THE BRITISH LIBRARY has announced a forthcoming important exhibition of sacred texts:

Jewish Christian And Muslim Sacred Texts Exhibition At BL

The British Library is proud to announce that HRH The Duke of Edinburgh and His Majesty Mohammed VI, King of Morocco, are the royal patrons of its forthcoming exhibition, Sacred: Discover what we share, which presents some of the world’s earliest-surviving, most important and beautiful religious texts from the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths.

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Sacred sees priceless examples of the Torah, New Testament and Qur’an mounted alongside each other – not individually in separate zones. The texts will be treated thematically, exploring points in common, looking at the ways in which they have been produced, interpreted and used. By integrating material in this way, the exhibition will demonstrate how these faiths have interacted and influenced one another, and will enable visitors to learn about all three alongside each other.

The exhibition explores inter faith attitudes in the UK both today and in the past and takes a look at community and schools projects from around Britain.

The exhibition is part of the Library’s long-term plans to feature other major world faiths which are represented within its collections.

Among the treasures to be displayed are:

* Codex London: One of the oldest surviving manuscripts of the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, which are central to Jewish worship. The traditional Jewish view is that these five books were written by the Prophet Moses at divine dictation. This rare early copy was made in the Middle East, perhaps Palestine, in the 10th century.

* Codex Sinaiticus: It is the oldest complete manuscript of the New Testament and the earliest and best witness for some books of the Old Testament as well. This copy of the New Testament in Greek is absolutely key in the history of Christian textual scholarship. It was produced around 350 AD, possibly in Palestine, but its name derives from the still active Monastery of Saint Catherine near the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt where it was preserved for many centuries.

* Ma'il Qur'an: One of the earliest Qur’ans in the world to have survived, this dates from the beginning of the 8th century AD. That equates to the 1st century in the Muslim Hijri calendar, which means that this manuscript was penned within 100 years of a key event in the founding of Islam i.e. the hejira or flight of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD to escape his enemies. It was produced on the Arabian peninsula, probably in or near the holy cities of Islam.

* Syriac Pentateuch: The earliest known dated Biblical manuscript. This copy of the Books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy in Syriac is the earliest known dated Biblical manuscript. It was written by Deacon John at Amida (modern Diyarbakir in south eastern Turkey) in 463. Syriac was the language of the Syrian Church which extended across modern Turkey, Syria and Iraq. This version of the Bible (known as the Peshitta or 'simple' version) became important as the origin of most of the translations made into other languages of the Eastern churches, including Armenian.

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And more! This sounds like a superb project. The article has the usual sort of glitches, such as giving the impression that the whole of Codex Sinaiticus will be displayed (only part of it is in Britain and I doubt they are gather all the surviving leaves from the other sites). It also refers to the Book of "Revelations," which should be "Revelation."