Text talk:EBD:Sinaiticus codex

Literature

There exists a codex sinaiticus in printed form: The Codex Sinaiticus If you are interested, I can add some additional Information ...

Hi. Please feel free to add any information and edit any articles that you see fit. If you want to edit or add information about the Sinaiticus codex, you can do so at the overview encyclopedia article here: Codex Sinaiticus (overview). The article Sinaiticus codex (EBD) is the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary entry on the Sinaiticus Codex. --Graham grove 20:32, 14 January 2007 (EST)

Ok, I'll add my first attempt to this discussion. Wolfgang Uhr 10:56, 17 January 2007 (EST)

First Attempt

The story of Codes Sinaiticus is the story of a seed which has died to grow up and to bring up a lot of fruit (Johannes 12.24). The text has been born in Alexandria somewhere in the 4th century, mainly between 330 and 350. The youth, this text has spend in an oriental metropolis of Jewish–Hellenistic education. Later in 530 A.D. the monastery at the Sinai has been founded by the emperor Justinian.

This monastery never has been a subject to pillage or destruction. We do not know, if the Codex has been stored there to have a security copy of it or if the monks really studied the texts in the first years. In 642 the library of Alexandria has been burned down and the city has been destroyed by the Arabians. The details of this time are unknown. The other copies of the codex had been destroyed and this version had been forgotten.

Darkness!

More than 1.000 years later in 1815 A.D. a man was born, who should live give this text a rebirth Konstantin von Tischendorf. It was a these of some defamers – “There is no valid text and neither any proof that the “legends” of the bible itself are not a legend”. So the task of the live of Tischendorf had become to prove the validity of the New Testament.

Several expeditions to different monasteries in Europe had been done, different texts are copied, the Codex Ephraemi has been decoded and then in 18th February 1859 he has been in the monastery at the Sinai. At this time a monk wanted to burn some old papers. Tischendorf took one of them and the second life of the codex began.

Either the story of the monk, and the burning codex or the following story are not confirmed by the monks of Sinai today. They have a different story, but this will be described later. Tischendorf travels back to Europe, having a small part of the text and negotiated with the monks, and the German and later with the Russian government. The Russian tzar has been protective saint of the monastery and so Tischendorf overnext vist he has hat a creditial document of the Russian tzar in his luggage.

So the Codex Sinaiticus had become a present to the Russian tzar. Tischendorf tooks back this text to Germany, spends 3 years to study the text, develop own letterpress letters and produced a reprint of xxx Versions. Then he visits the tzar, delivered the original and yyy reprints. The other reprints had been delivered to the different Universities of Europe.

The next event is the Russian revolution in 1905. The family of the tzar has been killed and the Codex has been added to the booty of the communists. 1933 the British Library in London bought the Codex – its price: 100.000 £ payed by private persons and Britannia government. Up to now, it is the last station.

Today the monks of Sinai tell a different story. Tischendorf has stolen the codex. But firstly: If you really employ the life of Tischendorf, you will figure out, that this is absolutely impossible. Tischendorf was a Christ and he really lived his faith. On the other side – if the Codex has been stolen, today the monastery is still the owner of the text. And for a monastery in the desert in may be an attractive element for getting something more tourism.

But let us study the story of Tischendorf again. The Russian tzar has been the protective saint of the monastery. Let us assume that you are a monk in a desert monastery and someone detected such an important text. What will you do? How do you secure this text? A group of ten persons or less are easily able to organize a robbery, kill the monks and take the text away. What did you do in this situation?

The monastery belongs to the east church und the tzar is its protective saint. So the codex should be ideally made to be a present to this person. It is a present to the protective saint and not to the tzar. It is a present having a message: You can secure this text, we cannot. If you read the present in this way, you understand the motivation of the monks. And then you should know: The codex has been stolen by the communists and bought out by the British Library, but normally you cannot by a stolen text. So the owner of this text is still the Church of the East.

But furthermore: Assume that you will put a glass case to the monastery of Sinai today. And assume that we will put in there 10 kg gold. What do you think, how long can they secure it today?

The story of Codes Sinaiticus is the story of a seed which has died to grow up and to bring up a lot of fruit (Johannes 12.24). In his second live, the codex become to be the most important reference of the New Testament. It originally contains a gapped Septuaginta (Translation of the Old Testament), the Epistle of Barnabas, portions of The Shepherd of Hermas and – most important – the complete New Testament.