General Information

• New Testament. Virtual Manuscript Room, Universität Münster Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung - The University of Münster’s Institute for New Testament Textual Research maintains the official list of papyri and parchment witnesses to the New Testament, with images.


• Bart Ehrman's Web Site - Ehrman has written a great deal about the transmission of the mansucripts of the New Testament and the changes that scribes introduced into the text—changes accidental and intentional. Read more about him and view his full list of publications here.


• Clara Moskowitz, Bible Possibly Written Centuries Earlier, Text Suggests, LiveScience.com (15 January 2010) - A recent news account of a 10th century B.C.E. pottery shard that contains Hebrew writing encouraging fair treatment of the poor, the widow and the orphan, much like (but not identical to) Isaiah 1:17, Psalms 72:3, and Exodus 23:3. (thanks to John Daly for this reference)


• FRONTLINE: From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians - Interviews with several scholars about the rise of Christianity and the diversity of early beliefs and groups.(thanks to Vilma Pallette and others for this recommendation)


• NOVA: The Bible's Buried Secrets - A comparison of the historical account in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament with the archaeological record (thanks to Vilma Pallette and others for this recommendation).

Dead Sea Scrolls

• Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Hebrew University of Jerusalem - A rich site oriented to both academic research (with its complete bibliography) and to the interested lay person.


• Virtual Tour of Qumran - Take a virtual tour of the Qumran site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Hosted by the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls.


• The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls - in September 2011, Google Books finished digitizing the first five of the 950+ Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts, selecting the best-preserved scrolls housed at the Shrine of the Book Museum (most of the rest are housed at the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem). Here is the YouTube video promoting the effort.



• Andrew Lawler, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, Smithsonian (January 2010) - A discussion of recent theories about how the Dead Sea Scrolls got into the 11 caves near Qumran, and other recent controversies about the interpretation of the texts. (thanks to Jerry Tennant for this reference)

Great Codices from the Early Centuries

• The Aleppo Codex - One of the two most important manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, this 9th century manuscript is older than the other (the Leningrad Codex) but less complete. This excellent Web site provides access to the text and wonderful background information on the manuscript. A beautiful Web site hosted by the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem.


• Matti Friedman, "Aleppo Codex: The History of the Oldest Hebrew Bible," Huffington Post: Religion (31 July 2012), online.


• Codex Sinaiticus - Inscribed in the fourth century CE, this Greek copy of the Old and New Testaments is one of the oldest Christian Bibles in the world, and the largest book to have survived antiquity. Another fabulous Web site that lets you explore the manuscript as if it were right in front of you. Hosted by the Codex Sinaiticus Project, in partnership with the four institutions that currently house part of the manuscript (The British Library, the National Library of Russia, St. Catherine's Monastery, and Leipzig University).

Oxyrhynchus

• POxy: Oxyrhynchus Online, Papyrology at Oxford, Oxford University - Grenfell and Hunt, the scholars who discovered the papyrus dump at Oxyrhynchus, worked at Oxford University. This Web site provides access to information and exhibits about the discovery and to the publications of the Egypt Exploration Society.

Gnostic Texts

• The Gnostic Society Library - This Web site contains over a thousand Gnostic documents, including the Nag Hammadi Library from Egypt (but not the Gospel of Judas).


• The Lost Gospel of Judas, National Geographic - This gospel likely was part of the Nag Hammadi corpus originally, and was sold on the black market. In 2006, after an antiquities collector made the manuscript available to scholars for research, National Geographic produced a program and Web site to present the manuscript to the public. There’s a lot of interesting information on the Web site about the reconstruction, text, and significance of the manuscript.


• The Gospel of Jesus' Wife - In September 2012, Harvard Divinity School professor Karen L. King published a fourth-century Coptic papyrus fragment in which Jesus refers to someone (probably Mary Magdalene) as "My wife" and mentions that "she will be able to be my disciple." The document is a copy of a late second-century manuscript. This link takes you to the HDS press release, which provides a summary of the discovery and access to a draft article that Dr. King will soon publish in Harvard Theological Review.



In this video from the Harvard Divinity School,
Dr. King introduces the manuscript.



In this video from the Smithsonian Channel,
she explains why this document is so unique.

Apocrypha & Pseudepigrapha

• Noncanonical Literature, Wesley Center Online - Almost all of the known Old and New Testament apocrypha (hidden books) and pseudepigrapha (false writings) are presented here for your reading pleasure, including the infancy gospels, gnostic literature, and apocryphal acts of the apostles.