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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.'"
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."
Yes, but you need to be in God-mode for the editing feature to be enabled.
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
Why would Paul write so strongly about the resurrection even in prison?
What makes you think that Paul wrote that gospel? The Bible was assembled by committee and included the the works submitted and voted in. Is it based on faith alone that you assume that the gospels were not embellished before publication?
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Mod parent down. That's not correct at all.
1. Codex Sinaiticus mentions the resurrection many times. What is omitted is the description of the Gospel of Mark. The description in the Gospel of Luke, however, is NOT missing from that text. At best Codex S. supports the theory that the ending of Mark was added later---a theory that a fair number of biblical scholars hold, mind you.
2. Codex Sinaiticus was either written in the last few years of Constantine or after his death. This proves nothing about Constantine's effect on the early church. You'd need something at least a hundred years older.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
But it isn't responding to a troll, PKD is correct.
They should call it Paulism instead of Christianity.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Paul wrote NO Gospel.
OK. I absolutely have to correct this. There were four gospels, one of them Paul's. First came John, then Paul, then George, and finally Ringo.
Oh, crap... I may be mixing theology here... OK fine. His story is an epistle - I stand corrected.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
He saw there was more money in it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
C'mon. Why is it that people who are otherwise intelligent, rational thinkers suddenly turn that part of their brains off when it is time to attack Christianity?
Jesus' resurrection is also recounted in the gospels of Matthew (28:1-10) and Luke (24:1-35), passages which are present in the Codex.
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.
In warning against those who forbid people to marry, St. Paul was referring to Gnostics who taught dualism which viewed material things as bad, and thus rejected marriage and procreation. He was not referring to the Christian practice of celibacy which recognizes the great good of marriage but "have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:12).
Celibacy is a charism, a gift given by God for the building up of the Body of Christ. It is not given to all ("Whoever can accept this, ought to accept it" (Matthew 19:12). Speaking of his own celibacy, St. Paul says, "I wish that all were as I myself am, but each has a particular gift from God, one of one kind and one of another" (1 Cor 7:7).
In the Catholic Church, celibacy is imposed on no one. Rather, in the western rites of the Catholic Church, candidates for the priesthood are chosen from those who have freely promised celibacy. In the eastern rites, candidates for the priesthood are chosen from both married and celibate men, but bishops are chosen only from celibate priests.
Fr. Terry Donahue, CC