The Impact of Digital Research: Thinking about the MARK16 Project

International audience; This article presents the challenges of developing Humanities research in a digital environment in relation to a New Testament test-case: the MARK16 project. The first section argues that virtual research environments (VREs) have become an excellent milieu in which to develop a digitized research project based on collaborative work. The second section presents an overview of VREs and digital projects on the New Testament. The third section demonstrates the ways in which the MARK16 project participates in the development of VREs and fosters new modes of engaging material in digitized NT research. Preamble The research question of this paper is simultaneously simple and boundless: does it matter if we practice Humanities research in a digital culture rather than in traditional print cultures? And what does the answer to this question mean for New Testament research in particular? Such abyssal questions are fundamental and should at least be considered when a scholar is planning a research project in biblical studies, theology, or religious studies. Indeed, the number of digital research projects are increasing at the international, European, and national levels.1 Such questions closely accompanied the preparatory phase of the SNSF PRIMA grant MARK16, a five-year project supported by the Swiss National Foundation.2 These interrogations are deeply embedded within the opening phase of the project and will remain so throughout, as MARK16 aims to build a new Digital Humanities research model. This will be based on a test case that is well known in New Testament textual criticism (NTTC): the ending of the Gospel according to Mark. Consequently, this article explores the epistemological digital turn in the Humanities and relates it to the MARK16 project, hoping to inspire further research and engagement in NTTC and New Testament studies. The first section outlines some challenges for digital research, pointing to the fact that virtual research environments (VREs) seem to be the main emergent digital milieu in which this work occurs. The second section presents an overview of VREs in New Testament and Early Christian research, and the third discusses the challenges presented by MARK16 in building a new Humanities research model around a NTTC test case.