ON THE CUTTING EDGE: 1600-YO Christian Bible Now In 21st Century Format
For 150 years, the 1,600-year-old Codex Sinaiticus - the oldest surviving Christian Bible - was divvied up amongst libraries in Britain, Germany, Russia, and Egypt, but can now be found in one single location in cyberspace, reports The Associated Press:
Sinaiticus, which loosely translated means "the book from Sinai," was discovered at the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai by German Bible scholar Constantine Tischendorf in the mid-19th century. Much of it eventually wound up in Russia - just how exactly the British Library won't say, citing lingering sensitivity over the circumstances surrounding its removal from the monastery.
The British Library bought 347 pages from Soviet authorities in 1933. Forty-three pages are at the University Library in Leipzig, Germany, and six fragments are at the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg. And in 1975, monks stumbled on 12 more pages and 40 fragments stashed in a hidden room at the monastery at Mount Sinai. …
On these parchment leaves is written around half of the Old Testament and Apocrypha, the whole of the New Testament and two early Christian texts not found in modern Bibles. Most of the first part of the Bible manuscript - containing most of the so-called historical books, from Genesis to 1 Chronicles - is missing and presumed to be lost. …
The digitized manuscript includes more than 800 pages and fragments, including the pages discovered in 1975 - published for the first time.
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