Friday, July 25, 2008

THE CODEX SINAITICUS PROJECT is still getting lots of attention in the press. Here's a piece from CNN:
World's oldest Bible goes online
By Ed Payne
CNN

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The oldest known surviving copy of the New Testament gets the modern touch Thursday when parts of it go online for the first time.
The full manuscript of the Codex Sinaiticus will be online a year from now.

The full manuscript of the Codex Sinaiticus will be online a year from now.

The British Library plans to begin publishing the Codex Sinaiticus, a 4th century text handwritten in Greek, on its Web site. The Gospel of Mark and the Book of Psalms go online Thursday. The full manuscript is to be online in a year.

Translations of the Codex Sinaiticus have long been widely available, but publishing images of the manuscript online will let anyone see pages that, until now, have been viewed in detail mainly by academia.

[...]
Some people seem struck by the fact that this oldest, or at least very old, Bible includes the Apocrypha. The Cleveland Leader headlines this with "World's Oldest Bible Gets Digitized, Includes Disputed Apocrypha Books" and notes:
The Codex contains all of the New Testament, and also includes part of the Old Testament, and originally contained the entire text of the Christian Bible. It also includes Apocrypha, the 14 disputed books of the Old Testament which are typically omitted from the Protestant Bible. The Codex also contains two early Christian texts, "Epistle of Barnabas" and the "Shepherd of Hermas."
And someone posting on Associated Content notes the Apocrypha connection and makes much of 2 Maccabees being in the Apocrypha, evidently being unaware that 2 Maccabees is not found in Codex Sinaiticus.

Background here.

UPDATE (31 July): Bad link fixed. The paragraph on 2 Maccabees has been deleted at Associated Content.