Codex Sinaiticus Project Goes Live July 24, 2008

The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important mss. we have, and the oldest extant New Testament. The fourth century (c. 350) Greek ms. is over 1600 years old and contains the complete Bible in Greek, including the oldest complete copy of the New Testament. The other central “complete” ms. bible is Codex Vaticanus, which varies in several ways from this carefully corrected ms. The Codex Sinaiticus has been in four sections for several hundred years. In 1844 a German Biblical scholar, Konstantin von Tischendorf, found several folios of the ms. at Saint Catherine’s Monastery by Mount Sinai. He brought part of the ms. to Leipzig University Library. Later he brought other sections to Russia. The Project, a collaborative work between the Russian National Library, the British Library and Saint Catherine’s Monastery, has digitized the entire ms. and will be placing high resolution images on the Internet starting July 24 here. You’ll note, if you look at the sample image aboveimage from the end of Jeremiah and the beginning of Lamentations, that the Codex was written before word spaces were used.