World’s Oldest Bible - Digitized!

Until July 6, 2009, if you wanted to see any of the Codex Sinaiticus, touted as the world’s oldest Bible (and perhaps the first real book), you would need to travel to the British Library in London, the Monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai, the National Library in Russia, or the Leipzig University Library in Germany.  And then you would only see portions of the Codex.  No one institute had all the pieces, although the British Library did have the most.

Now, thanks to a 4 year project begun in 2005 and spearheaded by the British Library, anyone with a computer (or access to one at their local public library), and an Internet connection, can see this historic work from the comfort of their home.  I took a look at it myself.  Here is what I saw:

Would you look at the quality of the calligraphy!?  Of course, since I can’t read Greek written in Uncial script I’m not sure what I’m looking at.  Then again, I’m not a Bible scholar, either.

But I can certainly appreciate the significance of what we have been presented with.  Christian or not, this is a historical book that has been made available to all for the first time in almost 1,600 years.  I’ll leave it up to the scholars (Biblical and otherwise) to debate the meaning of what is in this book that is not in the current Bible.

What I do see here is the growing significance of digitization.  This project could not have been done using film, primarily because the leaves could not travel, and therefore had to be photographed at four different venues with different equipment!  And because it was done digitally, it could all be brought together, and now we all can see it online.  No travel involved.

Actually, I hope the British Library, upon completion of the project, took these images and put them on computer output microfilm.  Then we have true preservation of these images.