Primary Source Catalogue

Purpose

The Primary Source Catalogue records the confessions, editions, theological works, historical documents, manuscript images, and other original materials used by Confessional Bibliology. Its purpose is not merely to collect links. It is to show exactly what source was consulted, which copy or edition was used, how it was verified, and where the site’s quotation or conclusion can be checked.

What Counts as a Primary Source

For this catalogue, a primary source is an item that directly bears witness to the historical question under study. Depending on the question, that may include:

• a Hebrew or Greek biblical edition;
• a manuscript, facsimile, collation, or apparatus;
• a confession, catechism, synodical act, or ecclesiastical record;
• an original theological or polemical work;
• an author’s own letter, preface, diary, lecture, or published statement;
• a contemporary review, catalogue, or institutional record;
• the first edition of a critical theory or textual method;
• a historic translation or version.

A modern handbook may be a valuable secondary source, but it does not replace the artifact or document on which its claim depends.

Catalogue Divisions

Scripture, Confessions, and Ecclesiastical Standards

This division includes the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, historic Protestant confessions, catechisms, and ecclesiastical documents relevant to revelation, inspiration, canon, preservation, authenticity, authority, and translation.

Historic Reformed Witnesses

This division records Reformers, Reformed orthodox theologians, Westminster divines, Puritans, seventeenth-century polemicists, and later confessional witnesses. Their testimony is subordinate to Scripture but important for establishing what the confessional language meant in its historical setting.

Texts, Editions, and Collations

This division includes Hebrew Bibles, Greek New Testaments, Textus Receptus editions, critical editions, majority-text editions, polyglots, collations, and other instruments used to identify readings and edition history.

Opposing and Critical Sources

Strong contrary works are catalogued rather than hidden. Restorationist, eclectic, majority-text, canon, Septuagint, and anti-received-text works may be included because a serious argument must engage the evidence and methods in their strongest forms.

Publication and Controversy Records

Where a claim concerns what a person, institution, editor, or edition did, the catalogue should preserve the original publication, dated statement, or documentary record rather than rely upon a later characterization.

Required Fields for a Controlled Record

Every completed catalogue record should include, as applicable:

1. normalized author or corporate author;
2. full title and short title;
3. publication place, publisher or printer, and date;
4. edition, impression, volume, and language;
5. STC, Wing, shelfmark, catalogue identifier, or other stable identifier;
6. holding institution or provider;
7. source-copy URL and date accessed;
8. completeness and image-quality statement;
9. rights and reuse status;
10. file size, page count, and checksum for locally controlled source files;
11. verification status;
12. precise locators for quoted material;
13. related articles, editions, people, passages, and projects;
14. a permanent Confessional Bibliology record URL.

Not every field applies to every source. A record should never supply invented data merely to make the form look complete.

Verification Status

The catalogue uses explicit status labels:

• Identified: bibliographic identity established, but the source has not yet been inspected in full.
• Acquired: a usable copy has been obtained and its provenance recorded.
• Partially checked: selected passages or structural elements have been verified.
• Source-verified: the cited portion has been checked against the named source copy.
• Independently reviewed: a second qualified reviewer has checked the relevant transcription, translation, or citation.
• Unresolved: a bibliographic, textual, rights, or source-copy question remains open.

The label describes the extent of verification, not the importance of the source.

Source Hierarchy

When possible, research proceeds from the artifact or original edition to contemporary documentation, then to foundational scholarly treatment, modern technical work, and finally handbooks or popular summaries. Later sources can help identify questions, but derivative repetition must not be counted as multiple independent witnesses.

If the original item cannot be obtained, the record should say what substitute was used and what limitation follows.

Quotations, Languages, and Locators

Every quotation should retain a page, folio, column, signature, section, or stable line reference. Original-language quotations should identify the edition and the person or published source responsible for the translation. A translation created for the site must state its review status.

Quotation accuracy and argument accuracy are distinct. A sentence can be transcribed correctly and still be misrepresented if its qualification or context is omitted.

Rights and Source Copies

The underlying text, a scan, a transcription, and a modern editorial edition may have different rights. Catalogue records therefore distinguish public-domain status from provider terms and from the license attached to Confessional Bibliology’s own work.

For the governing policy, see Text Modernization and Rights.

Current Catalogue State

The 2026 research-library rebuild established the record model and assembled controlled source-and-rights records for the first eight modules of Foundations of Confessional Bibliology. The John Owen 1659 edition pilot provides the first full Source Library test case. Additional records will be published only at the highest verification status actually reached.

Browse related material through Reformed Witnesses, Confessions on Scripture, Editions and Textual History, and Downloads and Citation Center.

Corrections

Documented corrections to an author, title, date, shelfmark, locator, transcription, translation, rights statement, or source link should be submitted through the Contact page. Substantive changes will be entered in the Corrections and Revision History.

Source Record

• Confessional Bibliology Source Library Manual, version 1.0
• Source-and-rights records for Foundations of Confessional Bibliology, Modules 1–8
• John Owen 1659 Pilot Work Warrant and Source-Acquisition Dossier, version 1.0