Early history Provenance Little is known of the manuscript's early history. According to Hort, it was written in the West, probably in Rome, as suggested by the fact that the chapter division in the Acts of the Apostles common to Sinaiticus and Vaticanus occurs in no other Greek manuscript, but is found in several manuscripts of the Latin
Vulgate.
Robinson countered this argument, suggesting that this system of chapter divisions was introduced into the Vulgate by
Jerome himself, as a result of his studies at
Caesarea. According to
Kenyon the forms of the letters are Egyptian and they were found in Egyptian papyri of earlier date.
Gardthausen, Ropes and
Jellicoe thought it was written in
Egypt. Biblical scholar
J. Rendel Harris believed that the manuscript came from the
library of Pamphilus at Caesarea Maritima.
Streeter, Skeat, and Milne also believed that it was produced in Caesarea.
Date The codex can be dated with a reasonable degree of confidence between the early fourth century and the early fifth century. It could not have been written before about 325 because it contains the
Eusebian Canons, which is a
terminus post quem. The
terminus ante quem is less certain. Milne and Skeat relied on small cursive notes to assert that the date of the production of the codex was not likely to be much later than about 360. More recent research suggests that these cursive notes could be as late as the early fifth century. Tischendorf theorized that Codex Sinaiticus was one of the
fifty copies of the Bible commissioned from
Eusebius by
Roman emperor Constantine after his conversion to Christianity (
De vita Constantini, IV, 37). This hypothesis was supported by
Pierre Batiffol. Biblical scholars
Caspar René Gregory and T.C. Skeat believed that it was already in production when Constantine placed his order, but had to be suspended in order to accommodate different page dimensions. Biblical scholar
Frederic G. Kenyon argued: "There is not the least sign of either of them ever having been at Constantinople. The fact that Sinaiticus was collated with the manuscript of Pamphilus so late as the sixth century seems to show that it was not originally written at Caesarea".
Scribes and correctors Tischendorf believed four separate scribes copied the work (whom he named A, B, C and D), and five correctors amended portions (whom he designated a, b, c, d and e). He posited one of the correctors was contemporaneous with the original scribes, and the others worked during the sixth and seventh centuries. After Milne and Skeat's reinvestigation, it is now agreed Tischendorf was incorrect, as scribe C never existed. According to Tischendorf, scribe C wrote the poetic books of the Old Testament. These are written in a different format from the rest of the manuscript – they appear in two columns (the rest of books is in four columns), written stichometrically. Tischendorf probably interpreted the different formatting as indicating the existence of another scribe. The three remaining scribes are still identified by the letters Tischendorf gave them: A, B, and D. There were in fact more correctors, with at least seven (a, b, c, ca, cb, cc, e). Modern analysis identifies three scribes: • Scribe A wrote most of the historical and poetical books of the Old Testament; almost the whole of the New Testament; and the Epistle of Barnabas • Scribe B was responsible for the Prophets and for the Shepherd of Hermas • Scribe D wrote the whole of Tobit and Judith; the first half of 4 Maccabees; the first two-thirds of the Psalms; and the first five verses of Revelation Scribe B was a poor speller, and scribe A was not much better; the best scribe was D. Metzger states: "scribe A had made some unusually serious mistakes". Scribes A and B used
nomina sacra in contracted forms most often (ΠΝΕΥΜΑ contracted in all occurrences, ΚΥΡΙΟΣ contracted except in two occurrences), whereas scribe D mostly used the uncontracted forms. Scribe D distinguished between sacral and nonsacral uses of ΚΥΡΙΟΣ. His spelling errors are the substitution of ΕΙ for Ι, and Ι for ΕΙ in medial positions, both equally common. Otherwise substitution of Ι for initial ΕΙ is unknown, and final ΕΙ is only replaced in the word ΙΣΧΥΕΙ. The confusion of Ε and ΑΙ is very rare. In the Book of Psalms, this scribe has ΔΑΥΕΙΔ instead of ΔΑΥΙΔ 35 times, while scribe A normally uses an abbreviated form . Scribe A made the most phonetic errors: confusion of Ε and ΑΙ occurs in all contexts. Milne and Skeat characterised scribe B as "careless and illiterate". A
paleographical study at the
British Museum in 1938 found the text had undergone several corrections. The first corrections were done by several scribes before the manuscript left the scriptorium. Readings which they introduced are designated by the siglum a. Milne and Skeat have observed the superscription to 1 Maccabees was made by scribe D, while the text was written by scribe A. Scribe D corrects his own work and that of scribe A, but scribe A limits himself to correcting his own work. In the sixth or seventh century, many alterations were made (b) – according to a
colophon at the end of the book of
Esdras and
Esther, the source of these alterations was "a very ancient manuscript that had been corrected by the hand of the holy martyr
Pamphylus" (
martyred in 309). If this is so, material beginning with
1 Samuel to the end of Esther is Origen's copy of the
Hexapla. From this colophon, the corrections are concluded to have been made in
Caesarea Maritima in the sixth or seventh centuries. The pervasive
iotacism, especially of the diphthong, remains uncorrected.
Discovery The Codex may have been seen in 1761 by the Italian traveller
Vitaliano Donati, when he visited the
Saint Catherine's Monastery at Sinai in
Egypt. His diary was published in 1879, in which was written: In questo monastero ritrovai una quantità grandissima di codici membranacei... ve ne sono alcuni che mi sembravano anteriori al settimo secolo, ed in ispecie una Bibbia in membrane bellissime, assai grandi, sottili, e quadre, scritta in carattere rotondo e bellissimo; conservano poi in chiesa un Evangelistario greco in caractere d'oro rotondo, che dovrebbe pur essere assai antico.
In this monastery I found a great number of parchment codices ... there are some which seemed to be written before the seventh century, and especially a Bible (made) of beautiful vellum, very large, thin and square parchments, written in round and very beautiful letters; moreover there are also in the church a Greek Evangelistarium in gold and round letters, it should be very old. The "Bible on beautiful vellum" may be Codex Sinaiticus, and the gold evangelistarium is likely
Lectionary 300 on the Gregory-Aland list. in 1870 German Biblical scholar
Constantin von Tischendorf wrote about his visit to the monastery in
Reise in den Orient in 1846 (translated as
Travels in the East in 1847), without mentioning the manuscript. Later, in 1860, in his writings about the Sinaiticus discovery, Tischendorf wrote a narrative about the monastery and the manuscript that spanned from 1844 to 1859. He wrote that in 1844, during his first visit to the Saint Catherine's Monastery, he saw some leaves of parchment in a waste-basket. They were "rubbish which was to be destroyed by burning it in the ovens of the monastery", although this is firmly denied by the Monastery. After examination he realized that they were part of the Septuagint, written in an early Greek uncial script. He retrieved from the basket 129 leaves in Greek which he identified as coming from a manuscript of the
Septuagint. He asked if he might keep them, but at this point the attitude of the monks changed. They realized how valuable these old leaves were, and Tischendorf was permitted to take only one-third of the whole, i.e. 43 leaves. These leaves contained portions of 1 Chronicles, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, and Esther. After his return they were deposited in the
Leipzig University Library, where they remain. In 1846 Tischendorf published their contents, naming them the 'Codex Friderico-Augustanus' (in honor of
Frederick Augustus and keeping secret the source of the leaves). Other portions of the same codex remained in the monastery, containing all of Isaiah and 1 and 4 Maccabees. In 1845,
Archimandrite Porphyrius Uspensky (1804–1885), at that time head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem and subsequently Bishop of
Chigirin, visited the monastery and the codex was shown to him, together with leaves which Tischendorf had not seen. In 1846, Captain C. K. MacDonald visited Mount Sinai, saw the codex, and bought two codices (
495 and
496) from the monastery. . In 1853, Tischendorf revisited the Saint Catherine's Monastery to get the remaining 86 folios, but without success. Returning in 1859, this time under the
patronage of
Tsar Alexander II of Russia, he was shown Codex Sinaiticus. He would later claim to have found it discarded in a rubbish bin. (This story may have been a fabrication, or the manuscripts in question may have been unrelated to Codex Sinaiticus: Rev. J. Silvester Davies in 1863 quoted "a monk of Sinai who... stated that according to the librarian of the monastery the whole of Codex Sinaiticus had been in the library for many years and was marked in the ancient catalogues... Is it not likely... that a manuscript known in the library catalogue would have been jettisoned in the rubbish basket." Indeed, it has been noted that the leaves were in "suspiciously good condition" for something found in the trash.) Tischendorf had been sent to search for manuscripts by
Russia's Tsar Alexander II, who was convinced there were still manuscripts to be found at the Sinai monastery. The text of this part of the codex was published by Tischendorf in 1862: • Konstantin von Tischendorf:
Bibliorum codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus. Giesecke & Devrient, Leipzig 1862. This work has been digitised in full and all four volumes may be consulted online. It was reprinted in four volumes in 1869: • Konstantin von Tischendorf, G. Olms (Hrsg.):
Bibliorum codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus. 1. Prolegomena. G. Olms, Hildesheim 1869 (Repr.). • Konstantin von Tischendorf, G. Olms (Hrsg.):
Bibliorum codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus. 2. Veteris Testamenti pars prior. G. Olms, Hildesheim 1869 (Repr.). • Konstantin von Tischendorf, G. Olms (Hrsg.):
Bibliorum codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus. 3. Veteris Testamenti pars posterior. G. Olms, Hildesheim 1869 (Repr.). • Konstantin von Tischendorf, G. Olms (Hrsg.):
Bibliorum codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus. 4. Novum Testamentum cum Barnaba et Pastore. G. Olms, Hildesheim 1869 (Repr.). The complete publication of the codex was made by
Kirsopp Lake in 1911 (New Testament), and in 1922 (Old Testament). It was the full-sized black and white facsimile of the manuscript, "made from negatives taken from St. Petersburg by my wife and myself in the summer of 1908". The story of how Tischendorf found the manuscript, which contained most of the Old Testament and all of the New Testament, has all the interest of a romance. Tischendorf reached the monastery on 31 January; but his inquiries appeared to be fruitless. On 4 February, he had resolved to return home without having gained his object: of
Saint Catherine's Monastery, based on sketches made by
Porphyrius Uspensky in 1857 On the afternoon of this day I was taking a walk with the steward of the convent in the neighbourhood, and as we returned, towards sunset, he begged me to take some refreshment with him in his cell. Scarcely had he entered the room, when, resuming our former subject of conversation, he said: "And I, too, have read a Septuagint" – i.e. a copy of the Greek translation made by the Seventy. And so saying, he took down from the corner of the room a bulky kind of volume, wrapped up in a red cloth, and laid it before me. I unrolled the cover, and discovered, to my great surprise, not only those very fragments which, fifteen years before, I had taken out of the basket, but also other parts of the Old Testament, the New Testament complete, and, in addition, the Epistle of Barnabas and a part of the Shepherd of Hermas. in Saint Catherine's Monastery; a lithograph from the album of Porphyrius Uspensky After some negotiations, he obtained possession of this precious fragment. James Bentley gives an account of how this came about, prefacing it with the comment, "Tischendorf therefore now embarked on the remarkable piece of duplicity which was to occupy him for the next decade, which involved the careful suppression of facts and the systematic denigration of the monks of Mount Sinai." He conveyed it to Tsar Alexander II, who appreciated its importance and had it published as nearly as possible in facsimile, so as to exhibit correctly the ancient handwriting. In 1869 the Tsar sent the monastery 7,000
rubles and the
monastery of Mount Tabor 2,000 rubles by way of compensation. The document in Russian formalising this was published in 2007 in Russia and has since been translated. The codex is regarded by the monastery as having been stolen, which is proven by a receipt given by Tischendorf to the authorities at the monastery promising to return the manuscript from St. Petersburg 'to the Holy Confraternity of Sinai at its earliest request', a copy of which is on display in the publicly-accessible area of the monastery. This view of Tischendorf's role in the transfer to Saint Petersburg has been contested by several scholars in Europe. New Testament scholar
Bruce Metzger wrote: Certain aspects of the negotiations leading to the transfer of the codex to the Tsar's possession are open to an interpretation that reflects adversely on Tischendorf's candour and good faith with the monks at Saint Catherine's Monastery. For an account intended to exculpate him of blame, see Erhard Lauch's article 'Nichts gegen Tischendorf' in
Bekenntnis zur Kirche: Festgabe für Ernst Sommerlath zum 70. Geburtstag (Berlin, c. 1961), pp.15-24; for an account that includes a hitherto [i.e., before 1964] unknown receipt given by Tischendorf to the authorities at the monastery promising to return the manuscript from Saint Petersburg 'to the Holy Confraternity of Sinai at its earliest request,' see Ihor Ševčenko, "New Documents on Tischendorf and the Codex Sinaiticus", published in the journal
Scriptorium, xviii (1964), pp. 55–80.
Simonides On 13 September 1862
Constantine Simonides (1820–1890), skilled in calligraphy and with a controversial background with manuscripts, made the claim in print in
The Manchester Guardian that he had written the codex himself as a 19-year-old boy in 1839 in the
Panteleimonos monastery at
Athos.
Constantin von Tischendorf, who worked with numerous Bible manuscripts, was known as somewhat flamboyant, and had ambitiously sought money from several royal families for his ventures, who had indeed funded his trips. Simonides had a somewhat obscure history, as he claimed he was at Mt. Athos in the years preceding Tischendorf's contact, making the claim at least plausible. Simonides also claimed his father had died and the invitation to
Mount Athos came from his uncle, a monk there, but subsequent letters to his father were found among his possessions at his death. Simonides claimed the false nature of the document in
The Manchester Guardian in an exchange of letters among scholars and others, at the time. Henry Bradshaw, a British librarian known to both men, defended the Tischendorf find of Codex Sinaiticus, casting aside the accusations of Simonides, which later have been disproved. Since Bradshaw was a social 'hub' among many diverse scholars of the day, his aiding of Tischendorf was given much weight. Simonides died shortly after, and the issue lay dormant for many years. In answer to Simonides in
Allgemeine Zeitung (December 1862), Tischendorf noted only in the New Testament were there many differences between it and all other manuscripts.
Henry Bradshaw, a bibliographer, combatted the claims of Constantine Simonides in a letter to
The Manchester Guardian (26 January 1863). Bradshaw argued that Codex Sinaiticus brought by Tischendorf from the Greek monastery of Mount Sinai was not a modern forgery or written by Simonides. The controversy seems to regard the misplaced use of the word 'fraud' or 'forgery' since it may have been a repaired text, a copy of the Septuagint based upon Origen's Hexapla, a text which has been rejected for centuries because of its lineage from
Eusebius who introduced Arian doctrine into the courts of Constantine I and II. Not every scholar and Church minister was delighted about the codex find.
Burgon, a supporter of the
Textus Receptus, suggested that Codex Sinaiticus, as well as codices
Vaticanus and
Codex Bezae, were the most corrupt documents extant. Each of these three codices "clearly exhibits a fabricated text – is the result of arbitrary and reckless recension." The two most weighty of these three codices, and
B, he likens to the "two false witnesses" of Matthew 26:60. However, independent discoveries of other fragments of the codex in recent history (see below) prove its authenticity, and disprove all theories of it being a forgery.
Recent history In the early 20th century
Vladimir Beneshevich (1874–1938) discovered parts of three more leaves of the codex in the bindings of other manuscripts in the library of Mount Sinai. Beneshevich went on three occasions to the monastery (1907, 1908, 1911) but does not tell when or from which book these were recovered. These leaves were also acquired for St. Petersburg, where they remain. from 1859 until 1933. For many decades, the Codex was preserved in the
Russian National Library. In 1933, the
Soviet Union sold the codex to the
British Museum (after 1973 part of it was separated to become the
British Library) for £100,000 raised by public subscription (worth £ in ). After coming to Britain it was examined by Skeat and Milne using an
ultra-violet lamp. In May 1975, during restoration work, the monks of Saint Catherine's Monastery discovered a room beneath the St. George Chapel which contained many parchment fragments.
Kurt Aland and his team from the
Institute for New Testament Textual Research were the first scholars who were invited to analyse, examine and photograph these new fragments of the New Testament in 1982. Among these fragments were twelve complete leaves from the
Sinaiticus, eleven leaves of the
Pentateuch and one leaf of the
Shepherd of Hermas. Together with these leaves 67 Greek Manuscripts of New Testament have been found (uncials
0278 –
0296 and some minuscules). In June 2005, a team of experts from the United Kingdom, Europe, Egypt, Russia and United States undertook a joint project to produce a new digital edition of the manuscript (involving all four holding libraries), and a series of other studies was announced. This will include the use of
hyperspectral imaging to photograph the manuscripts to look for hidden information such as erased or faded text. This was done in cooperation with the British Library. More than one quarter of the manuscript was made publicly available at The Codex Sinaiticus Website on 24 July 2008. On 6 July 2009, 800 more pages of the manuscript were made available, showing over half of the entire text, although the entire text was intended to be shown by that date. The complete document is now available online in digital form and available for scholarly study. The online version has a fully transcribed set of
digital pages, including amendments to the text, and two images of each page, with both standard lighting and raked lighting to highlight the texture of the parchment. Prior to 1 September 2009, the
University of the Arts London PhD student, Nikolas Sarris, discovered the previously unseen fragment of the Codex in the library of Saint Catherine's Monastery. It contains the text of Book of Joshua 1:10. == Present location ==