The surviving pages of the world’s oldest Christian Bible have been reunited online. The early work, known as the Codex Sinaiticus (“the book from Sinai”), has been housed in four separate locations around the world for more than 150 years. As of last week, it is now available for anyone to peruse at the Web site www.codexsinaiticus.org, allowing scholars and other readers to get a closer look at this unique treasure. The only other Bible that rivals Codex Sinaiticus in age is Codex Vaticanus, which was written around the same time, but lacks parts of the New Testament. Codex Sinaiticus is the oldest book that contains a complete New Testament and is only missing parts of the Old Testament and the Aprocrypha. [ABC News]
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This is a valuable resource – however, one should take caution about claims that the Codex Sinaiticus is “the oldest, therefore the most accurate” of sources.
It was discovered in a trash heap, and has several errors in the OT, and differs in sections of the NT where an overwhelming amount of evidence in different sources (from differing times and locals) would show it is inaccurate.
In other words – there is a reason it was in the trash heap. Monks don’t just throw away hand-copied books (which would take 6 months to a year to copy), especially scriptures, unless they have errors.
So, in summary – it is a ‘useful’ source, but not a ‘definitive’ source.
Excellent feedback, Jonathan… thanks!