Our Year in Review

As we close the books on another year at the Text & Canon Institute, we’re grateful that readers like you found our website by the hundreds of thousands through Google searches, social media posts, and of course, by subscribing to our email list. To give you a sense of our growth, this past year, our website received more views than in the previous two years combined! We’ve especially loved meeting you at conferences, getting your emails, and hearing about your passion for the Bible’s rich history. So, here’s a look back at our work in 2023 and a glimpse of the year ahead.

New articles

This year, we published fifteen new articles. Readers learned about Erasmus and the search for the original text of the New Testament, a Hebrew manuscript that sold for over $38M at auction, bad Bible translations, a new papyrus with sayings of Jesus, the Bible in Jesus’ own language, and more. We enlisted scholars to write accessible articles from their expertise, and we’re happy to see their work received so positively.

We especially love it when we hear from readers about how our articles have helped in their own ministry. From Kentucky, Hannah sent us this encouraging note:

I teach Apologetics to High School Seniors. As a part of the course, I always give a couple of lectures on biblical manuscripts and canon. The website has been very helpful in my own preparation and as a resource to give my students. I’ve had several students and alumni ask questions about issues of text and canon, and I have been so thankful to know that I can direct them to the TCI for information that is honest, scholarly, and trustworthy. Just a few weeks ago, I had a student asking where she could find reliable information on historical evidence for the Bible, and TCI was the first resource I recommended.

From Colorado Christian University, Megan noted the benefit of the web articles for her undergraduate students:

I am including several links to the TCI website in my syllabus as required reading in the Spring. I’m grateful to have it as a resource for my undergrads!

We’re humbled that the website received significant traffic this year from the US, the UK, and Canada. And we’re also excited that many readers found the Spanish and Portuguese versions of the site. In fact, our second most read article this year was the Spanish article ¿Por qué son Diferentes Las Biblias Protestantes y Católicas? Many of these views came from Mexico, Colombia, and Spain to name only the top three Spanish-speaking countries.

Speaking

In addition to publishing articles, our team traveled and spoke to churches and parachurch groups around the USA about how we got our Bible through the Scribes & Scripture conference. In the spring, we spoke at the Young Life Mountain West leaders conference in Spokane, WA; Desert Springs Church in Albuquerque, NM; and three other churches in our home state of Arizona. Interest in these events continues to increase. (Keep reading to see if we’re speaking near you next year.)

In the fall, we spoke at The Gospel Coalition national conference in Indianapolis to an audience of 1,300 people. We gave talks on the canon of Scripture and the history of the English Bible, and Dr. Michael Kruger spoke on some misconceptions about the New Testament canon. With attendees standing and sitting on the floor in the back of the room, the session was a complete success.

Scribes & Scripture videos

Routinely, when we announce we’re speaking somewhere, we receive several questions from our followers about whether the talks will be recorded and made available. We listened. And we did something about it. This year, we recorded our Scribes & Scripture conference talks in a world-class studio with a live audience. As much as we would like to travel and speak to every group, we simply can’t. We recorded our talks this summer and hope to make them available to individuals and groups next year. Stay tuned!

Publications

Published just last year, our book Scribes and Scripture: The Amazing Story of How We Got the Bible (Crossway) was a finalist for the 2023 Christian Book Awards in the category of Bible reference works. Plans are already in the works for several translations. If you’ve read the book, consider leaving us a review on Amazon. It really helps.

In addition to speaking and producing digital resources, we also published a number of more academic works. Dr. Meade, along with his coeditors, published a special volume known as a Festschrift in honor of Dr. Peter J. Gentry, Like Nails Firmly Fixed (Qoh 12:11): Essays on the Text and Language of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, Presented to Peter J. Gentry on the Occasion of His Retirement (Peeters). Dr. Meade also published several chapters in edited volumes including “The Canonical Shape of the Greek Old Testament” (T&T Clark) and “Septuagint: Thematic Parallels to the New Testament” (Baker).

Dr. Gurry had several articles and chapters published, including “Inerrancy and the Initial Text” (in the journal Presbyterion), the entry on textual criticism in the new second edition of the Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (IVP), a chapter on textual variants in early Protestant Bibles in Pen, Print, and Pixels: Advances in Textual Criticism in the Digital Era (Hendrickson), and, finally, a chapter arguing for reasoned eclecticism in Can We Recover the Original Text of the New Testament? (Wipf & Stock).

Looking to 2024

Looking forward to the New Year, we eagerly anticipate serving you with more of our digital articles about the history of the Bible for the church and public. Make sure you’ve subscribed so you don’t miss an article. Also, consider a donation to the TCI so that we can enter the New Year fiscally strong. We depend on generous supporters to accomplish our mission of illuminating the history of the Bible.

Next year, we plan to speak in Houston, TX; Kansas City, MO; Snohomish, WA; New Hyde Park, NY; and Phoenix, AZ. See if we’re speaking near you. John also plans to speak at the Apologetics Canada conference, “Can I Trust the Bible?” on March 2–3.

We will send out an announcement on the Scribes & Scripture videos once those are ready for distribution and we hope to announce some exciting updates on our academic colloquia in the first half of next year. You will not want to miss these.

Finally, as we sign off on 2023, we thank our Lord Jesus for his faithfulness to the TCI as we celebrate his miraculous birth this time of year. We are fully committing our plans to him, recognizing his goodness to us in all the work we get to do.

From all of us at the TCI, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Peter J. Gurry

Peter (PhD, University of Cambridge) is Associate Professor of New Testament and Codirector of the Text & Canon Institute at Phoenix Seminary. He is the author of Scribes and Scriptures: The Amazing Story of How We Got the Bible (with John Meade) and Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism (with Elijah Hixson).

John D. Meade

John (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is Professor of Old Testament and Codirector of the Text & Canon Institute at Phoenix Seminary and a contributor of the Hexapla Project. He is the author (with Ed Gallagher) of The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity and Scribes and Scripture: The Amazing Story of How We Got the Bible (with Peter Gurry).