Is this GNT from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-SA?

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Nigel Chapman
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Is this GNT from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-SA?

Post by Nigel Chapman »

I'm publishing a query about a GNT text here and a nearly parallel query about an LXX text in the Septuagint and Pseudepigrapha forum.

Like many people with technological and Greek backgrounds, I aspire to have/make all the relevant texts for NT studies available in the most open and usable formats and licenses, as a basis for writing analytical and educational software. The holy grail is a reasonably modern text, good enough for language education if not for academic use, which can be CC-BY-SA licensed like Wikipedia, and then collaboratively maintained online without any licensing concerns.

I recently came across a pair of GNT and LXX texts at the Antioch site.[1] According to the person who hosts them there, they circulated online for some years, were corrected or updated by many different people, and are now orphaned, so that no-one has a clear claim of copyright on their current forms.

The GNT is a ~2 Meg Word Doc, and is introduced as follows:
NOVUM TESTAMENTUM
Textus secundum III. editionem UBS, omnino cum XXVI. et XXVII. editionibus Novi Testamenti Graece, Nestle et Aland editoribus, concors, praeter minutias interpunctionis.
It has been suggested to me that Tischendorf was the original basis of this text, though the seeming references to USB3, NA26 and NA27 (I don't read Latin, but that's what it looks like) leads me to expect copyright issues. Can anyone here tell me anything about the history of this version of the text, or any information that might help me establish it's copyright status or risk?

My current plan is to pick about ten textual and interpretive cruxes and compare them with the major academic Greek texts, to see if this text has been conformed to one or another in any consistent way. If so, then I won't be using it. Otherwise, I think it's a candidate to release under CC-BY-SA.

[1] http://www.hancock.dircon.co.uk/antioch.htm (see under "Free Extras", halfway down the page)
"When eras die their legacies are left to strange police." -- Clarence Day
Nigel Chapman | http://chapman.id.au
MAubrey
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Re: Is this GNT from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-

Post by MAubrey »

I can't speak for that particular text, but I would suggest that the SBL Greek New Testament is the best modern text with a flexible usage license that you're going to be able to find without simply hiring a group of text critics to make your own.

http://www.sblgnt.com/
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
SIL International
Koine-Greek.com
Nigel Chapman
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Re: Is this GNT from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-

Post by Nigel Chapman »

Thanks Mike; the SBLGNT is my fallback position, but so long as I have the option of avoiding its prohibition on half-English diglots, then I'll try and pursue that. I don't want anyone working with biblical texts to have to keep second-guessing whether limitations apply to their use.

Regarding text-criticism, the system I'm working on can store manuscript photographs which are CC-BY-SA or public domain, directly link them to the texts they represent, and support commentary and tagging of both; this will encourage readers to consider text-critical questions themselves and for my purposes that is better than having a definitive text.
"When eras die their legacies are left to strange police." -- Clarence Day
Nigel Chapman | http://chapman.id.au
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Is this GNT from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-

Post by Jonathan Robie »

I am not a lawyer. Here's my understanding:
  • If you don't know where a text came from, you don't know what copyrights it infringes. If you make copies of a text that infringes someone else's copyright, each copy you make is a further infringement. You really need to know how the text was created.
  • For the New Testament, SBL has fairly generous rights. For even more generous rights, has anyone considered digitizing the 1904 BFBS GNT, which is now in the public domain? It seems to be as close as you can get to the UBS/NA texts without violating copyright.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Nigel Chapman
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Re: Is this GNT from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-

Post by Nigel Chapman »

BFBS


I've never seen that text before. The JPGs on archive.org are brilliant.

http://archive.org/stream/biblentgreekt ... 2/mode/2up

http://ia600308.us.archive.org/31/items ... 0nestuoft/
"When eras die their legacies are left to strange police." -- Clarence Day
Nigel Chapman | http://chapman.id.au
Diego Santos
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Re: Is this GNT from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-

Post by Diego Santos »

Nigel Chapman wrote:
BFBS


I've never seen that text before. The JPGs on archive.org are brilliant.

http://archive.org/stream/biblentgreekt ... 2/mode/2up

http://ia600308.us.archive.org/31/items ... 0nestuoft/
I transcribed the image files into unicode text. The outcome is available at https://sites.google.com/site/nestle1904/ in public domain.
Nigel Chapman
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Re: Is this GNT from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-

Post by Nigel Chapman »

Diego Santos wrote:I transcribed the image files into unicode text. The outcome is available at https://sites.google.com/site/nestle1904/ in public domain.
Yes, but where's the Septuagint??? :)

Seriously, that is BRILLIANT work. It solves one of my major project issues. I must pass it on to the OpenScriptures list.

You might want to remove the note on the homepage that sys accents and punctuation are still to be added, or does that still apply to parts I haven't seen on my quick skim through?

Nigel.
"When eras die their legacies are left to strange police." -- Clarence Day
Nigel Chapman | http://chapman.id.au
Diego Santos
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Re: Is this GNT from the Antioch site compatible with CC-BY-

Post by Diego Santos »

I've just updated the front page and the downloads page according to the current state of the texts.

All the book files have diacritic marks and punctuation. The files nestle1904.zip and nestle1904vpl2.odt still do not contain any extra characters.
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