The Center for New Testament Restoration (CNTR) was founded by Alan Bunning in 2013 to provide free and open resources of the Greek New Testament, giving the general public a direct view into the original manuscript evidence so that they can examine all the important textual issues for themselves. (The CNTR absorbed the work of the Scientific Greek New Testament Interlinear project which he had previously founded in 2003.) For centuries, the underpinnings of the Greek New Testament had been obfuscated from the average Christian because of incomplete data, restricted access, biased scholarship, financial barriers, and educational obstacles. The CNTR has already achieved many accomplishments towards addressing these issues, completing two major milestones in particular to advance the field of textual criticism:
- The CNTR has released electronic transcriptions of every available extant Greek manuscript containing portions of the New Testament up to the year 400 AD, many of which still cannot be found anywhere else. All of these witnesses have been aligned into the highly-acclaimed CNTR computer-generated collation.
- The CNTR has provided an interlinear view of the collation and apparatus so that for the first time in history, the average person who does not know Greek is now able to see where the variant readings are and can get an idea of what they mean. All of the manuscripts and critical texts have been morphologically and lexically parsed to the same scheme which had never been done before.
All of this data resides in the CNTR database which includes a number of advanced features that were specifically designed for work in textual criticism, enabling areas of research that had never before been possible. None of this was done merely for the sake of academic head knowledge, but that many would ultimately apply the words of Scripture and be born again of the Spirit (John 3:3) by repenting of their sins (Acts 2:38) and receiving Jesus Christ as Lord of their lives (Rom. 10:9-10). A full description of the CNTR project can be found in the Project Overview document and in this short introductory video.
The motto for the CNTR is “Bringing scientific textual criticism to the masses.” One of the goals of the CNTR is to supply the data necessary for providing a rational answer to the age-old question, “What were the original autographs of the New Testament?” In this regard, the CNTR has quickly grown in popularity and its data has already been used in the creation of several new critical texts:
- Tyndale House (TH) Greek New Testament
- Bunning Heuristic Prototype (BHP) Greek New Testament and the derivative unfoldingWord Greek New Testament (UGNT)
- Open Greek New Testament (OGNT)
- NEW Statistical Restoration (SR) Greek New Testament
The SR featured on the homepage is the long-planned replacement for the BHP, which with the help of unfoldingWord has already been translated into dozens of different languages all over the world. The SR was created on the principles of scientific textual criticism which is discussed in the new book, “Restoration of the New Testament: The Case for Scientific Textual Criticism”.
The CNTR project is a continual work in progress and various aspects of the CNTR database are at different stages of development, so please contact the CNTR to report any errors or discrepancies that you may find. All of the data on the website should be considered to be in a beta stage and remains restricted by copyright to prevent errors from being disseminated while it's being developed. As data is ready for public distribution, it is released under an open license and made available for free download in the Resources area.
This website works best on a desktop computer with the latest version of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, or Opera browser. If the manuscripts do not appear to be using Koine Greek characters, please download the free KoineGreek font. If there appear to be problems with the website, try doing a hard refresh (Ctrl-F5) to ensure that the latest updates take effect.