Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Greek New Testament (Novum Instrumentum)
Return to the sources — the Greek New Testament made available, with new Latin translation, against the inherited Vulgate
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Greek New Testament (Novum Instrumentum) (Mature (the work that established Erasmus's international reputation and reshaped biblical scholarship)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Scripture |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Discrete |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Greek New Testament (Novum Instrumentum)
The historical-philological time of the Christian textual tradition — autograph, early manuscripts, Vulgate translation, medieval transmission, Renaissance recovery.
Space
Greek New Testament (Novum Instrumentum)
The Latin Christian commonwealth into which the Greek text returned for the first time since antiquity, mediated through the new printing press.
Matter
Greek New Testament (Novum Instrumentum)
The material manuscripts Erasmus collated — papyrus and parchment, ink and binding — as the physical carriers of the textual tradition.
Observer
Greek New Testament (Novum Instrumentum)
The scholar-editor whose careful critical work reconstructs the text; the educated Christian reader who now has direct access to the evidence.
Energy
Greek New Testament (Novum Instrumentum)
The intellectual energies of philological reconstruction; the institutional energies of the printing press that distributed the result.
Information
Greek New Testament (Novum Instrumentum)
The textual information itself — variants, readings, scribal errors, philological corrections — as the discrete content that scholarship can analyse.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The 1516 edition had famous textual deficiencies: Erasmus had to retro-translate the last six verses of Revelation from Latin into Greek because his sole Greek manuscript was missing them. The 1522 edition's inclusion of the Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7-8, the trinitarian "three heavenly witnesses" passage) under pressure from English critics, even though Erasmus had originally and rightly omitted it as absent from his Greek manuscripts, has been a textual-critical scandal for five centuries. The Reformation's appropriation of Erasmian biblical scholarship — Luther's translation, the Reformed sola scriptura — was not what Erasmus had intended, and the late editions show him struggling against the consequences of the work's own success.