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What is Codex Sinaiticus?
Codex Sinaiticus, a manuscript of the Christian Bible written in the middle of the fourth century, contains the earliest complete copy of the Christian New Testament. The hand-written text is in Greek. The New Testament appears in the original vernacular language (koine) and the Old Testament in the version, known as the Septuagint, that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians. In the Codex, the text of both the Septuagint and the New Testament has been heavily annotated by a series of early correctors.
The significance of Codex Sinaiticus for the reconstruction of the Christian Bible's original text, the history of the Bible and the history of Western book-making is immense.
Significance
Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important witnesses to the Greek text of the Septuagint (the Old Testament in the version that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians) and the Christian New Testament. No other early manuscript of the Christian Bible has been so extensively corrected.
A glance at the transcription will show just how common these corrections are. They are especially frequent in the Septuagint portion. They range in date from those made by the original scribes in the fourth century to ones made in the twelfth century. They range from the alteration of a single letter to the insertion of whole sentences.
One important goal of the Codex Sinaiticus Project is to provide a better understanding of the text of the Codex and of the subsequent corrections to it. This will not only help us to understand this manuscript better, but will also give us insights into the way the texts of the Bible were copied, read and used.
By the middle of the fourth century there was wide but not complete agreement on which books should be considered authoritative for Christian communities. Codex Sinaiticus, one of the two earliest collections of such books, is essential for an understanding of the content and the arrangement of the Bible, as well as the uses made of it.
The Greek Septuagint in the Codex includes books not found in the Hebrew Bible and regarded in the Protestant tradition as apocryphal, such as 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, 1 & 4 Maccabees, Wisdom and Sirach. Appended to the New Testament are the Epistle of Barnabas and 'The Shepherd' of Hermas.
The idiosyncratic sequence of books is also remarkable: within the New Testament the Letter to the Hebrews is placed after Paul's Second Letter to the Thessalonians, and the Acts of the Apostles between the Pastoral and Catholic Epistles. The content and arrangement of the books in Codex Sinaiticus shed light on the history of the construction of the Christian Bible.
The ability to place these 'canonical books' in a single codex itself influenced the way Christians thought about their books, and this is directly dependent upon the technological advances seen in Codex Sinaiticus. The quality of its parchment and the advanced binding structure that would have been needed to support over 730 large-format leaves, which make Codex Sinaiticus such an outstanding example of book manufacture, also made possible the concept of a 'Bible'. The careful planning, skilful writing and editorial control needed for such an ambitious project gives us an invaluable insight into early Christian book production.
'Codex Sinaiticus'
The name 'Codex Sinaiticus' literally means 'the Sinai Book'. It reflects two important aspects of the manuscript: its form and a very special place in its history.
'Codex' means 'book'. By the time Codex Sinaiticus was written, works of literature were increasingly written on sheets that were folded and bound together in a format that we still use to this day. This book format was steadily replacing the roll format which was more widespread just a century before when texts were written on one side of a series of sheets glued together to make a roll. These rolls were made of animal skin (like most of the Dead Sea Scrolls) or the papyrus plant (commonly used for Greek and Latin literature).
Using the papyrus codex was a distinctive feature of early Christian culture. The pages of Codex Sinaiticus however are of prepared animal skin called parchment. This marks it out as standing at an important transition in book history. Before it we see many examples of Greek and Latin texts on papyrus roll or papyrus codex, but almost no traces of parchment codices. After it, the parchment codex becomes normative.
During its history – particularly its modern history – parts of Codex Sinaiticus were also known by other names. The 43 leaves which are now at Leipzig University Library were published in 1846 as 'Codex Frederico-Augustanus' in honour of Frederick Augustus II, King of Saxony, who was the patron of the German Biblical scholar and editor of Codex Sinaiticus, Constantine Tischendorf. The 347 leaves now in The British Library were previously known as 'Codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus', as they were kept in St Petersburg between 1863 and 1933.
Date
Codex Sinaiticus is generally dated to the fourth century, and sometimes more precisely to the middle of that century. This is based on study of the handwriting, known as palaeographical analysis. Only one other nearly complete manuscript of the Christian Bible – Codex Vaticanus (kept in the Vatican Library in Rome) – is of a similarly early date. The only manuscripts of Christian scripture that are definitely of an earlier date than Codex Sinaiticus contain small portions of the text of the Bible.
Content
As it survives today, Codex Sinaiticus comprises just over 400 large leaves of prepared animal skin, each of which measures 380mm high by 345mm wide. On these parchment leaves is written around half of the Old Testament and Apocrypha (the Septuagint), the whole of the New Testament, and two early Christian texts not found in modern Bibles. Most of the first part of the manuscript (containing most of the so-called historical books, from Genesis to 1 Chronicles) is now missing and presumed to be lost.
The Septuagint includes books which many Protestant Christian denominations place in the Apocrypha. Those present in the surviving part of the Septuagint in Codex Sinaiticus are 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, 1 & 4 Maccabees, Wisdom and Sirach.
The number of the books in the New Testament in Codex Sinaiticus is the same as that in modern Bibles in the West, but the order is different. The Letter to the Hebrews is placed after Paul's Second Letter to the Thessalonians, and the Acts of the Apostles between the Pastoral and Catholic Epistles.
The two other early Christian texts are an Epistle by an unknown writer claiming to be the Apostle Barnabas, and 'The Shepherd', written by the early second-century Roman writer, Hermas.
Production
Codex Sinaiticus was copied by more than one scribe. Constantine Tischendorf identified four in the nineteenth century. Subsequent research decided that there were three, but it is possible that a fourth (different from Tischendorf’s fourth scribe) can be identified. Each of the three undisputed scribes has a distinctive way of writing which can be identified with practice. Each also had a distinctive way of spelling many sounds, particularly vowels which scribes often wrote phonetically. One of them may have been a senior copyist.
To make their manuscript, the scribes had to perform a series of tasks. They had to
The text which follows, concerning the history of the Codex Sinaiticus, is the fruit of collaboration by the four Institutions that today retain parts of the said Codex: the British Library, the Library of the University of Leipzig, the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg, and the Holy Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai (Saint Catherine’s). These Institutions recognize that events concerning the history of the Codex Sinaiticus, from 1844 to this very day, are not fully known; hence, they are susceptible to widely divergent interpretations and recountings that are evaluated differently as to their form and essence. Although they have not come to a full accord over the recent history of the Codex, the four collaborating Institutions offer the present, common, agreed text as the basis of a common formulation, as a framework of historical reference that may be completed by yet further documents, and as a basis for dialogue and the interpretation of events.
The Codex Sinaiticus is named after the Monastery of Saint Catherine, Mount Sinai, where it had been preserved until the middle of the nineteenth century. The principal surviving portion of the Codex, comprising 347 leaves, is now held by the British Library. A further 43 leaves are kept at the University Library in Leipzig. Parts of six leaves are held at the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg. Further portions remain at Saint Catherine’s Monastery.
On 9 March 2005, a Partnership Agreement was signed between the four institutions listed above for the conservation, photography, transcription, and publication of all surviving pages and fragments of the Codex Sinaiticus. Included among the aims and objectives of the Project was a provision:
To undertake research into the history of the Codex . . . , to commission an objective historical narrative based on the results of the research which places the documents in their historical context, written by authors agreeable to all four Members, and to publish the outcomes of the research through the project website and other related print publications, such publications to include the full texts of relevant documents (either as transcripts or digital surrogates) wherever the permission of the owners can be secured to publish the documents in this way.
The following text is a synopsis of the history of the Codex, which has been agreed by all four Partners. It is based on the evidence that has been thus far identified and made available to the Project.
The first written record of the Codex Sinaiticus may be identifiable in the journal of an Italian visitor to the Monastery of Saint Catherine in 1761. In it the naturalist Vitaliano Donati reported having seen at the Monastery ‘a Bible comprising leaves of handsome, large, delicate, and square-shaped parchment, written in a round and handsome script’.
Over eighty years later, in 1844, Codex Sinaiticus re-emerges from the mists of history. Sometime between 24 May and 1 June, the monks at Saint Catherine’s brought to the attention of the visiting German biblical scholar, Constantine Tischendorf, 129 leaves of the Old Testament portion of the Codex. According to his own published account (no other record has so far been identified), Tischendorf then obtained 43 of these leaves from the Monastery. In January 1845, he returned to Leipzig, together with this portion of the Codex and many other manuscripts that he had collected during his travels in the Eastern Mediterranean. The following year, Tischendorf published the 43 leaves now at Leipzig under the title of Codex Friderico-Augustanus. He did so in honour of King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony, who had supported Tischendorf’s journeys in 1843 and his edition of 1846. At that point the leaves were described merely as ‘from a monastery in the Orient’, a phrase which has given rise to various interpretations. Subsequently the 43 leaves became part of the collections of Leipzig University Library.
After 1844 several sightings of the Codex were recorded by visitors to the Monastery. According to his own account, the Russian Archimandrite Porfirij Uspenskij examined 347 leaves of the Codex during his visit in 1845. The leaves that he saw included the 86 seen, but not removed by Tischendorf in 1844. During the same visit Uspenskij obtained three fragments of two pages of the Codex, which had previously formed part of the bindings of books at the Monastery. Together with other manuscripts and artefacts that he had obtained from his extensive travels in the Middle East, these fragments were taken to Russia by Uspenskij. Subsequently, in 1883, they were acquired by the Imperial Library in Saint Petersburg. During his second visit to the Monastery in 1853, Tischendorf obtained several other manuscripts, including a fragment of the Codex that had originally formed part of the same leaf as one of the fragments acquired by Uspenskij. According to Tischendorf, this latest fragment was discovered serving as a bookmarker. It was later acquired by the Imperial Library. In 1911 a further fragment, taken from a binding, was identified in the collection of the Society of Ancient Literature, Saint Petersburg.
In 1859, Tischendorf made his third and final visit to Saint Catherine’s, this time under the patronage of the Russian Tsar Alexander II. According to his own account, he first saw the 347 leaves of the Codex on 4 February. Recognising the significant benefit to biblical scholarship of transcribing their complete text, but also the difficulties of doing so at the Monastery, Tischendorf requested that all the leaves be transferred to the Monastery’s metochion in Cairo. On 24 February, the Codex was brought to Cairo, and for three months, from March to May, Tischendorf was allowed access to the Codex, one gathering at a time. This detailed examination confirmed the German scholar’s belief that the 347 leaves were ‘the most precious biblical treasure in existence’. After further travels in the Middle East, Tischendorf returned to Cairo on 12/24 September, and four days later on 16/28 September, he signed a receipt for the loan of the 347 leaves. In the receipt Tischendorf stated that the purpose of the loan was to enable him to take the manuscript to Saint Petersburg and there compare his earlier transcription with the original as part of his preparations for its publication. He promised to return the Codex to the Monastery intact and as soon as it was requested, but at the same time referred to additional conditions stated in an earlier letter from the then Russian Ambassador to the Porte, Prince Lobanov, to the Monastery. Dated 10/22 September 1859, this letter refers to Tischendorf’s assertion that the community at Saint Catherine’s wished to donate the Codex to the Tsar. As the Donation could not be taken for granted, the Ambassador recognized that up and until, and always provided that it would be realized, ownership of the manuscript remained with the Holy Monastery, to which the manuscript ought to be returned, at its earliest request. In their reply to Lobanov, dated 17/29 September, the community expressed their support for Tischendorf in his endeavours and devotion to the Tsar, but made no explicit reference to the issue of donation.
What happened next is in its essentials now clearly documented. After further intense study of the Codex in Russia, Tischendorf published his lavish print facsimile edition in 1862. This edition was presented to its dedicatee and funder, Tsar Alexander II, at a formal audience in Zarskoje Zelo on 10 November 1862. At the same occasion, the Codex was also handed over by Tischendorf, his scholarly work completed. For the next seven years the manuscript remained in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Saint Petersburg; only in 1869 was it moved to the Imperial Library. In that same year, 1869, an act of donation of the Codex to the Tsar was signed first, on 13/25 November, by the then Archbishop of Sinai, Kallistratos, and the synaxis of the Cairo metochion, to which the Codex had been transferred in 1859, and second, on 18/30 November, by Archbishop Kallistratos and the synaxes of both the Cairo metochion and the Monastery of Saint Catherine’s itself.
Yet recent research has also brought to light a wide range of perspectives on each of these key events. In relation to the loan, conflicting evidence has emerged as to whether a donation to the Tsar was part of the original intention of all involved in the agreement of 1859. As for the ten years between the receipt and the act of donation, this period has become increasingly recognised as one of great complexity and difficulty for Saint Catherine’s. Most notably, the death of Archbishop Konstantios at Constantinople in 1859 was followed by a protracted vacancy of the Archiepiscopal Throne, as well as by a very turbulent period of succession. Although elected by the Brotherhood to succeed Konstantios as Archbishop, Kyrillos Byzantios was refused consecration as such by the Patriarch of Jerusalem. At length, it became possible for Kyrillos to be consecrated by the Patriarch of Constantinople, and hence, to be recognized by the political authorities of the Ottoman Empire, to which, at the time, Egypt belonged. Yet, very soon afterwards, Kyrillos’s actions led to a severance with the Brotherhood, to his repudiation by them, and to their election of a new Archbishop, Kallistratos. The latter was duly consecrated by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, but not recognised by either the other Patriarchs and Orthodox Churches or the political authorities, since they continued to consider Kyrillos, who resided in Constantinople after his disavowal by the Brotherhood, as the legitimate and rightful Archbishop. Finally, in 1869, Kallistratos achieved recognition as Archbishop by all canonical and state authorities. The concurrent resolution of such an apparently intractable situation and of the status of the Codex, both through Russian diplomacy, has been variously interpreted. There is certainly evidence to suggest that Russian diplomats directly connected their intervention over the Archiepiscopal succession with the official donation of the Codex by the Monastery to the Tsar. A policy of protracted obstruction, inconstancy and wavering adopted by the Monastery proved ineffectual in that it led to the Donation of 18/30 November.
Yet, the travels of the Codex did not end there. By the summer of 1933, it had become known in Britain that the Soviet Government of Joseph Stalin wished to raise foreign capital – this to support the second Five Year Plan – by selling the Codex through the London booksellers Maggs Brothers. With the strong support of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, the Trustees of the British Museum persuaded the Treasury to support a payment of £100,000 upon delivery of the Codex to London. To achieve this, the Treasury had agreed in October 1933 to provide £93,000 from the Civil Contingencies Fund on condition that a public fund-raising appeal was organised by the Museum. The Museum had committed to contribute £7,000 from its own funds. The full sum was paid by cheque to Arcos Ltd, the Soviet Government’s trading company, which was responsible for the delivery of the Codex to Britain. The Codex itself arrived in London on 26 December 1933, and on the following day was delivered to the British Museum, where, after having been checked against the published facsimile, it was put on public display. Championed by the Prime Minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the former Director of the British Museum Sir Frederic Kenyon, the public campaign raised £46,500 by May 1934. By October of the following year the campaign had returned to the Treasury a grand total of £53,563. A concerted British national effort, focused on the long-term preservation of the Codex, was then brought to an end.
Shortly after the arrival of the Codex in London, concerns about its continuing separation re-emerged. In a telegram, dated 29 January 1934, Archbishop Porphyrios of Sinai asserted the Monastery’s claim to be the ‘sole rightful owner’. In its reply, sent the following day, the British Museum referred the Monastery to the Soviet Government. At the same time the Museum’s director, Sir George Hill, initiated a re-examination of the events of 1859 to 1869. Based on the documentary evidence that the Museum had been able to access (the relevant Russian archives were at that point inaccessible) and a legal opinion from Lord Hanworth, Hill remained confident of the legality of his acquisition. While he faced numerous other expressions of concern over other issues relating to the purchase of the Codex from the Soviets, very few concerns over either their title to it or right to sell it were aired by the British press, governing class, or public. Of greater concern were such issues as the retention by the Russians, almost certainly unintentional, of one tiny fragment of one of the 347 leaves that came to the Imperial Library in 1869.
Over forty years later, in 1975, the Monastery uncovered further, previously unknown parts of the Codex. On 26 May, during the clearance of a chamber underneath Saint George’s Chapel on the north wall of the Monastery, the Skeuophylax Father Sophronios noted a large cache of manuscript fragments. Within these were soon noted several leaves and fragments of the Codex Sinaiticus. Thus, today at the Holy Monastery of Sinai there are to be found, at least, eighteen leaves in their entirety or in fragments, whose provenance is due either to the New Finds of 1975, or from the bindings of manuscripts in which, from time to time, they had been incorporated.
source: Codex Sinaiticus - Home
Codex Sinaiticus, a manuscript of the Christian Bible written in the middle of the fourth century, contains the earliest complete copy of the Christian New Testament. The hand-written text is in Greek. The New Testament appears in the original vernacular language (koine) and the Old Testament in the version, known as the Septuagint, that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians. In the Codex, the text of both the Septuagint and the New Testament has been heavily annotated by a series of early correctors.
The significance of Codex Sinaiticus for the reconstruction of the Christian Bible's original text, the history of the Bible and the history of Western book-making is immense.
Significance
Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important witnesses to the Greek text of the Septuagint (the Old Testament in the version that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians) and the Christian New Testament. No other early manuscript of the Christian Bible has been so extensively corrected.
A glance at the transcription will show just how common these corrections are. They are especially frequent in the Septuagint portion. They range in date from those made by the original scribes in the fourth century to ones made in the twelfth century. They range from the alteration of a single letter to the insertion of whole sentences.
One important goal of the Codex Sinaiticus Project is to provide a better understanding of the text of the Codex and of the subsequent corrections to it. This will not only help us to understand this manuscript better, but will also give us insights into the way the texts of the Bible were copied, read and used.
By the middle of the fourth century there was wide but not complete agreement on which books should be considered authoritative for Christian communities. Codex Sinaiticus, one of the two earliest collections of such books, is essential for an understanding of the content and the arrangement of the Bible, as well as the uses made of it.
The Greek Septuagint in the Codex includes books not found in the Hebrew Bible and regarded in the Protestant tradition as apocryphal, such as 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, 1 & 4 Maccabees, Wisdom and Sirach. Appended to the New Testament are the Epistle of Barnabas and 'The Shepherd' of Hermas.
The idiosyncratic sequence of books is also remarkable: within the New Testament the Letter to the Hebrews is placed after Paul's Second Letter to the Thessalonians, and the Acts of the Apostles between the Pastoral and Catholic Epistles. The content and arrangement of the books in Codex Sinaiticus shed light on the history of the construction of the Christian Bible.
The ability to place these 'canonical books' in a single codex itself influenced the way Christians thought about their books, and this is directly dependent upon the technological advances seen in Codex Sinaiticus. The quality of its parchment and the advanced binding structure that would have been needed to support over 730 large-format leaves, which make Codex Sinaiticus such an outstanding example of book manufacture, also made possible the concept of a 'Bible'. The careful planning, skilful writing and editorial control needed for such an ambitious project gives us an invaluable insight into early Christian book production.
'Codex Sinaiticus'
The name 'Codex Sinaiticus' literally means 'the Sinai Book'. It reflects two important aspects of the manuscript: its form and a very special place in its history.
'Codex' means 'book'. By the time Codex Sinaiticus was written, works of literature were increasingly written on sheets that were folded and bound together in a format that we still use to this day. This book format was steadily replacing the roll format which was more widespread just a century before when texts were written on one side of a series of sheets glued together to make a roll. These rolls were made of animal skin (like most of the Dead Sea Scrolls) or the papyrus plant (commonly used for Greek and Latin literature).
Using the papyrus codex was a distinctive feature of early Christian culture. The pages of Codex Sinaiticus however are of prepared animal skin called parchment. This marks it out as standing at an important transition in book history. Before it we see many examples of Greek and Latin texts on papyrus roll or papyrus codex, but almost no traces of parchment codices. After it, the parchment codex becomes normative.
During its history – particularly its modern history – parts of Codex Sinaiticus were also known by other names. The 43 leaves which are now at Leipzig University Library were published in 1846 as 'Codex Frederico-Augustanus' in honour of Frederick Augustus II, King of Saxony, who was the patron of the German Biblical scholar and editor of Codex Sinaiticus, Constantine Tischendorf. The 347 leaves now in The British Library were previously known as 'Codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus', as they were kept in St Petersburg between 1863 and 1933.
Date
Codex Sinaiticus is generally dated to the fourth century, and sometimes more precisely to the middle of that century. This is based on study of the handwriting, known as palaeographical analysis. Only one other nearly complete manuscript of the Christian Bible – Codex Vaticanus (kept in the Vatican Library in Rome) – is of a similarly early date. The only manuscripts of Christian scripture that are definitely of an earlier date than Codex Sinaiticus contain small portions of the text of the Bible.
Content
As it survives today, Codex Sinaiticus comprises just over 400 large leaves of prepared animal skin, each of which measures 380mm high by 345mm wide. On these parchment leaves is written around half of the Old Testament and Apocrypha (the Septuagint), the whole of the New Testament, and two early Christian texts not found in modern Bibles. Most of the first part of the manuscript (containing most of the so-called historical books, from Genesis to 1 Chronicles) is now missing and presumed to be lost.
The Septuagint includes books which many Protestant Christian denominations place in the Apocrypha. Those present in the surviving part of the Septuagint in Codex Sinaiticus are 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, 1 & 4 Maccabees, Wisdom and Sirach.
The number of the books in the New Testament in Codex Sinaiticus is the same as that in modern Bibles in the West, but the order is different. The Letter to the Hebrews is placed after Paul's Second Letter to the Thessalonians, and the Acts of the Apostles between the Pastoral and Catholic Epistles.
The two other early Christian texts are an Epistle by an unknown writer claiming to be the Apostle Barnabas, and 'The Shepherd', written by the early second-century Roman writer, Hermas.
Production
Codex Sinaiticus was copied by more than one scribe. Constantine Tischendorf identified four in the nineteenth century. Subsequent research decided that there were three, but it is possible that a fourth (different from Tischendorf’s fourth scribe) can be identified. Each of the three undisputed scribes has a distinctive way of writing which can be identified with practice. Each also had a distinctive way of spelling many sounds, particularly vowels which scribes often wrote phonetically. One of them may have been a senior copyist.
To make their manuscript, the scribes had to perform a series of tasks. They had to
- determine a format (there are very few surviving manuscripts written with four columns to a page);
- divide the work between them;
- prepare the parchment, including ruling it with a framework for the layout of columns and lines;
- prepare the manuscripts they were copying;
- get pens and ink together;
- write the text;
- check it;
- assemble the whole codex in the right order.
The text which follows, concerning the history of the Codex Sinaiticus, is the fruit of collaboration by the four Institutions that today retain parts of the said Codex: the British Library, the Library of the University of Leipzig, the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg, and the Holy Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai (Saint Catherine’s). These Institutions recognize that events concerning the history of the Codex Sinaiticus, from 1844 to this very day, are not fully known; hence, they are susceptible to widely divergent interpretations and recountings that are evaluated differently as to their form and essence. Although they have not come to a full accord over the recent history of the Codex, the four collaborating Institutions offer the present, common, agreed text as the basis of a common formulation, as a framework of historical reference that may be completed by yet further documents, and as a basis for dialogue and the interpretation of events.
The Codex Sinaiticus is named after the Monastery of Saint Catherine, Mount Sinai, where it had been preserved until the middle of the nineteenth century. The principal surviving portion of the Codex, comprising 347 leaves, is now held by the British Library. A further 43 leaves are kept at the University Library in Leipzig. Parts of six leaves are held at the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg. Further portions remain at Saint Catherine’s Monastery.
On 9 March 2005, a Partnership Agreement was signed between the four institutions listed above for the conservation, photography, transcription, and publication of all surviving pages and fragments of the Codex Sinaiticus. Included among the aims and objectives of the Project was a provision:
To undertake research into the history of the Codex . . . , to commission an objective historical narrative based on the results of the research which places the documents in their historical context, written by authors agreeable to all four Members, and to publish the outcomes of the research through the project website and other related print publications, such publications to include the full texts of relevant documents (either as transcripts or digital surrogates) wherever the permission of the owners can be secured to publish the documents in this way.
The following text is a synopsis of the history of the Codex, which has been agreed by all four Partners. It is based on the evidence that has been thus far identified and made available to the Project.
The first written record of the Codex Sinaiticus may be identifiable in the journal of an Italian visitor to the Monastery of Saint Catherine in 1761. In it the naturalist Vitaliano Donati reported having seen at the Monastery ‘a Bible comprising leaves of handsome, large, delicate, and square-shaped parchment, written in a round and handsome script’.
Over eighty years later, in 1844, Codex Sinaiticus re-emerges from the mists of history. Sometime between 24 May and 1 June, the monks at Saint Catherine’s brought to the attention of the visiting German biblical scholar, Constantine Tischendorf, 129 leaves of the Old Testament portion of the Codex. According to his own published account (no other record has so far been identified), Tischendorf then obtained 43 of these leaves from the Monastery. In January 1845, he returned to Leipzig, together with this portion of the Codex and many other manuscripts that he had collected during his travels in the Eastern Mediterranean. The following year, Tischendorf published the 43 leaves now at Leipzig under the title of Codex Friderico-Augustanus. He did so in honour of King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony, who had supported Tischendorf’s journeys in 1843 and his edition of 1846. At that point the leaves were described merely as ‘from a monastery in the Orient’, a phrase which has given rise to various interpretations. Subsequently the 43 leaves became part of the collections of Leipzig University Library.
After 1844 several sightings of the Codex were recorded by visitors to the Monastery. According to his own account, the Russian Archimandrite Porfirij Uspenskij examined 347 leaves of the Codex during his visit in 1845. The leaves that he saw included the 86 seen, but not removed by Tischendorf in 1844. During the same visit Uspenskij obtained three fragments of two pages of the Codex, which had previously formed part of the bindings of books at the Monastery. Together with other manuscripts and artefacts that he had obtained from his extensive travels in the Middle East, these fragments were taken to Russia by Uspenskij. Subsequently, in 1883, they were acquired by the Imperial Library in Saint Petersburg. During his second visit to the Monastery in 1853, Tischendorf obtained several other manuscripts, including a fragment of the Codex that had originally formed part of the same leaf as one of the fragments acquired by Uspenskij. According to Tischendorf, this latest fragment was discovered serving as a bookmarker. It was later acquired by the Imperial Library. In 1911 a further fragment, taken from a binding, was identified in the collection of the Society of Ancient Literature, Saint Petersburg.
In 1859, Tischendorf made his third and final visit to Saint Catherine’s, this time under the patronage of the Russian Tsar Alexander II. According to his own account, he first saw the 347 leaves of the Codex on 4 February. Recognising the significant benefit to biblical scholarship of transcribing their complete text, but also the difficulties of doing so at the Monastery, Tischendorf requested that all the leaves be transferred to the Monastery’s metochion in Cairo. On 24 February, the Codex was brought to Cairo, and for three months, from March to May, Tischendorf was allowed access to the Codex, one gathering at a time. This detailed examination confirmed the German scholar’s belief that the 347 leaves were ‘the most precious biblical treasure in existence’. After further travels in the Middle East, Tischendorf returned to Cairo on 12/24 September, and four days later on 16/28 September, he signed a receipt for the loan of the 347 leaves. In the receipt Tischendorf stated that the purpose of the loan was to enable him to take the manuscript to Saint Petersburg and there compare his earlier transcription with the original as part of his preparations for its publication. He promised to return the Codex to the Monastery intact and as soon as it was requested, but at the same time referred to additional conditions stated in an earlier letter from the then Russian Ambassador to the Porte, Prince Lobanov, to the Monastery. Dated 10/22 September 1859, this letter refers to Tischendorf’s assertion that the community at Saint Catherine’s wished to donate the Codex to the Tsar. As the Donation could not be taken for granted, the Ambassador recognized that up and until, and always provided that it would be realized, ownership of the manuscript remained with the Holy Monastery, to which the manuscript ought to be returned, at its earliest request. In their reply to Lobanov, dated 17/29 September, the community expressed their support for Tischendorf in his endeavours and devotion to the Tsar, but made no explicit reference to the issue of donation.
What happened next is in its essentials now clearly documented. After further intense study of the Codex in Russia, Tischendorf published his lavish print facsimile edition in 1862. This edition was presented to its dedicatee and funder, Tsar Alexander II, at a formal audience in Zarskoje Zelo on 10 November 1862. At the same occasion, the Codex was also handed over by Tischendorf, his scholarly work completed. For the next seven years the manuscript remained in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Saint Petersburg; only in 1869 was it moved to the Imperial Library. In that same year, 1869, an act of donation of the Codex to the Tsar was signed first, on 13/25 November, by the then Archbishop of Sinai, Kallistratos, and the synaxis of the Cairo metochion, to which the Codex had been transferred in 1859, and second, on 18/30 November, by Archbishop Kallistratos and the synaxes of both the Cairo metochion and the Monastery of Saint Catherine’s itself.
Yet recent research has also brought to light a wide range of perspectives on each of these key events. In relation to the loan, conflicting evidence has emerged as to whether a donation to the Tsar was part of the original intention of all involved in the agreement of 1859. As for the ten years between the receipt and the act of donation, this period has become increasingly recognised as one of great complexity and difficulty for Saint Catherine’s. Most notably, the death of Archbishop Konstantios at Constantinople in 1859 was followed by a protracted vacancy of the Archiepiscopal Throne, as well as by a very turbulent period of succession. Although elected by the Brotherhood to succeed Konstantios as Archbishop, Kyrillos Byzantios was refused consecration as such by the Patriarch of Jerusalem. At length, it became possible for Kyrillos to be consecrated by the Patriarch of Constantinople, and hence, to be recognized by the political authorities of the Ottoman Empire, to which, at the time, Egypt belonged. Yet, very soon afterwards, Kyrillos’s actions led to a severance with the Brotherhood, to his repudiation by them, and to their election of a new Archbishop, Kallistratos. The latter was duly consecrated by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, but not recognised by either the other Patriarchs and Orthodox Churches or the political authorities, since they continued to consider Kyrillos, who resided in Constantinople after his disavowal by the Brotherhood, as the legitimate and rightful Archbishop. Finally, in 1869, Kallistratos achieved recognition as Archbishop by all canonical and state authorities. The concurrent resolution of such an apparently intractable situation and of the status of the Codex, both through Russian diplomacy, has been variously interpreted. There is certainly evidence to suggest that Russian diplomats directly connected their intervention over the Archiepiscopal succession with the official donation of the Codex by the Monastery to the Tsar. A policy of protracted obstruction, inconstancy and wavering adopted by the Monastery proved ineffectual in that it led to the Donation of 18/30 November.
Yet, the travels of the Codex did not end there. By the summer of 1933, it had become known in Britain that the Soviet Government of Joseph Stalin wished to raise foreign capital – this to support the second Five Year Plan – by selling the Codex through the London booksellers Maggs Brothers. With the strong support of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, the Trustees of the British Museum persuaded the Treasury to support a payment of £100,000 upon delivery of the Codex to London. To achieve this, the Treasury had agreed in October 1933 to provide £93,000 from the Civil Contingencies Fund on condition that a public fund-raising appeal was organised by the Museum. The Museum had committed to contribute £7,000 from its own funds. The full sum was paid by cheque to Arcos Ltd, the Soviet Government’s trading company, which was responsible for the delivery of the Codex to Britain. The Codex itself arrived in London on 26 December 1933, and on the following day was delivered to the British Museum, where, after having been checked against the published facsimile, it was put on public display. Championed by the Prime Minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the former Director of the British Museum Sir Frederic Kenyon, the public campaign raised £46,500 by May 1934. By October of the following year the campaign had returned to the Treasury a grand total of £53,563. A concerted British national effort, focused on the long-term preservation of the Codex, was then brought to an end.
Shortly after the arrival of the Codex in London, concerns about its continuing separation re-emerged. In a telegram, dated 29 January 1934, Archbishop Porphyrios of Sinai asserted the Monastery’s claim to be the ‘sole rightful owner’. In its reply, sent the following day, the British Museum referred the Monastery to the Soviet Government. At the same time the Museum’s director, Sir George Hill, initiated a re-examination of the events of 1859 to 1869. Based on the documentary evidence that the Museum had been able to access (the relevant Russian archives were at that point inaccessible) and a legal opinion from Lord Hanworth, Hill remained confident of the legality of his acquisition. While he faced numerous other expressions of concern over other issues relating to the purchase of the Codex from the Soviets, very few concerns over either their title to it or right to sell it were aired by the British press, governing class, or public. Of greater concern were such issues as the retention by the Russians, almost certainly unintentional, of one tiny fragment of one of the 347 leaves that came to the Imperial Library in 1869.
Over forty years later, in 1975, the Monastery uncovered further, previously unknown parts of the Codex. On 26 May, during the clearance of a chamber underneath Saint George’s Chapel on the north wall of the Monastery, the Skeuophylax Father Sophronios noted a large cache of manuscript fragments. Within these were soon noted several leaves and fragments of the Codex Sinaiticus. Thus, today at the Holy Monastery of Sinai there are to be found, at least, eighteen leaves in their entirety or in fragments, whose provenance is due either to the New Finds of 1975, or from the bindings of manuscripts in which, from time to time, they had been incorporated.
source: Codex Sinaiticus - Home
