archive.org/details/nationalyiddishbookcenter

• The National Yiddish Book Center is a non-profit organization working to rescue Yiddish books and share their content with the world. More than 10,000 of our titles are now available free-of-charge through the Open Content Alliance.

• Look Higher ! – http://lookhigher.net/

This site has three collections of English Bibles:

• Public Domain Bibles - hosted by the site
• More Public Domain Bibles - hosted elsewhere
• Copyright Bibles - hosted elsewhere

Some of those in the first collection are translations that I have not seen hosted elsewhere. Among the more unusual digitized texts are the following:

• Anglo-Saxon Gospels - Manuscript 140, Corpus Christi College - circa 1000 by Aelfric
• Anglo-Saxon Gospels - Hatton Manuscript 38, Bodleian Library - circa 1200 by unknown author
• Wycliffe Bible - 1395 by John Wycliffe (66 books)
• Calvin Bible - 1855 by Calvin Translation Society (Joshua, Psalms, Isaiah to Malachi, Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Pastoral Epistles, Hebrews to 1 John, Jude)
• Revised Version, also called English Revised Version, 1885 Charles Ellicott editor
• The New Testament: Revised and Translated 1904 by Adolphus Worrell
• The New Testament: Translated from the Original Greek 1858 by Leicester Sawyer
• The New Testament: Translated from the Sinaitic Manuscript 1918 by Henry Anderson

None of the hosted translations include any deuterocanonical books, even though (for example) the 1885 Revised Version included the Apocrypha.

• Alaskan Orthodox texts – http://www.asna.ca/alaska/

This site is an electronic library of historic Orthodox Christian resources in the indigenous languages of Alaska. Included in this site are printed texts in the Aleut, Alutiiq, Tlingit, and Yup'ik languages. Among these are some translations of the Holy Gospels.

• Corpus Biblicum Catalanicum – http://www.abcat.org/cbcat/

As part of the Corpus Scriptorum Cataloniae series, the Corpus Biblicum Catalanicum will include a critical edition of all known Catalan translations of the Bible or texts directly related to it, published or unpublished, from the thirteenth century until the year 1900. On the website of the Associació Bíblica de Catalunya

Catalogues

• The Internet Bible Catalog – an experiment in creating a web-based catalogue of existing Bible Translations.

• Bible Research – The site is for Bible students who are looking for detailed information on the history of the canon, texts, and versions of Scripture.

Museums

• The Ramseyer-Northern Bible Society Collection was the hobby and intense interest of the Rev. Henry E. Ramseyer, who was from 1918 until his death in 1945 the Secretary of the Northern Bible Society. He was born in Ontario in 1873, moved in his youth to Michigan, and studied theology at Blufton College in Ohio. He became a minister in 1896 and, coming somewhat by chance to Duluth Minnesota in 1898, he decided that his life's work would be to minister to the lumber and mining camps then developing in northern Minnesota. In Duluth itself he also found a lack of ministry to the poor and homeless, and founded a branch of the Bethel Society, raising funds for the construction of a building which still stands. In 1918, he expanded the work of missions to the workers in northern Minnesota by founding the Northern Bible Society, with the objective of providing the Scriptures to all, at little or no cost, in the languages of their origins. In 1932, the Society erected the Bible House, and in it they had their headquarters, a Book and Bible Shop, and space for the public display of Rev. Ramseyer's private collection.

Online Resources

• The Septuagint Online: Electronic Resources for the Study of the Septuagint and Old Greek Versions – compiled by Joel Kalvesmaki.

Software

• Greenstone Digital Library Software – Greenstone is a suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections. It provides a new way of organizing information and publishing it on the Internet or on CD-ROM. Greenstone is produced by the New Zealand Digital Library Project at the University of Waikato, and developed and distributed in cooperation with UNESCO and the Human Info NGO. It is open-source, multilingual software, issued under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Read the Greenstone Factsheet for more information.

Libraries

The following powerful inter-library search engines are useful as aids for general research.:

• WorldCat
• COPAC