[B-Greek] Inaccurate electronic versions

Alan Bunning bunning at verizon.net
Wed Jan 24 18:35:23 EST 2007


Thanks for the info! I'll take a look and compare it with what I have. I
certainly don't want to have to reinvent the wheel. It does look like there
is some overlap. Let me know if anything I am doing can help your cause. The
next thing I was planning on doing, was correcting the parsings and roots
for those same texts. As I said, I barely got started and already found a
tremendous number of errors. What sort of work have you done in this regard?
I will certainly add the set you have to the mix when I compare them.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: James Tauber [mailto:jtauber at jtauber.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 10:36 PM
> To: bunning at verizon.net
> Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Inaccurate electronic versions
> 
> 
> Silly me -- that should be http://morphgnt.org/ without the www :-)
> 
> James
> 
> On 23/01/2007, at 10:25 PM, James Tauber wrote:
> 
> > Alan,
> >
> > Are you aware of the texts available at www.morphgnt.org and the 
> > continuing work of Ulrik Petersen and myself that may overlap 
> > considerably with your SGNTI?
> >
> > I have spent the last twelve years maintaining and correcting the 
> > morphological analysis and lemmatization of the UBS text originally 
> > provided by CCAT. Unfortunately, very old versions of this work 
> > continue to be distributed. As far as I can tell, your work only 
> > references these older and more erroneous versions.
> >
> > Your input to Ulrik and my work would be most welcome as 
> I'm sure you 
> > have dealt with many of the same issues that we continue to 
> deal with.
> >
> > James
> >
> >
> > On 20/01/2007, at 10:59 AM, Alan Bunning wrote:
> >
> >> I got tired of the myriad of inaccuracies, sloppy scholarship, and 
> >> proprietary nature associated with the New Testament Greek 
> texts and 
> >> decided to start collecting my own accurate electronic versions. I 
> >> have gone through hundreds of websites and several Bible programs 
> >> collecting copies of the various Greek texts. After I obtained 
> >> several copies of a certain text, such as Stephanus 1550 
> for example, 
> >> I then normalized them all to the same format and then had the 
> >> computer compare them for differences. To my surprise, all of them 
> >> contained differences from each other. After a while, I 
> could see who 
> >> was copying their electronic texts from whom and could distinguish 
> >> several root lines that were repeatedly being utilized. I then 
> >> recorded all of the differences and consulted with the printed 
> >> version in various libraries to determine which electronic version 
> >> might be right. To my surprise, NO SINGLE TEXT of any of 
> the texts I 
> >> collected was entirely right
> >> -- some had most things right and but then would have other things 
> >> wrong. I repeated this process for each of the following texts so 
> >> far:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Stephanus 1550
> >>
> >> Westcott and Hort 1881
> >>
> >> Scrivener 1891
> >>
> >> Byzantine Majority 1991
> >>
> >> Nestle-Aland 27/UBS4
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Common sources such as the Online Bible, Broman, Unbound 
> Bible, and 
> >> CCAT all had various errors. Not one single text for any version I 
> >> examined was entirely correct, although a few were really close. I 
> >> have recorded where each of the major texts I collected 
> differed so 
> >> that the providers could correct their texts, and also 
> have contacted 
> >> a few of them. In some cases, the providers did not 
> actually have the 
> >> text they claimed to have.
> >> The
> >> corrected texts and the differences are all available on 
> my website 
> >> under the "Greek Texts" link at:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> http://mysite.verizon.net/bunning/SGNTI/
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> I would point out that this process of mine does not 
> guarantee that 
> >> the texts I have placed on my website are error free, but 
> only that 
> >> they are more accurate than all of the other texts I have 
> compared. 
> >> They are now at least correct in all the areas where any 
> of the texts 
> >> differed from each other.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> I have since begun looking at the morphological parsings 
> and links to 
> >> root words, and am even more appalled at the magnitude of 
> errors. It 
> >> is far, far worse than I ever imagined. I am not talking about 
> >> alternatives in the way a word could be parsed by different 
> >> interpreters, I am talking about internal errors and wrong 
> links to 
> >> root words within the same text, and then those by the same author 
> >> across texts. What a mess! (There are also errors in verse 
> numbering 
> >> that I am still working on).
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> If you believe you have an electronic copy of a Greek text 
> that you 
> >> believe is correct AND you have compared it with the 
> errors I already 
> >> recorded (in other words, it is not just another copy of 
> one of the 
> >> main copies I already evaluated), I would be happy to 
> compare it with 
> >> the texts that I have.
> >> Perhaps someone has also done some of this and can save me some 
> >> trouble. I would also be curious to see if the big money programs 
> >> like Libronix, also have the same errors because they copied from 
> >> these other texts as their source.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Alan Bunning
> >>
> >> bunning at verizon.net
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ---
> >> B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek B-Greek 
> mailing list 
> >> B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org 
> >> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
> >
> > ---
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