

Codex Sinaiticus - yu
http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/
Source: Reuters 2009-07-06.  Summary:
* oldest Bible, 800 pages and fragments (of 1400)
* mid-fourth century, uncovered a fourth scribes
* includes Greek and some English translations
* collection of sections from British Library, Monastery of St. Catherine, National Library of Russia, Leipzig University Library
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sethg
One interesting detail from the site is that the Codex Sinaiticus is a
_technological_ milestone as well as a religious milestone: it's one of the
oldest known books that puts such a large number of pages together as a bound
volume rather than as a scroll.

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yu
Source: Reuters 2009-07-06. Summary: * oldest Bible, 800 pages and fragments
(of 1400) * mid-fourth century, uncovered a fourth scribes * includes Greek
and some English translations * collection of sections from British Library,
Monastery of St. Catherine, National Library of Russia, Leipzig University
Library

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leoc
The modern history of the Codex beginning with its 1844 "rediscovery" is
pretty interesting too. It looks a bit like the Elgin Marbles story, only
messier. Even the official website mentions that the Monastery of St.
Catherine had "some initial hesitations" about participating in the scanning
project.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Sinaiticus#Discovery>
<http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/codex/history.aspx>

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hvs
Ok, I give. What does this have to do with anything?

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nopassrecover
"What is probably the oldest known Bible is being digitised, reuniting its
scattered parts for the first time since its discovery 160 years ago. It is
markedly different from its modern equivalent. What's left out?"

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7651105.stm>

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jon_dahl
This is not news. The text of the Codex Sinaiticus has been available for over
a century. I have a Greek New Testament on the shelf at home that footnotes
points at which Sinaiticus disagrees with other ancient manuscripts.

The "news" is that the text is now available online, whereas previously it was
only available in print.

Details (if you're interested):

This story is 99% hype.

First, there are several major ancient New Testament manuscripts (Sinaiticus,
Vaticanus, Majority Text, and tons of fragments). We have fragments from the
second and third centuries, and entire versions from the fourth century
(including Codex Sinaiticus). This isn't unusual; most of our manuscripts for
other ancient documents (Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, etc.) come from many
centuries after they were actually written.

Second, these manuscripts often disagree on wording, but they rarely disagree
on content. Definitely not "markedly different". They were orally dictated to
scribes, not reprinted by a printing press, which is how many of the
differences were introduced.

Third, the "no resurrection" business is false. One of the four gospels - Mark
- ends with some of Jesus' followers finding an empty tomb, and an angel
saying that Jesus had rose from the dead. End of text. It doesn't actually
follow Jesus around post-resurrection. But that's different than not including
a resurrection, and it's really, really old news.

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tokenadult
What do you think of the user interface of this new website? Besides the
server not being able to keep up with demand after today's news, it seems that
there is a rather glaring lack of usability.

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leoc
It's not bad as these things usually go, and it has some nice features. The
right-hand pane with the transcription in the same physical layout as the
scanned image is useful. The option to view some pages in raking light is also
useful and I think quite unusual. (Though it's not a matter of website UI as
such.)

