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23 Jul 2008
The British Library is to put the remains of the world's oldest bible online for public viewing.
The remaining fragments of the Codex Sinaiticus, which are stored in Britain, Russia, Germany and a monastery in the Sinai Desert, will be scanned and made available for viewing for the first time since their discovery.
"I think it is fantastic that, thanks to technology, we can now make the oldest cultural artefacts, that were once so precious you couldn't show them to anyone, accessible to everyone in really high quality," Ulrich Johannes Schneider, director of Leipzig University Library, which holds part of the manuscript, told Reuters.
A preview, containing the Book of Psalms and the Gospel of Mark will be put online on Thursday and the full text should be available by next July.
However, the bible is likely to cause some controversy as it contains no mention of the resurrection of Jesus. Instead the disciples enter Jesus's tomb, find it empty and leave in fear.
The Codex Sinaiticus was written over 1,600 years ago in Greek, and analysis of the pages shows that it has been heavily amended over the centuries.
The copy only covers part of the New Testament and contains books not found in the current Christian bible, such as the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas.
It was discovered in Saint Catherine's Monastery in Mount Sinai by a German biblical scholar in 1844, where parts of it still remain.
The British Library's sections were purchased from the Russian authorities for £100,000 in the 1930s.
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Do you agree?
What is the truth
i dont trust the bible anymore, i dont know whats true to whats fauls anymore
Posted by: Renault James 27 Oct 2009
Totall non-controversial
Nice attempt at a scandal. The end of Mark is old news to liberal and conservative scholars alike. Nothing new, nothing earth-shattering to either group.
Posted by: Jeff 28 Jul 2008
Uh oh...
Here we go... Blind Faith vs Blind Logic. There's enough evidence the world over to be certain of one thing. We don't have all the information, and what we do have has been manipulated out of all recognition to support the cults thats existence relies on one version or another. What this is really about is making any artifact available to scholars all around the globe. What a fantastic thing to do! The fact that this particular relic treads on the toes of people who have other motives is neither here nor there and doesn't matter at-all to the rest of us. This relic exists and is being shared and that's all there is to it.
Posted by: David Lambert 25 Jul 2008
mr ben
if the resurrection did not happened than what good was His death?
Posted by: Ben schillaci 23 Jul 2008
Thomson's Misinformed Attempt at Promoting Controversy
Instead of trying to promote controversy, why not get your facts straight? The only place the resurrection is missing in Codex Sinaiticus is at the end of Mark's Gospel, where the so-called "longer ending" (whose legitimacy has long been questioned anyway) is missing. The other three Gospels (Matthew, Luke, John) as well as all the epistles have the resurrection fully intact. Iain Thomson's statement that "the bible...containes no mention of the resurrection of Jesus" is an utter falsehood.
Posted by: Matthew Allan Eby 23 Jul 2008
Not a "problem" at all
As a student of the Bible, and pastor, I am excited to have access to this ancient manuscript online, but I think that this particular article is rather misleading about the content of Sinaiticus. It states that the resurrection is not mentioned in this manuscript, which is simply untrue. It does not diverge from the ancient witness that record the words of "a young man dressed in a white robe," (16:5) who says, "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you." This hardly seems like "no mention" of resurrection. The truth is, Sinaiticus, along with other ancient manuscripts, do not include 16:9-20. Theories abound for who actually wrote this piece, and what happened to Mark's original ending. But the ancient witnesses of Mark's gospel do agree, Jesus is "raised from the dead." Christians, and the broader community, are still faced with these early witnesses of Jesus' life, death and resurrection - it up to us as to what we do with them.
Posted by: David Fields 22 Jul 2008