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Fourth-Century Greek Bible

Codex Sinaiticus

Also called Sinaiticus

A parchment Bible written around the middle of the AD 300s at St Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai, containing the oldest surviving complete copy of the New Testament — and now divided between four institutions in four countries.

Siglum
Codex Sinaiticus (Gregory-Aland 01; von Soden δ 2)
Type
Parchment uncial codex, 380 x 345 mm, in four columns to the page except Psalms-Job, which are in two
Language
Koine Greek
Contents
Around half of the Greek Old Testament and Apocrypha, heavily incomplete, and the complete New Testament — the earliest complete Greek New Testament there is. After Revelation it continues with the Epistle of Barnabas and part of the Shepherd of Hermas (1:1-27:6, 28:5-30:3). Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11 are absent
Written
Second to third quarter of the fourth century AD Traditional dating
Origin
Eastern Mediterranean, possibly Palestine. The often-repeated attribution to Caesarea is not what the British Library's record says
Found at
St Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt
Found in
1844 and 1859, with further leaves and fragments found at the monastery in 1975
Found by
Constantin von Tischendorf took leaves from the monastery on three visits, in 1844, 1853 and 1859. The monastery has maintained ever since that the manuscript was lent rather than given
Now held at
Divided between the British Library (347 leaves), Leipzig University Library (43 leaves), the National Library of Russia and St Catherine's Monastery
Shelfmark
London, British Library, Add MS 43725; Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, MS gr. 1
Facsimile
View the manuscript

Tischendorf at Sinai

Constantin von Tischendorf, a German scholar hunting for early biblical manuscripts, visited St Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai in 1844 and left with forty-three leaves of a very old Greek Bible, which he deposited at Leipzig. He returned in 1853 and found nothing more. On a third visit in 1859, backed by the Russian tsar, he was shown the bulk of the manuscript, and it travelled to St Petersburg. In December 1933 the Soviet government sold the Russian portion to the British Museum, the purchase completed in 1934 with help from the British government and a national subscription; it is now in the British Library. The price is usually given as £100,000, a figure that comes from press reports of the sale rather than from either institution's own account of it.

The codex is written on fine parchment in a formal script by three or four scribes, with corrections added by later hands over centuries, and it is famous for its four narrow columns to the page — though not uniformly so: the poetic books from Psalms to Job are laid out in two wider columns instead. It originally ran to something like 730 leaves. What survives is split four ways: 347 leaves in London as British Library Add MS 43725, the 1844 leaves at Leipzig University Library as MS gr. 1, four separate shelfmarks in the National Library of Russia, and further leaves and fragments found at the monastery itself in 1975 — the British Library and the Codex Sinaiticus project give slightly different counts for that last group. All four holdings have been photographed and reunited digitally, so the whole book can now be read online in one place for the first time since the nineteenth century.

What Is In It

Sinaiticus contains the Greek Old Testament, incomplete, and the complete New Testament — the earliest complete New Testament we have. After Revelation it continues with two more works: the Epistle of Barnabas and part of the Shepherd of Hermas. That is worth pausing on. It is not evidence that the fourth-century church regarded those books as scripture on a par with the Gospels, since a codex could gather useful reading beyond the canon; but it is evidence that the edges of the collection were still being worked out in a way the printed table of contents of a modern Bible conceals.

The manuscript also lacks two familiar passages: the longer ending of Mark (Mark 16:9-20) and the account of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11). This is not a suppression and not a discovery of the modern era — it is simply what the early manuscript evidence shows, which is why most modern Bibles mark both passages with a note. Vaticanus, of roughly the same date, agrees on Mark. A translation that tells the reader this is being honest with them, not undermining them.

How It Left the Monastery

The circumstances of Tischendorf's acquisition are genuinely disputed, and the dispute is not settled by evidence available to outsiders. Tischendorf's published accounts, which vary between tellings, describe leaves about to be used as kindling in 1844 and a gift of the remainder to the tsar in 1859. St Catherine's Monastery has maintained for well over a century that the manuscript was lent for copying and not given, and points to a receipt in which Tischendorf undertook to return it. Historians assess the story differently depending on which documents they weight. The fair statement is that a Western scholar removed a monastery's most valuable book, that the monastery says it did not consent, and that his own narrative of how it happened changed over time.

One further controversy can be closed. In the 1860s a Greek named Constantine Simonides claimed he had written the codex himself as a young man. Palaeographers dismissed the claim at the time, and nothing since has supported it; the manuscript's script, materials, corrections, and textual character are all consistent with the fourth century and inconsistent with a nineteenth-century forgery. It resurfaces occasionally online and can be set aside.

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