Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity
University of St Andrews
In addtion, Dr. Wright has written roughly two hundred articles, both scholarly and popular, along with book reviews, and other publications.
I belong to the generation that grew up with manual typewriters. As a Classicist who had moved into Biblical Studies, I went green with envy at those who could afford ‘golf-ball’ electric machines which allowed you to switch ‘golf-balls’ to produce Greek or Hebrew while I was leaving blanks and filling in other languages by hand. I typed my doctoral dissertation in 1980 on a battered old electronic machine someone else had thrown out. I remember someone coming back to the library and telling us about a strange new machine that some of the scientists were using that was like a typewriter only much, much more so . . .
When computers arrived, I was determined to be at the leading edge of what was going on. Greek and Hebrew was still a problem and I experimented with various packages, with mixed results. Then, going on sabbatical to Jerusalem in 1989, I took the plunge and bought Nota Bene. I have never looked back.
At that stage, its great advantage to me was its language capabilities, its footnoting skills, and the early version of Ibidem. At a stroke, all kinds of things that had eaten up valuable research time – and had often gone wrong in the process – were done, done quickly, and done well. It was like going from a rusty old Ford to a Rolls-Royce. The first book for which I did camera-ready copy was my first major monograph, the Climax of the Covenant, published in the UK in 1991 and the US in 1992. I remember almost laughing out loud as I watched the bibliography appear as if by magic (I still get a thrill out of it, especially when I remember the long days of typing, and correcting, in the 1970s and 1980s). I grew bolder, and when my copy-editor used Nota Bene to work with me through The New Testament and the People of God (1992), turning a three-week task into a three-day one, I realised things were even better than I’d thought.
The next decade saw Nota Bene producing over twenty more of my books, ranging from popular to scholarly, with the highlights being Jesus and the Victory of God in 1996 and The Resurrection of the Son of God in 2003. By then I was embarked on a series of guides to the whole New Testament, now published as The New Testament for Everyone. It may sound silly, but there is something beguiling about sitting down with Nota Bene open and ready to go. Sometimes, drafting documents at meetings, I have had to use certain other well known packages, and have constantly been frustrated that they won’t do some of the basic things that Nota Bene will (and they will do certain things, like ‘correcting’ my language, which happily Nota Bene will not do). Nota Bene is a grown-up programme and it treats its users as grown-ups, too.
In fact, I sometimes think I have more growing to do. I have not used Orbis or Archiva nearly as much as I might have done. When my present flurry of projects comes to a pause, I want to go deeper into both of them, having just glimpsed the extraordinary things that they make not only possibly but easy. In the meantime, however, Nota Bene has triumphantly enabled me to produce the largest book I’ve ever written, the two-volume Paul and the Faithfulness of God (2013). This was begun, and so has been completed, with Nota Bene 9; now that the project is done, I’m ready to switch to Version 10 and look forward to yet more possibilities.
When I take on new graduate students, I always ask them what software they’re using. I tell them what they need in their software (not least, in Biblical Studies, the ancient languages – but also the reference tools, the bibliography, and so much more), and how Nota Bene provides exactly that. It will do everything you can think of and want, and plenty more besides. If it can’t make the coffee, that is simply because the coffee-makers haven’t yet caught up with the technology.
The Rt Revd Prof N T Wright taught New Testament Studies at Oxford, Cambridge and McGill for twenty years, before becoming Dean of Lichfield, Canon of Westminster Abbey, and then Bishop of Durham over the next twenty. He has now returned to the academy as Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St Andrews. He holds the DD from Oxford University and honorary doctorates from a further eleven institutions.
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