Jacob W. Peterson

xeirographa.comXeirographaA guided learning platform for reading Greek manuscripts with interactive transcription exercises.

My (free) website for learning to read from Greek manuscripts is available. Still some tweaks to be made but it’s ready with 12 lessons, tips and hints, downloadable reports if you use it for a class, and links to lots of resources. Please share and give feedback! xeirographa.com

xeirographa.comXeirographaA guided learning platform for reading Greek manuscripts with interactive transcription exercises.

And now user accounts with permanent storage so you can access your progress across devices. This also allows more classroom friendly features like injecting email addresses into the downloadable progress reports. For the nerds, it's an implementation of Supabase for auth and the database.

Now with mobile device support for those of you who can’t get enough manuscript time into your commute

birmingham.ac.ukBirmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament 2027: Call for Papers - University of BirminghamPaper proposals are invited for the Fifteenth Birmingham Colloquium to be held in April 2027

22 Sept

CFP for the 15th Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament next April. No theme this year, so open call! www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2026/bi...

23 Sept

Proposal submitted. See you there regardless

papyrus46.comPapyrus 46Free online images and transcriptions of Papryus 46

3 Sept

A major update released today. In addition to a11y and perf improvements, there are 3 features worth mentioning. 1) Per-source position memory aka the viewers remember your position, scroll, and zoom level for each page so you can toggle back and forth without needing to find your place again

Jacob W. Peterson@jacobwpeterson.com

One of my personal project papyrus46.com is online. It brings together a complete set of the latest digital images and the transcriptions I produced for my doctoral thesis. You can also add images and transcriptions from Kenyon's ed. pr. for comparison. It also contains an extensive bibliography.

3 Sept

2) Mobile version. Some nav items hide/shrink and you only get one viewer at a time. But combined with (1) above, toggling back and forth between sources isn't a real problem. Touch gestures supported by both viewers

3 Sept

3) The URL now embeds your folio and source(s) so you can share a specific view 1) and 2) were a proof of concept that can now be reapplied to my xeirographa.com site to support a mobile/tablet user

xeirographa.comXeirographaA guided learning platform for reading Greek manuscripts with interactive transcription exercises.

3 Aug

If you’re teaching #Greek, #palaeography, #manuscripts, #textcriticsm etc. this coming year, consider adding my website to your course assignments or resources. It’s free, I don’t collect/sell your info, and it’d be nearly impossible to cheat with AI. See 🧵 for details

Jacob W. Peterson@jacobwpeterson.com

Yours in negritude, Ryan K. Smith

1 Aug

Successful weekend already. Bought 3.2kg of focaccia for £10

Jacob W. Peterson reposted

@mewefree.bsky.social

19 July

Two people tried to enter a screening of The Odyssey without buying tickets after hiding inside a miniature model of the Trojan Horse. 😂😂😂

@countbinface.bsky.social

16 July

- Vienna (was almost home) - Edinburgh (is home) - San Francisco (was home) - Athens (practically home for a couple years) - Seoul B-themed also rans: Basel, Berlin, Boston, Bratislava, Budapest

Brent Toderian@brenttoderian.bsky.social

QUESTION: What are your FIVE favourite cities anywhere in the world? Bonus points for persuasive explanations why your choices are “right.” Mine (in no order) are: Paris Barcelona New York Montreal Vancouver

Jacob W. Peterson reposted

Count Binface

19 July 2023

Under a Binface government, anyone who doesn’t accept human-made climate change as fact will be sent back to school, from Year 1 right the way to A Levels, to see if anything goes in the second time round. #VoteBinface

3 July

Very helpful free tool

Jakub Sypiański@sypianski.bsky.social

I built a free scholary converter for 20 premodern calendar systems — Julian, Hijri, Solar Hijri, Coptic, Armenian, Byzantine, Syriac, Athenian and more: kalkal.online

23 June

When I was 17, I hung out with Ghostface Killah from Wu-Tang Clan for about half an hour while we listened to Funeral for a Friend perform

Kayla Cromer Official@kaylacromer.bsky.social

Tell me a random fact about yourself that sounds fake but is 100% true.

brentnongbri.comA New Article on P.Oxy. 7.1008 and 7.1009 (P15 and P16)The latest issue of Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft contains an article I wrote on two papyrus folia from Oxyrhynchus. Here is the abstract: P.Oxy. 7.1008 and 7.1009 (P15 and P16…

14 June

Gun Alba, Gun Phàrtaidh!

Haven’t seen anyone posting this yet. Nongbri has a new post (and article) on P15 and P16 brentnongbri.com/2026/05/07/a...

Jacob W. Peterson reposted

Ian N Mills

@iannelsonmills.bsky.social

30 Apr

Open Access Publication! My essay. "Canonizing Paul's Epistle to the Laodiceans," won this year's DeGruyter-Brill Prize and, as of today, is available open access. I'm really proud of this one. You can download here: www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Jacob W. Peterson reposted

Joey McCollum

@joeymccollum.bsky.social

27 Mar

More fun news: a paper I co-authored with Pasi Hyytiäinen and Tim Finney is now available as an advance article in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities: doi.org/10.1093/llc/.... We investigate the validity of the contested paradigm of text-types using a battery of computational approaches. (1/8)

doi.orgComparative computational textual criticism of the Gospel of Mark and the paradigm of textual clustersAbstract. In New Testament textual criticism, the paradigm of textual clusters has become a controversial subject. Within this paradigm, the traditional pr

22 Mar

Hacked our high school’s network to create a private LAN so that we could play Unreal Tournament from any ISD computer. Took admins more than a year to take down. (We could also change grades and, more importantly, adjust cafeteria balances)

Standard Issue Computing@standardissuecomputing.blog

myscotlandguide.comMy Scotland Guide — Scotland Itineraries, Travel Guides & Expert Trip PlanningHand-crafted Scotland itineraries for every travel style. Filter by transport, activities, pace, and group type.

14 Mar

In a break from academic projects, I’ve created a website with various itineraries for exploring Scotland. MyScotlandGuide.com

digitalorientalist.comXeirographa: Learn to Read Greek New Testament ManuscriptsIntroduction The jump from reading the text of the Greek New Testament in a printed edition to reading the same text in a manuscript is a big one. Printed editions use a clear, readable font, have …

9 Mar

A nice write up of my Xeirographa project in Digital Orientalist (NB: all the bugs had been fixed)

Matthieu Cassin@mcassin.bsky.social

Xeirographa: Learn to Read Greek New Testament Manuscripts digitalorientalist.com/2026/03/06/x...

Jacob W. Peterson reposted

Andrew Connor

@andrewconnor.bsky.social

15 Apr 2025

Open-access scholarship/books in papyrology (and related fields): a thread I hope to periodically update, as new material comes out. 1/?

14 Feb

A bigger athletic event than the Olympics has begun

Keith@keithdunn.bsky.social

The conch was blown at 5:00am. The 2026 Barkley Marathons begins in one hour. #BM100

youtu.beThe Finisher: Jasmin Paris and the Barkley Marathons (Full Documentary)YouTube video by Singletrack

14 Feb

For the uninitiated, here’s fellow Edinburgher Jasmine Paris becoming the first female to complete the event last year youtu.be/PgTEsybXw-4?...

Jacob W. Peterson reposted

Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos

@handle.invalid

10 Feb

We have received numerous credible reports of torture, killing, and inhumane treatment of detained individuals at the Camp East Montana migrant detention facility, located within Fort Bliss. #txlege

11 Feb

When I was a kid, all my tamagotchis died. This raises deep questions about my place among history’s worst serial killers

The New Yorker@newyorker.com

Experiments conducted with the A.I. system Claude are producing fascinating results—and raising questions about the nature of selfhood. Gideon Lewis-Kraus reports from inside the company that designed it, Anthropic. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/rOfXjg

xeirographa.comXeirographaA guided learning platform for reading Greek manuscripts with interactive transcription exercises.

And I should have an onboarding flow added tonight with all the information from this thread that you’ll see the first time you visit the lessons page

@iannelsonmills.bsky.social

27 Jan

The site now includes a dashboard view summarising all your progress and a navigation item allowing you to pick up where you left off.

Jacob W. Peterson reposted

Ian N Mills

26 Jan

How did early readers think about the relationship between the gospels? Repost to enter a drawing to win a free book.

26 Jan

*Worst person I know* meme

Scott Horton@robertscotthorton.bsky.social

Gov Greg Abbott (R-TX) openly criticizes ICE and distances himself from their operations in Minnesota, suggesting he things they are a spectacular failure and that the GOP needs to find someone to blame other than the people of Minnesota. www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/2...

european-alternatives.euEuropean AlternativesWe help you find European alternatives for digital service and products, like cloud services and SaaS products.

19 Jan

If you or your company are looking to migrate from US-based tech services in light of current politics, tariffs, and everything else here’s a list of Europe-based alternatives european-alternatives.eu

11 Jan

In a world dark with despair, a spot of light and hope for us: our daughter, Eleanor Freya, was born happy and healthy yesterday

xeirographa.comXeirographaA guided learning platform for reading Greek manuscripts with interactive transcription exercises.

Then it's just a matter of making it through all the lessons At the top of the page, you can click the "Gear" icon to toggle settings for Dark mode, plus font size and contrast options for users with vision-based accessibility concerns. There's also an option to reset all your answers

That's it! It's free. I take none of your data. All of your answers are stored locally on your internet browser. If you spot issues, as I'm certain there will be some, I can be reached through the contact form or on here.

xeirographa.comXeirographaA guided learning platform for reading Greek manuscripts with interactive transcription exercises.

Get the right number of letters, but still have something wrong? Now the help tooltip will give you the locations of incorrect letters.

If you're a teacher and having students do this for a class, at the end of each lesson is the option to download a report. This basically creates a PDF of the right hand side of the page

xeirographa.comXeirographaA guided learning platform for reading Greek manuscripts with interactive transcription exercises.

Clicking the "Check" button at the end of the line evaluates the answer. Here, it's correct and you see the check-circle. But what happens when things go wrong? Forget to switch your keyboard? It will let you know (and link you to the section of the guide on setting up keyboards)

If your answer is too short or too long, you'll also get a helpful message. Trying to force people to make honest guesses, it only says short or long after three attempts. Before that, it just says "Answer is incorrect"

xeirographa.comXeirographaA guided learning platform for reading Greek manuscripts with interactive transcription exercises.

Within that right side, you can click to require the answer to be correctly spaced. By default, you can input continuous text. There's also a quick link to the guide. Below that, a progress tracker. In this lesson the first line is a title, so the user gets special instructions

When you encounter new concepts or tricky sections, there is some help given under the line. For some concepts, this also links to a longer discussion in the glossary

xeirographa.comXeirographaA guided learning platform for reading Greek manuscripts with interactive transcription exercises.

The basic premise is a guided set of lessons starting with easy-to-read majuscule manuscripts before working up to difficult cursive minuscule texts. Ideally, each lesson introduces only one or two new concepts, which then reappear in subsequent lessons tho of course in different forms.

So how does this work? Here's lesson 1. On the left, a Mirador viewer using @iiif.bsky.social manifests. On the right, the transcription area. At the top, a general introduction to the lesson, often highlighting pitfalls or oddities about that page, and instructions about the following exercises

10 Dec 2025

For those of you with personal Microsoft accounts you’ll likely have received notice of a large price increase hitting soon (due to AI). If you go through the cancellation flow, they offer a “classic” plan without AI for you to swap to at your existing price