Tentmaker Forum

For anyone who might be interested, this last week I was able to closely view some open pages of the Codex Sinaiticus at the British Library (it was open in Isaiah 40+). I was actually at the British Library to see a data visualisation exhibition and I had not consciously planned on seeing one of the rarest and most priceless books on the planet. I supply some information offered by the "Codex Sinaiticus Project"...

"The name 'Codex Sinaiticus' literally means 'the Sinai Book'. Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important witnesses to the Greek text of the Septuagint (the Old Testament in the version that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians) and the Christian New Testament.

Parchment (animal) and papyrus (plant)

Using the papyrus (plant) codex was a distinctive feature of early Christian culture. The pages of Codex Sinaiticus however are of prepared animal skin called parchment. This marks it out as standing at an important transition in book history. Before it we see many examples of Greek and Latin texts on papyrus roll or papyrus codex, but almost no traces of parchment codices. After it, the parchment codex becomes normative.

Date

Codex Sinaiticus is generally dated to the fourth century, and sometimes more precisely to the middle of that century. This is based on study of the handwriting, known as palaeographical analysis. Only one other nearly complete manuscript of the Christian Bible – Codex Vaticanus (kept in the Vatican Library in Rome) – is of a similarly early date. The only manuscripts of Christian scripture that are definitely of an earlier date than Codex Sinaiticus contain small portions of the text of the Bible.

Content

As it survives today, Codex Sinaiticus comprises just over 400 large leaves of prepared animal skin, each of which measures 380mm high by 345mm wide. On these parchment leaves is written around half of the Old Testament and Apocrypha (the Septuagint), the whole of the New Testament, and two early Christian texts not found in modern Bibles. Most of the first part of the manuscript (containing most of the so-called historical books, from Genesis to 1 Chronicles) is now missing and presumed to be lost.

The Septuagint includes books which many Protestant Christian denominations place in the Apocrypha. Those present in the surviving part of the Septuagint in Codex Sinaiticus are 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, 1 & 4 Maccabees, Wisdom and Sirach.

The number of the books in the New Testament in Codex Sinaiticus is the same as that in modern Bibles in the West, but the order is different. The Letter to the Hebrews is placed after Paul's Second Letter to the Thessalonians, and the Acts of the Apostles between the Pastoral and Catholic Epistles.

The two other early Christian texts are an Epistle by an unknown writer claiming to be the Apostle Barnabas, and 'The Shepherd', written by the early second-century Roman writer, Hermas."

It was a release, uplifting and also wonderfully special to have all the time in the world alone with this bound Sacred Record. It seemed to me - as a whole - to be an old friend of the most sacred kind.

 :cloud9: Wow. That must have been fascinating. I got to see a portion of Isaiah in the Dead Sea Scrolls about 15 years ago. Incredible that things have survived so many centuries. Blessings....