World's oldest bible published in full online
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The oldest bible in the world was displayed in its entirety for the first time in 150 years today after researchers digitised its four sections kept in cities thousands of miles apart and placed the reunited text in cyberspace.
The Codex Sinaiticus, which was written some 1,600 years ago on more than 800 pages of animal skin parchment, is available on a free website following a collaboration between four institutions in Germany, Russia, Egypt and Britain, which have held different parts of the ancient book after it was bought on behalf of the Russian Tsar in the mid-19th century.
The British Library, which has led the project, has held the largest chunk the bible- some 600 pages - since it bought most of the book from the Soviet Union in 1933 for £100,000 raised by public subscription amid fears that the Communist regime would discard it.
The four-year project to scan bible, considered by scholars to be one of the most important early examples of Christianity’s holy book, will allow viewers to not only scan the Greek text but also view close ups of the parchment which are so detailed that scar tissue can be from some of the estimated 360 animals slaughtered to provide the raw material.
The arrival of the 4th century bible, painstakingly handwritten by a team of scribes, on the internet in the latest twist in the volume’s extraordinary history. Coveted by scholars and rulers throughout the centuries, it is thought it is the only surviving example of 50 bibles ordered by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great and was kept for much of its existence at the remote Monastery of St Catherine in Sinai. The newly digitised bible includes 24 pages which were found in 1975 in a blocked off room beneath a chapel in the monastery.
Dr Scot McKendrick, head of western manuscripts at the British Library, said: “The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the world’s greatest written treasures. This 1,600-year-old manuscript offers a window into the development of early Christianity and first-hand evidence of how the text of the bible was transmitted from generation to generation.”
The existence of the ancient bible first became known in the West in late 18th century when an Italian visitor to the Sinai wrote of a “beautiful Greek text written in gold” inside the monastery.
In 1859, a German archaeologist, Constantin von Tischendorf, who had been employed to search for early Christian manuscripts by Russia’s Tsar Alexander II, arrived at the monastery and managed to persuade the monks to let him initially borrow the bible so it could be copied in St Petersburg.
The transaction remains disputed with authorities at the monastery claiming that the codex was effectively stolen despite the recent publication of a deed of gift to Tischendorf signed by the archbishop of Sinai.
Whatever the legitimacy of the deal, the bible ended up split between the monastery, the British Library, Leipzig University and the National Library of Russia and the whole work was only available for scrutiny by trekking thousands of miles to its different locations.
The website - www.codexsinaiticus.org - will allow academics to study the Greek text, which contains phrases and variations not found in the modern bible, as well as the minutiae of its production. By analysing the handwriting, the researchers have already found that it was written by four scribes rather than the previously thought three.
Dr McKendrick said: “The availability of the virtual manuscript for study around the world creates opportunities for collaborative research that would not have been possible just a few years ago.”
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Comments
The language of Jesus was Aramaic. Thats the real language of the Bible. Shame the Gospels in Aramaic have disappeared.
Its a case of "lost in translation". But somewhat more because its that plus alterations by the Roman empire to make it fit in with their view of God and the world.
But, as far as the New Testament is concerned, there is no real "language of the Bible". You make the mistake of thinking that the Christian scriptures are like the Qu'ran is for Islam - dictated by God verbatim to the prophet. This is one of the confusions that have arisen from the Reformation idea of the place and meaning of the scriptures, summed up in Dr Billy Graham's assertion that "God wrote the Bible by means of more than forty secretaries". Which he didn't, at least in those bald simple terms,in any Christian thinking older than, or outside, the western Protestant tradition.
Christianity was from the beginning a faith in the person of Christ, not in a written revelation. Nothing appears to have been written down in any systematic way for at least a generation, not least because the early Christians expected Christ to return again in their lifetime, so there was no point. When, in the second generation, the Church discovered a greater need for written material, the writings
that were circulated were practical, incidental and for particular purposes, not least the writings that became the New Testament, and none of the authors remotely conceived that subsequent generations of Christians would come to treat them as sacred writings with the same authority - or even greater - than the Old Testament.
They were written in whatever language was most appropriate, and as Greek was the lingua franca of the whole eastern Mediterranean, including Palestine, this was the language used most commonly and universally. But there were Aramaic texts and versions, some of which, like the Peshitta, have survived to modern times. So there are ancient versions of the Gospels in Aramaic known to us.
But the written texts in those early days were always judged for authenticity by whether they were in accordance with the oral tradition of preaching and teaching that had been passed down in the local Christian community, and not the other way round!
And as for the suggestion that Roman imperial interests might have "fiddled" the text to suit their purposes, it's pretty clear that, humanly speaking, Constantine favoured Christianity because he thought the Christian God helped him win battles and the faith had the potential for being a social cement in his empire. The last thing he would have wanted was to risk the wrath of that God by any deliberate "cooking of the books"!
Exactly, Jesus was the Word of God. As Jesus's spoken language was Aramaic, therefore the Word of God was in Aramaic. There is no misunderstanding here.
I fully understand what this means. And the way that it is different from the Old Testament and the final Testament (Quran).
Of course they were written down by men, it was a transcription of older copies ;) and the original copies were written through men by the inspiration of my God, as the scripture itself says. So, what's your point?
Atheists have a real argument to offer, but it's hardly enhanced by tilting at windmills ...
But the difficulty with your argument is that, unless you're set on deliberate misrepresentation of Christian history, you'll find, alongside them, beauty, heroism, gentleness, a concern for the poor and exploited and concrete action for their welfare, and a profusion of thought - though, personally, I do tend to think that not all the intricacies of all of the thought were particularly useful or beneficial.
And you have to contend with the fact that secularist ideologies too, in the comparatively short time that they've held sway, haven't made an entirely positive contribution to the sum of human happiness, whether they've focused on the civilizing mission of white Europeans, the supremacy of the Aryan race, the victory of the proletariat, the irresistability of market forces, the imperative of exporting democracy, or whatever.
And confessed Christian who behave foully always have to face the reality of the reproach of the Christian message, while secular ideologies often have no such inherent checks and balances.
Where do you want the Word of God written, if not a book?
With Jesus, he was an agent of God, authorised to advise and guide man on bahalf of God.
So it is what Jesus said that is the guidance from God. The Bible (New Testament) are the words of God through Jesus. So obviously they will be spoken words, which get put into a physical book.
So, you have to decide whether it is the word of God or not. But, if God exists and you stand before Him on the day of judgement, you will be judged according to the laws in His Books.
Your disbelief in God will not change what happen in the future. There is no "I don't beleieve in God therefore He doesn't exist" option. What will happen, will happen...
What if you believe in a religion upon which the Christian deity has no place? Which "god" sentences you to a life of eternal damnation?
Some call Him just God,
Jews call Him Elohim or Yahwey,
Jesus called Him Allaha
Muslims call Him Allah
and so on...
This is, of course, complete rubbish. If there is a god and we're all 'made in his image' then he'll probably be much happier with one of his creations at least using the brain he'd created, rather than counting the sad sheep who swallowed the minority views expressed in the bible. Of course the true view is that once you die that's it. There's no after party, no wings and heaven and no meeting your maker, as you're makers are your mum and dad.
1. that God doesn't sentence anyone to damnation. God loves totally and unreservedly - no "first class love" for Christians and something else for the rest. But he respects his creation, and forces relationship with himself on no one in this life or any other, because love always has to be freely entered into. If Christians are right and ultimate reality is shot through with the inescapable being and presence of God, then the experience of that presence won't be joy to those who who don't desire it. Everything else is picture language and image. (If Christians are wrong, of course, either the whole thing is illusion, as bobby55smith maintains, or some other reality will finally be revealed!)
So, in effect, the Christian view is that we have the capacity to damn ourselves. As, for example, I might refuse an inheritance of loads of money from someone I despised and wanted no dealings with. Or, to try another image, I couldn't live in water, but a fish could! For those in relationship with God, his reality is experienced as joy. For those who ultimately aren't, it isn't.
2. In original Christian thinking, every human being is made in God's likeness, and our rationality is the mark of that. We can make decisions, weigh one thing against another, we have a sense of what seems true and what doesn't. In this, we're like God, in a way that no other being that we know of is. If someone cultivates a sharp and thoughtful conscience, and tries to make decisions conscientiously, they follow the divine light that's in them. They can't do more than that.
Christians don't pretend they have all the answers, but the God they believe in is one who acts lovingly and fairly. Therefore it was never a part of original Christian belief that anyone experiences an eternity of damnation for following another faith or philosophy if all they were doing was being conscientiously obedient to their "inner light".
What you can get from the biblical books (tautologous, I know, but simply using the term "the Bible" makes it seem as if the books have a 100% homogenous line on everything, and they don't) in the area of moral conflict is what believers at various particular times made of their contemporary moral conflicts, and the reasons why they worked out what they thought their God wanted them to do about them.
And they came, at different times, to quite radically different categories of conclusion from ne another over some of the issues. Which is why you can find quite different "lines" taken in the various writings.
When Christians - at least the mainstream sort, not what I rather uncharitably called "the lunatic fringe" - talk about "God speaking through the Bible", they mean trying to see if they can discern what God may want of them now through learning from other people's praying, interpretation and inspiration in the past. What they can't rationally do is expect the Bible to serve up clear ready-made answers to today's challenges, which would be no more sensible than to hope to make a decision in your own life by opening the Bible at random, sticking a pin on to a verse with your eyes shut, and then trying to use the verse to direct your decision. (Yes, I know people sometimes do it, but it's about as effective as trying to get guidance from killing a chicken and trying to "read" a message in its spilled entrails, which the ancient Romans went in for at one time.) Christians believe that God hasn't given us minds for nothing - or they should do! Which means that there's no way of ducking out of thinking and praying through modern moral conflicts, and any other issues, and just hoping that some formula in the Bible will turn up a pat answer, because it won't. Which is my beef with Anglican traditionalists over sexuality right now. I've got a different beef with the liberals, but that's not relevant to this thread!
The main use usefulness for the Church of these ancient texts is the mundane one of trying to sort out the original words and meanings of ambiguous or corrupted texts - when everything was copied by hand, errors were inevitable, and one original error could be recopied far and wide over centuries, and to get a better sense of which books were in and which books were not in the New Testament in early times - complicated by the fact that the list of books recognized as authoritative scriptured varied to some degree between local churches until the middle of the fourth century. Sinaiticus comes from the time when that was just about on the point of being agreed throughout the whole Church.