A Brief History of the Bible - 6
Codex Sinaiticus
In May 1844, the German scholar Constantine Tischendorf visited the
monastery of St Catherine, at the foot of Mount Sinai. He writes:
"In visiting the library of the monastery . . . I perceived in the middle of
the great hall a large and wide basket full of old parchments; and the
librarian, who was a man of information, told me that two heaps of papers
like these, mouldered by time, had already been committed to the flames.
What was my surprise to find amid this heap of papers a considerable number
of sheets of a copy of the Old Testament in Greek, which seemed to me to be
one of the most ancient that I had ever seen. The authorities of the
convent allowed me to possess myself of a third of these parchment, or about
forty-three sheets, all the more readily as they were destined for the fire.
But I could not get them to yield up possession of the remainder. The too
lively satisfaction which I had displayed had aroused their suspicions as to
the value of this manuscript."
He gave the sheets to Frederick Augustus II of Saxony, his patron, and they
were deposited in the University Library, Leipzig, where they still are.
A second visit in 1853 brought to light eleven lines of Genesis, now in St
Petersburg.
He visited the monastery for the third time in 1859. On 4th Februrary he
was in conversation with the steward of the monastery, who produced
"a bulky kind of volume, wrapped up in a red cloth and laid it before me. I
unrolled the cover, and discovered, to my great surprise, not only those
very fragments which, fifteen years before, I had taken out of the basket,
but also other parts of the Old Testament, the New Testament complete, and
in addition the Epistle of Barnabas and a part of the Pastor of Hermas.
Full of joy, which this time I had the self-command to conceal from the
steward and the rest of the community, I asked, as if in a careless way, for
permission to take the manuscript into my sleeping chamber to look over it
more at leisure. There by myself I could give way to the transport of joy
which I felt. I knew that I held in my hand the most important Biblical
treasure in existence - a document whose age and importance exceeded that of
all the manuscripts which I had ever examined during twenty years' study of
the subject."
Tischendorf "borrowed" the Manuscript (ho ho!) and presented it to the Tsar
of Russia. This caused some ill feeling between the monastery and the
Russian government, the monks feeling that they had been diddled. In 1869
the Russian diplomatic service came to an agreement with the new Archbishop
of Sinai, Callistus, and some money passed hands. However, the monks on
Sinai still resent the way in which their treasure was given away;
although, to be fair, in Tischendorf had not alerted them to its value, they
would have burnt it years earlier.
The Library was deposited in the library at St Petersburg. In 1933 the
Soviet government, having no great interest in the Bible but being somewhat
strapped for cash, sold it to the British government for £100,000. It is
now in the British Library, where it is catalogued as Additional MS 43725.
When the British Library was housed inside the British Museum, I often saw
Codex Sinaiticus side by side with Codex Alexandrinus in a glass case. I
haven't yet visited the new British Library, so I don't know if or how they
are now displayed to view.
"It is a large manuscript and though it has lost over 300 leaves from the
Old Testament, it is still the earliest complete New Testament, and is the
earliest and best witness for some of the books of the Old Testament" [from
a British Library pamphlet].
Tischendorf published an edition of his find in 1862. He had already
published an edition of the 43 leaves in Leipzig. Both parts were published
in 1911 in collotype facsimile by Kirsopp and Helen Lake.
Westcott and Hort used Vaticanus ("B") and Sinaiticus (Aleph or "S") for
their edition of the Greek New Testament, and the readings of these MSS had
a major influence on the Revised Version of 1881, the first new English
translation since the King James Version of 1611 [I ignore for the moment
various translations by private individuals and the various Catholic
translations from the Vulgate]. Many of the differences between the King
James Version and the Revised Version are accounted for by the discovery of
these MSS.
To give just two examples [at this stage] of the way in which the text of
these MSS differs from others: In both B and S, St Mark's Gospel ends at
16:8 with the words "ephobounto gar", "for they were afraid". This seems an
awfully abrupt ending. It would be most unusual to end a sentence, let
alone an entire book, with a conjunction, "gar." And St Mark has as yet
described no encounter with the risen Christ, which would seem to be the
point and climax of the Gospel story. And yet it does seem either that Mark
ended his account there, or that his original ending has been lost - perhaps
torn from the edge of his original papyrus scroll. There is a considerable
scholarly discussion of the subject, into which I cannot now go. The
various endings in other MSS (Mark 16:9-20) are manifestly summaries of the
endings of the other gospels, added to Mark by later hands to "round off"
his account. Read them and I think you will agree.
Again, there is a curious story in the gospels of a woman taken in adultery.
It occurs at various points in St John's Gospel in various MSS. Some place
it at John 7:58-8:11; others place it after John 7:36, or 7:52 or 21:24.
Its language however is not like that of John at all, but more like that of
the synoptic evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke), and some MSS place the story
after Luke 21:38. It does appear to be an interpolation, and it is
significant that B and S omit the story altogether.
Oriens.
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