Jonathan Robie: "Needed - An Open, Trustworthy, Trusted Greek Text"

Jonathan Robie at biblicalhumanities.org presents an important argument about the need for an open, trustworthy, trusted Greek text. He writes:

The Bible is at the heart of digital biblical humanities, and open scholarship depends on an open text that can be used in scholarly publications and translations. For the Greek New Testament, the critical editions that can be used in scholarly publications and most translations are not open. The texts that are open are generally not considered acceptable for scholarly publications or translation. Something's got to give.

While arguing for such a Greek NT text, he notes that for the Hebrew OT there is the Westminster Leningrad Codex and the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. He notes the workarounds scholars have had to use with the Greek NT and lists some of the options, none of which are fully satisfying. He offers some suggested ways forward: 

1. One of the copyright holders (e.g., Nestle-Aland, SBLGNT, Tyndale House GNT) could decide to open their texts
2. The scholarly community could agree to recognize one of the existing openly-licensed texts
3. A new critical edition could be created and licensed openly.

It's a brief but significant article worth your time reading. I had been under the impression that the SBLGNT--a joint project of the Society of Biblical Literature and Logos Bible Software--was basically open, but Robie points out that there are restrictions that limit its openness. (Cf. here.) Personally, I'd like to see any of the texts mentioned in #1 be opened up, but if not, I'm ready to go with one of the open texts in #2 listed in Robie's article.

HT: James Tauber @jtauber on Twitter