Need Help Transcribing A.A. Alexander

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Travis Fentiman

Puritan Board Sophomore
Friends,

I am looking to spearhead the transcribing of Archibald Alexander's "Lecture Notes on Systematic Theology", hand-written by Charles Hodge. This, of course, is a treasure.

Alexander was the first professor of Old Princeton Seminary (early 1800's), and this work is unavailable in any other form. I have split up the work into 11 sections of roughly 20-30 pages each.

I would greatly appreciate your help in this project. Here are the qualifications to help:

1. You are a generally competent person (and know English, and can generally make out Hodge's cursive handwriting). Knowledge of theology is a plus; Interest in theology is sufficient.

2. You will be very careful; ask questions if needed, etc.

3. You have the time to do it, and will complete what you sign up for. (It might take a total of 10-15 hours to complete a section)​

There will be deadlines, namely: to complete one's section in the month of February. In March you will double-check the transcription of the section after your own.

When the work is completed, I will put up the finished product (with due acknowledgement of all that worked on it) on ReformedBooksOnline as public domain content.

This is your chance to do something historically significant for the good of humanity. All labor will be paid 1,000 fold at Christ's coming.

If you would like to commit to this (check out the link above before-hand, so you know what you are getting into), please so indicate below in the comments and personal message me your email address.

Thank you greatly for any that are able to help. May the Lord add his blessing herein.

Here, again, is the link:

Here is the Table of Contents:

1. Philosophy of the Mind 1
2. Theology 19
3. Revealed Theology 37
4. Prophecy 44
5. Inspiration 53
6. Attributes 61
7. Scientia Media (Middle Knowledge) 72
8. Trinity 87
9. Decrees 109
10. Predestination 117
11. Election 121
12. Reprobation 131
13. Creation 135
14. Providence 147
15. The Covenant of Nature, or of Works 193
16. On the Will 221-263​
 
This is your chance to do something historically significant for the good of humanity. All labor will be paid 1,000 fold at Christ's coming.

There is no doubt that both these sentences are true. However, the labourer deserves his wages. I suggest you set up a Go Fund me page for this project to see if you can pay someone to do it for you.
 
...I suggest you set up a Go Fund me page for this project to see if you can pay someone to do it for you.

Daniel,

Thank you for the idea, though I am going to stick with my original plan.

Is there anyone that would like to help with this project? Currently we have 6 workers. 6 more would be ideal. I do think the work itself will be richly rewarding in and of itself.
 
A wonderful endeavor. Unfortunately I am overloaded and unable to help. Having read the handwritten notes often, I want to offer up a suggestion to the volunteers. Helpers should have available the following searchable resources which will aid when stuck trying to figure out some turns of phrases used by A. A. Hodge, as they will appear in these resources, often verbatim:

https://theologue.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/popularlecturesontheologicalthemes-aahodge.pdf
https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/Outlines of Theology_Online.html
- Get the epub version and load it into Calibre for searching. The pdf linked version is no longer available at Cox's Spanish website. See attached for a pdf version that I obtained years ago from a now defunct website).
 

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  • Systematic Theology Outlines A. A. Hodge.pdf
    1.7 MB · Views: 1
I think the author is Archibald Alexander, which makes since given the date; Charles Hodge would have been a student I guess in 1818.
 
I have experience with some Miller MS and older secretary hand but simply don't have the time for this. Even paid work in this area can be spotty; so the volunteers need a second to recheck their work. If you are doing it, get it as right as you possibly can.
 
I think there is a way to convert the original notebook to show a white backgound against the handwritten text. I am looking into this using Abby FineReader. I have done this before, but cannot recall the exact settings. I think that will be easier on the eyes for the transcriber. ABF is opening it now, but will likely take nearly an hour while it is processing the file.

Given your endeavors you may find this page with ABF cheat sheet useful:
http://archivehistory.jeksite.com/download/download.htm#dl09
 
Timing isn't right for me to help. I have another few weeks on my current job, and it eats up almost all of my non-sleeping time.
 
@Travis Fentiman

After four hours, I have finally processed the doc at 600dpi and adjusted the contrast and some other things such that it is white background with black handwriting. This will make transcription much easier. That is the good news. The bad news is that it is 218MB. If you have something like Acrobat or FoxitPhantom PDF you can extract the sections you are working on to reduce the file size.

You can download it here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6HWxDunFF2GeHc2Um5CQ1RneTA/view?usp=sharing
 
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