What is probably the oldest known Bible is being digitised, reuniting its scattered parts for the first time since its discovery 160 years ago. It is markedly different from its modern equivalent. What’s left out?
The world’s oldest surviving Bible is in bits.
For 1,500 years, the Codex Sinaiticus lay undisturbed in a Sinai monastery, until it was found - or stolen, as the monks say - in 1844 and split between Egypt, Russia, Germany and Britain.
Now these different parts are to be united online and, from next July, anyone, anywhere in the world with internet access will be able to view the complete text and read a translation.
For those who believe the Bible is the inerrant, unaltered word of God, there will be some very uncomfortable questions to answer. It shows there have been thousands of alterations to today’s bible.
The Codex, probably the oldest Bible we have, also has books which are missing from the Authorised Version that most Christians are familiar with today - and it does not have crucial verses relating to the Resurrection.
About 800 pages of the earliest surviving Christian Bible have been recovered and put on the internet.
Visitors to the website http://www.codexsinaiticus.org can now see images of more than half of the 1,600-year-old Codex Sinaiticus manuscript.
Fragments of the 4th Century document - written in Greek on parchment leaves - have been worked on by institutions in the UK, Germany, Egypt and Russia.
Experts say it is “a window into the development of early Christianity”.
Preservation secrets
Dr Scot McKendrick, head of Western manuscripts at the British Library, said the wide availability of the document presented many research opportunities.
“The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the world’s greatest written treasures,” he said.
What’s missing from the Codex Sinaiticus?
“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 availability of the virtual manuscript for study by scholars around the world creates opportunities for collaborative research that would not have been possible just a few years ago.”
The original version contained about 1,460 pages - each measuring 40cm by 35cm, he added.
To British Library is marking the online launch of the manuscript with an exhibition - which includes a range of historic items and artifacts linked to the document.
For 1,500 years, the Codex Sinaiticus lay undisturbed in a Sinai monastery, until it was found in 1844 and split between Egypt, Russia, Germany and Britain.
It is thought to have survived because the desert air was ideal for preservation and because the monastery, on a Christian island in a Muslim sea, remained untouched, its walls unconquered.
I’m not sure why anyone ever thinks another drop in the ocean ... okay, another supertanker in the ocean of cognitive dissonance will bother fundy types who can convince themselves the Bible is inerrant as-is.
I’m not sure why anyone ever thinks another drop in the ocean ... okay, another supertanker in the ocean of cognitive dissonance will bother fundy types who can convince themselves the Bible is inerrant as-is.
To your point, from the link:
Many Christians have long accepted that, while the Bible is the authoritative word of God, it is not inerrant. Human hands always make mistakes.
“It should be regarded as a living text, something constantly changing as generation and generation tries to understand the mind of God,” says David Parker, a Christian working on digitising the Codex.
Issues like this aren’t even really a theoretical dissonance problem for non-inerrantists though. I was just pointing out that consistency and rational integrity have pretty much no bearing on inerantism so while this should be an issue for them, it won’t be.
Issues like this aren’t even really a theoretical dissonance problem for non-inerrantists though. I was just pointing out that consistency and rational integrity have pretty much no bearing on inerantism so while this should be an issue for them, it won’t be.
Understood, but it should be, and in both cases they are equally ignoring the facts.
Issues like this aren’t even really a theoretical dissonance problem for non-inerrantists though. I was just pointing out that consistency and rational integrity have pretty much no bearing on inerantism so while this should be an issue for them, it won’t be.
I get the sneaking suspicion that Christians realize it, and realize they are lying to themselves. I know when I was a Christian, I had a hard time shaking that feeling. Frankly, at first I attributed it to the devil trying to cause me to doubt, but eventually I couldn’t keep doing it and that led to a deconversion.
On occasion in a face-to-face debate, you can catch these moments when the logic overwhelms the dissonance and clarity ensues. Sadly, the eyes once again go fearful, cloud over, and it’s back to the self-delusion.
Of course, you don’t get to see this online, but I was wondering if anyone else ever had this experience?
Oh boy…let’s scare all the chicken little Christians into thinking that all they know of the Bible and Christianity is called into question because of this manuscript. Let’s not tell them about the other 4000+ manuscripts and near 2000 years of bible scholarship that has made the Bible that we see today (depending on what Bible you’re talking about) or the fact that few, if any, of the differences in this text call any significant doctrine into question.
I get the sneaking suspicion that Christians realize it, and realize they are lying to themselves. I know when I was a Christian, I had a hard time shaking that feeling. Frankly, at first I attributed it to the devil trying to cause me to doubt, but eventually I couldn’t keep doing it and that led to a deconversion
Of course, you don’t get to see this online, but I was wondering if anyone else ever had this experience?
Yes, it’s called doubt. I’ve seen the same in face-to-face conversations with atheists and agnostics who, when really being explained the Gospel and seeing it lived out in real lives, are starting to wonder if there’s more to Jesus Christ than just South Park parodies and whatever they read from wikipedia or heard from Bill Maher.
The fact is, KTR, there are many Christians that are lying to themselves and just haven’t “freed their mind” like you. But there are also those that “run the race” and aren’t lying to themselves at all.
“All a man’s ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs the heart.”
Read the bible horizontally, not vertically, and read it with critical-historical methodolgy and not priori devout methods. In other words, read it honestly.
I’m not sure why anyone ever thinks another drop in the ocean ... okay, another supertanker in the ocean of cognitive dissonance will bother fundy types who can convince themselves the Bible is inerrant as-is.
For example:
clayforHim648 - 07 July 2009 02:43 PM
Oh boy…let’s scare all the chicken little Christians ...
Did you just close the door on new information that may be valuable to your understanding of scripture, Clay?
Right, ‘cause this is new information?
Thanks for further demonstrating.
Oh comeon!
All but a very few believers may have never actually dealt with the issues of the Codex (certainly not the one we’re dealing with here), but since it’s not new information that means it’s been dealt with in any case, right?
No?
I mean, what’s actually dealing with the concept got to do with anything?
I’m not sure why anyone ever thinks another drop in the ocean ... okay, another supertanker in the ocean of cognitive dissonance will bother fundy types who can convince themselves the Bible is inerrant as-is.
If Jesus came back as an intelligent young man, interested in science and all the new breakthroughs in human knowledge made since his last (purported) visit here, fundamentalist Christians would hoot him down as an imposter. They know better.
Jesus is purported to have said, “By their fruits you shall know them.” For fundamentalists, the ‘fruits’ are feats of magic and paranormal shenanigans like the tales people told each other around the campfire in 10,00 B.C, and like the ones fundamentalist Christians have ‘witnessed’ in Cecil B. DeMille movies.
(see my topic, ‘The Mummer in Hyde Park’ in the Christianity category of The Reason Project).
I’m not sure why anyone ever thinks another drop in the ocean ... okay, another supertanker in the ocean of cognitive dissonance will bother fundy types who can convince themselves the Bible is inerrant as-is.
If Jesus came back as an intelligent young man, interested in science and all the new breakthroughs in human knowledge made since his last (purported) visit here, fundamentalist Christians would hoot him down as an imposter. They know better.
Jesus is purported to have said, “By their fruits you shall know them.” For fundamentalists, the ‘fruits’ are feats of magic and paranormal shenanigans like the tales people told each other around the campfire in 10,00 B.C, and like the ones fundamentalist Christians have ‘witnessed’ in Cecil B. DeMille movies.
(see my topic, ‘The Mummer in Hyde Park’ in the Christianity category of The Reason Project).
BTW when the next installment, I want to know if you and Anett hook up
Sinaiticus is nothing new. And neither is the info in “Jesus Interrupted”. I have read quite a lot of Ehrman’s work. He’s a bright guy. But he has his biases just as any other researcher in this field.
Eudomonia, have you ever read N T Wright? If so did you read his work with an open mind?
Clay and wahoo are right, religion is about cherry picking and confirmation bias. New information is accepted or rejected in relation to what the believer wants to believe, which goes to show how religion is optional.
Entirely correct. The information brought forward by Bart Ehrman in ‘Jesus Interrupted’ is nothing new. That is the exact point that he makes in this book. For over 200 years now, Theologians have known about the horizontal, critical-historical interpretations of the bible that expose it’s fraudulent, conflicting, nature and content.
Every mainstream divinity school in the world today teaches this. Modern ministers, pastors and priests, of course, do not teach this to their congregations, thus people like Clay and Wahoo continue on with their ignorance about the bible and it’s supposed ‘truths’
It is the biggest and oldest propangada program in human history, and almost all educated clergy people know it.
Wahoo, I do not believe you read this book and if you did, you did not understand it. Nothing in this book was Bart Ehrmans OPINION. He states this over and over. It is commonly accepted historical knowledge.
Clay, will not have the courage to read any of Ehrmans work.
