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Codex Sinaiticus: The Bible in Four Libraries

In the archive

Held
British Library, Leipzig University Library, St Catherine's Monastery, National Library of Russia
Date evidence
c. 330–360 CE
Era
Era V · Late Antiquity
In the archive
Early Christianity · Patristic Christianity

In 1844 the young German scholar Constantin von Tischendorf was visiting St Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai. By his own later account, which the monks have always disputed, he saw old parchment leaves in a basket and was told they were bound for the fire. He left with 43 leaves of an ancient Greek Bible and gave them to Leipzig. In 1859 he returned under the patronage of the Russian Tsar and was shown the rest. The manuscript went to St Petersburg. How it came to leave Sinai, whether as loan, gift or appropriation, is a dispute that has never been resolved. In 1933 the Soviet government, needing hard currency, sold most of it to the British Museum for £100,000.

What they had found is the Codex Sinaiticus, written around 330–360 CE. It is one of the two oldest near-complete Bibles in the world, and it contains the oldest complete New Testament.

Turn the fourth-century pages

How the codex writes: capitals without spaces, sacred names contracted. The first page is in the style of the codex, not a facsimile of its line breaks.

John 1:1, as its scribes wrote. ΕΝΑΡΧΗΗΝΟΛΟΓΟΣΚΑΙΟΛΟΓΟΣΗΝΠΡΟΣΤΟΝΘ̅Ν̅ΚΑΙΘ̅Σ̅ΗΝΟΛΟΓΟΣ Scriptio continua: no spaces between words. Θ̅Ν̅ and Θ̅Σ̅ are contracted sacred names.

The same words, separated. En archē ēn ho logos, kai ho logos ēn pros ton theon, kai theos ēn ho logos. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The sacred names. Θ̅Σ̅ God · Κ̅Σ̅ Lord · Ι̅Σ̅ Jesus · Χ̅Σ̅ Christ Nomina sacra: holiness marked in the spelling itself.

Mark 16:8, where Mark ends here. …for they were afraid. The longer ending, Mark 16:9–20, is absent.

Books later left out. After Revelation: the Epistle of Barnabas and part of the Shepherd of Hermas.

One book, four libraries. London, 347 leaves · Leipzig, 43 · Sinai, 12 and fragments · St Petersburg, fragments of 3. Reunited online by the Codex Sinaiticus Project in 2009.

    Study the object

    The four holding libraries publish the complete manuscript through the Codex Sinaiticus Project.

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    The object

    • Originally over 730 leaves of fine parchment. About 400 survive, divided among four institutions: - British Library, London: 347 leaves, the main part. - Leipzig University Library: 43 leaves (1844). - St Catherine's Monastery, Sinai: 12 leaves and fragments, found in 1975 in a sealed room. - National Library of Russia: fragments of 3 leaves.
    • Written in Greek uncials, capital letters with no spaces between words (scriptio continua), in four columns per page for most books.
    • Several scribes, usually counted as three, and thousands of later corrections by many hands. The corrections are themselves a record of how the text was read over centuries.
    • In 2009 the four institutions completed the Codex Sinaiticus Project, reuniting the whole surviving manuscript online, with transcription.

    What is in it, and what is not

    • The Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), including books that later Protestant Bibles would call apocrypha, such as Tobit, Judith and 1 and 4 Maccabees.
    • The whole New Testament, together with two early Christian works later left out of the canon: the Epistle of Barnabas and part of the Shepherd of Hermas.
    • Mark ends at 16:8, with the women fleeing the empty tomb "for they were afraid". The longer ending (Mark 16:9–20) that most later Bibles print is absent. That fact, shared with Codex Vaticanus, is central to modern textual study of Mark.

    Symbology and scribal encoding

    Sacred names in shorthand. Like other early Christian manuscripts, Sinaiticus writes the holiest names as contractions with a line over them: ΘΣ for theos (God), ΚΣ for kyrios (Lord), ΙΣ for Iēsous, ΧΣ for Christos. These nomina sacra are a real, deliberate scribal marking of holiness. They are closely related to the way Jewish scribes set the divine name apart (V02).

    The text as a living layer-cake. The corrections, which run into the thousands, show later readers adjusting the text towards the form that later became standard. The manuscript preserves a text in motion, not a single fixed original.

    Connections

    Early Christianity (ch16), Patristic Christianity (ch22, for the formation of the canon), the Dead Sea Scrolls (V02, for the Jewish scribal handling of the divine name), and the Nag Hammadi Codices (V08), another fourth-century library of Christian books.

    ✦ The evidence, honestly

    What's well supported by the evidence

    • A fourth-century Greek Bible (c. 330–360), about 400 surviving leaves, now divided among London, Leipzig, Sinai and St Petersburg and reunited online in 2009. It contains the Septuagint, the complete New Testament, Barnabas and part of Hermas, and ends Mark at 16:8.

    What is not supported

    • Claims that Sinaiticus is a modern forgery. Its parchment, scripts, corrections and history all argue against that.

    What's genuinely open

    • How it left Sinai. Tischendorf's "fire basket" story and the terms of the 1859 transfer are disputed, and St Catherine's continues to regard the manuscript as taken.
    • Where it was written. Egypt, Caesarea and elsewhere have been proposed.

    Sources

    From The Divine Archives · https://getconexto.com/vault/codex-sinaiticus.html

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