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British Library Puts Oldest Surviving Bible Online
Peace Corps Library writes "BBC reports that about 800 pages of the earliest surviving Christian Bible, the 1,600-year-old Codex Sinaiticus manuscript, have been recovered and put on the Internet. 'The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the world's greatest written treasures,' says Dr. Scot McKendrick, head of Western manuscripts at the British Library. 'This 1,600-year-old manuscript offers a window into the development of early Christianity and first-hand evidence of how the text of the Bible was transmitted from generation to generation.' The New Testament of the Codex Sinaiticus appears in Koine Greek, the original vernacular language, and the Old Testament in the version, known as the Septuagint, that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians. For 1,500 years, the Codex Sinaiticus lay undisturbed in a Sinai monastery until it was found in 1844 and split between Egypt, Russia, Germany, and Britain. It is thought to have survived because the desert air was ideal for preservation and because the monastery, on a Christian island in a Muslim sea, remained untouched, its walls unconquered. The British Library is marking the online launch of the manuscript with an exhibition which includes a range of historic items and artifacts linked to the document. 'The availability of the virtual manuscript for study by scholars around the world creates opportunities for collaborative research that would not have been possible just a few years ago.'"
But is it wiki'd so that people can make corrections to it?
1 In the begining was the psot. And it was frist.
2 And yea, I faileth it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm really interested to see what different translators come up with. Now that it's been made available, there is going to be a wonderful opportunity to compare translations and interpretations from a much more 'original' source.
Though, I have this nagging feeling that "And it was Good" might also be interpreted as "Sorry for the inconvenience."
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
..... and the old priest looked at the original copy, and came out crying.
When asked why, he looked at the young novice and said "the word is CELEBRATE not CELIBATE"
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
1600 years old, from earlier manuscripts that pre-date Constantine's adoption of Christianity as a state religion.
It has no mention of a resurrection.
For example, St Mark's Gospel ends 12 verses before later, revised, versions - omitting the appearance of the resurrected Jesus Christ.
The incorporation of Osiris/Attys/Adonis/Mithras cultism, which dominated the eastern empire with it's symbolic resurrection theology was key to the success of Constantine's venture. It was so deeply held a belief, the bishops under Constantine may not even have realized they were fabricating and innovating.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Sinaiticus is arguably one of the most important discoveries in the history of the textual transmission of the New Testament. Add an exciting controversy involving either idiot Greek monks who had quite literally dumped it in the wastepaper bin or a conniving Russian manuscript hunter-turned-thief making up lies to cover his crimes and you've got a great story that never fails to turn up fundraising dollars.
That said, I wish they could produce software for the examination of the codex that doesn't suck. But because they refuse to release the database of manuscript photos for public download (even though, at least in the United States, those images are uncopyrightable and therefore in the public domain) enterprising folks like me can't build a better system and give it away to people. So you have to suffer with their terrible system if you want to examine the manuscript. It's typical conservator behavior, building unnecessary walls against access to information that should be free.
We really really need to start making sure that digital copies of the ancient literary patrimony are available for free with no conditions -- i.e., in the public domain, but apparently everyone is too interested in fighting for scarce research grant dollars to produce something that all of their academic competitors could use.
If there's a substantial OT manuscript dating to the 4th cent. BCE on consensus then I'd love to see it.
The reason why Sinaiticus is so important is because it substantially a transcript of what is agreed to be the most accurate record of the original text of the New Testament. It's called the "Alexandrian text-type." Almost all of the tiny fragments that predate the fourth century (and they are very scanty indeed) agree with the text of Sinaiticus extensively. As a result, Bible scholars believe that the alterations we find in later manuscripts are untrustworthy corruptions rather than viable alternate readings.
As to the textual corruption that took place in the late first and second centuries AD we have very little evidence and therefore no remedy. Christians believe that God would not have permitted His word to be corrupted beyond our ability to understand it. I am an atheist and work extensively on ancient Greek textual criticism so you can imagine I do not have much patience for this point of view, but the fact is that the New Testament is the most well-attested ancient Greek or Latin text still in existence. Even Vergil's Aeneid, for which we have three manuscripts predating the fifth century CE, is not supported so well, and in the cases like the tragedies of Sophocles we are on much shakier footing.
I would think that the Bono Act would have ensured that this work was still under copyright.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
No, what they reveal is the tremendous accuracy of today's modern translations compared to the papyrii and codeces of antiquity. After all, consider the state of Christianity in the first few centuries A.D. - a bunch of "heretics", hated by the Jews, persecuted by the Romans, and driven underground. It was in that environment that the gospels and letters of Paul, Peter, John, etc. were copied, distributed, re-copied, distributed some more, etc.
Were there transcription errors? Sure. You try copying something the size of the Bible in secret, by hand, while fearing for your life! But we can reconstruct the original readings of the books of the NT with tremendous accuracy.
Your insistence that Christians must equate "the literal word of God" with "infallible transcriptions, every single time a book of the Bible is copied" is just plain wrong. That's not what most Christians believe. They believe that the method God used to preserve the text was to have it copied quickly and widely before any single organization could control the process and make "secret" alterations to the Scripture. (Conspiracy theorists who hint darkly about secret councils that burned books or suppressed certain ancient Christian beliefs tend to forget that, even if that was possible, there were no such organizations or counsels like that for many, many centuries . Compare that with Uthman Ibn Affan, who decided which copy of the Qur'an would be canonical, then gathered together and burning all other copies that differed from the official version. Christianity has nothing like that.
Actually, the "corruptions" appear in every new Bible. They are listed in the footnotes. The King James text actually contains all of them in the text itself. This dynamic is well understood and nobody is freaking out over it.
Well, nobody who practices Christianity. It's an example of deliberate blindness to textual defects that would cause infinitely more doubt and discussion if their context was not as emotionally felt as one's relationship with one's God. These variants were never problems in the early church and they are not not in Catholicism and the Orthodox churches because there is a very long tradition among them that church fathers, even today, can transmit to their followers the ultimate meaning of God's message and effectively channel God's will through themselves. Protestants are long since severed from that tradition, and their dependence on the determinacy of the text destroys the power of their message. I'm convinced that you cannot have a good knowledge of the history of the textual transmission of the Bible and be a Protestant.
Papyrus fragments predating Siniaticus contain most of the New Testament if you look at all of them as a whole.
That's possibly true but totally irrelevant. The intrinsic reliability of a papyrus fragment is not determined by its age, and if you try to piece together a text based on nothing but papyri of completely different provenances and values you're going to get a Frankentext that looks far worse than even a comparatively late but integral and complete exemplar. I am extremely well-trained in textual criticism and I don't appreciate your snarky comments. If you want to whip out your degrees I'd be happy to compare, but don't think that passive-aggressive appeals to what you think is my lack of understanding will help you.