Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts

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The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM), is a non-profit organization set out to preserve the Greek text of the New Testament by taking digital photographs of all extant Greek New Testament manuscripts. Founded by Daniel B. Wallace, a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, in Texas on September 13, 2002, the organization acts under the umbrella of The Center for the Research of Early Christian Documents (CRECD). Daniel Wallace is the executive director of CSNTM.

Wallace has said the goal of the center is to photograph 1.3 million pages of Greek New Testament manuscripts, and estimates this goal will not be reached until 2020.^[1] The CSNTM team has already photographed manuscripts in Istanbul at the Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church; at the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung or Institute for New Testament Textual Research (INTF) in Münster, Germany; at Tübingen University, Germany; at the Monastery of St. John the Theologian on the island of Patmos, Greece; and a few sites in the United States. Wallace has also examined manuscripts at St. Catherine’s Monastery (Sinai), The Vatican, Cambridge University, Oxford University, the British Library, and several other sites.

The activity of CSNTM is limited by several reasons, including international law, finances and the traditional thinking of the other institutions. In spite of these difficulties CSNTM has photographed:

Although the primary focus of the CSNTM is digital preservation of New Testament manuscripts, it also works with printed books related to textual criticism such as von Soden's Greek New Testament ("Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments, in ihrer ältesten erreichbaren Textgestalt hergestellt auf Grund ihrer Textgeschichte", Verlag von Arthur Glaue, Berlin 1902-1910). CSNTM has holded also some manuscripts of New Testament, for instance minuscule 2882.