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Monday, July 21, 2008

THE CODEX SINAITICUS PROJECT goes live on Thursday:
German University to Put World's Oldest Bible Online

(Deutsche Welle)

The world's oldest surviving semi-complete copy of the Bible, a 4th-century manuscript in ancient Greek that was discovered in a waste-paper bin by a German scholar, is set to be published online.

The Codex Sinaiticus, rediscovered in a monastery in the Sinai Peninsula by Konstantin von Tischendorf in 1844, contains half the Jewish Old Testament and most of the Christian New Testament, the University of Leipzig Library said on Monday, July 21.

The library added that it would go online on Thursday.

[...]
The project website is here. For past PaleoJudaica coverage of Codex Siniaticus, see here.

It's not exactly the oldest Bible; its one of the oldest Christian Bibles which is bound in a single binding. The oldest is probably Codex Vaticanus, but only by a few decades. Both are in Greek, both come from the fourth century, and both are damaged and incomplete. Headline quibbles aside, this is an important and welcome project and I'm very happy to see it coming online.

I'm discussing this story with an AP reporter this afternoon, so you may hear more from me about it presently.

UPDATE (22 July): For the AP article, see here.