British Library Puts Oldest Surviving Bible Online 568
Peace Corps Library writes "BBC reports that about 800 pages of the earliest surviving Christian Bible, the 1,600-year-old Codex Sinaiticus manuscript, have been recovered and put on the Internet. 'The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the world's greatest written treasures,' says Dr. Scot McKendrick, head of Western manuscripts at the British Library. '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 New Testament of the Codex Sinaiticus appears in Koine Greek, the original vernacular language, and the Old Testament in the version, known as the Septuagint, that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians. 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. The 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. '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.'"
Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:4, Interesting)
1600 years old, from earlier manuscripts that pre-date Constantine's adoption of Christianity as a state religion.
It has no mention of a resurrection.
For example, St Mark's Gospel ends 12 verses before later, revised, versions - omitting the appearance of the resurrected Jesus Christ.
The incorporation of Osiris/Attys/Adonis/Mithras cultism, which dominated the eastern empire with it's symbolic resurrection theology was key to the success of Constantine's venture. It was so deeply held a belief, the bishops under Constantine may not even have realized they were fabricating and innovating.
Re:Potential for translations (Score:5, Interesting)
The text of Sinaiticus has been reviewed by scholars already and is part of the critical apparatus used to construct the UBS and NA modern Greek texts of the New Testament. Never mind that we also have manuscripts of individual books that predate even Sinaiticus by 200 years. This is an interesting development in terms of making the text more broadly available, but the impact of Sinaiticus on the actual translations we use today has already happened.
From the standpoint of textual criticism and biblical translation this is a non-story. From the standpoint of broad accessibility this is a great development. Remember that serious scholars have been able to get facsimiles for this text for years...
Ancient Manuscripts in a Digital Age (Score:5, Interesting)
Sinaiticus is arguably one of the most important discoveries in the history of the textual transmission of the New Testament. Add an exciting controversy involving either idiot Greek monks who had quite literally dumped it in the wastepaper bin or a conniving Russian manuscript hunter-turned-thief making up lies to cover his crimes and you've got a great story that never fails to turn up fundraising dollars.
That said, I wish they could produce software for the examination of the codex that doesn't suck. But because they refuse to release the database of manuscript photos for public download (even though, at least in the United States, those images are uncopyrightable and therefore in the public domain) enterprising folks like me can't build a better system and give it away to people. So you have to suffer with their terrible system if you want to examine the manuscript. It's typical conservator behavior, building unnecessary walls against access to information that should be free.
We really really need to start making sure that digital copies of the ancient literary patrimony are available for free with no conditions -- i.e., in the public domain, but apparently everyone is too interested in fighting for scarce research grant dollars to produce something that all of their academic competitors could use.
Re:Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:4, Interesting)
I see this is currently modded as 'Troll', since the Codex obviously has many such references. However, the other possibility is that Philip is unwittingly viewing the manuscript using an Evil Tool of the Devil [blogspot.com].
Celibacy was not the intent (Score:4, Interesting)
If you look into 1 Timothy, chapter 3 -
"2: A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;
3: Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous;
4: One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity;
5: (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)"
you will see that it was not the intention of the church founders that priests should be celibate.
Re:Celebrate! (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, it does. 1 Timothy 4:
I'm not trying to bash the Catholics here, but it would seem that people that forbid marrying for priests and meat on Fridays is not really where you want to be.
The Apostle Paul VOLUNTARILY went unmarried because of his faith, but even commented that others would probably be unable to do so, and should marry rather than commit sexual sin. At no time did he criticize married believers such as Peter.
Re:Celebrate! (Score:3, Interesting)
I know you are joking, but the Bible says nothing about priests or celibacy. That was invented by the catholic church
The Catholic Church decided the canon of the bible. If you're going to recognize their authority to do that, why wouldn't you also recognize their authority on other matters?
I find that I have a much more positive view of the Catholic Church as an agnostic than I did as a protestant.
Re:Bible 0.1.1-beta (Score:5, Interesting)
No, what they reveal is the tremendous accuracy of today's modern translations compared to the papyrii and codeces of antiquity. After all, consider the state of Christianity in the first few centuries A.D. - a bunch of "heretics", hated by the Jews, persecuted by the Romans, and driven underground. It was in that environment that the gospels and letters of Paul, Peter, John, etc. were copied, distributed, re-copied, distributed some more, etc.
Were there transcription errors? Sure. You try copying something the size of the Bible in secret, by hand, while fearing for your life! But we can reconstruct the original readings of the books of the NT with tremendous accuracy.
Your insistence that Christians must equate "the literal word of God" with "infallible transcriptions, every single time a book of the Bible is copied" is just plain wrong. That's not what most Christians believe. They believe that the method God used to preserve the text was to have it copied quickly and widely before any single organization could control the process and make "secret" alterations to the Scripture. (Conspiracy theorists who hint darkly about secret councils that burned books or suppressed certain ancient Christian beliefs tend to forget that, even if that was possible, there were no such organizations or counsels like that for many, many centuries . Compare that with Uthman Ibn Affan, who decided which copy of the Qur'an would be canonical, then gathered together and burning all other copies that differed from the official version. Christianity has nothing like that.
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Re:Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:5, Interesting)
I've read a few articles about "edit wars" between Paulinists and the early Christians, in which Paul gradually was inserted to a prominent role.
I'm not trying to be a dick, but I'd appreciate a source or two. I've never heard of this before, and I'd like to read them for myself.
(Paul is, interestingly, also the source of most of the "old testament doesn't apply anymore, except for some bits, but we're not going to tell you exactly which!" dogma)
Oh? The text I see most frequently cited in this connection is the account from Acts 10 of Peter's dream about food.
Re:Inflammatory? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Potential for translations (Score:3, Interesting)
The Johanneum Comma [wikipedia.org], for one.
The establishment of the Trinity didn't show up really until the Textus Receptus, the bastardized text based on many, many later manuscripts, and the text on which the King James Version was based. Prior to this (and ALL, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, old manuscripts agree), the passage:
1 John 5:7-8
5:7 "[...] in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
5:8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, [...]"
simply does not exist.
Re:Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:3, Interesting)
The main reason people are willing fight dangerous battles (and other potential sacrifices) is because it is expected of them by the people near and dear to them - their squad, disciples, buddies, parents, comrades, bretheren, or whatever you want to call it in whatever context. Long-lived organizations always have a structure and activities to enhance camaraderie, such as organizing people into relatively small groups with a stable membership, and exposing them to peril together (even manufactured hardship if necessary). Loyalty, peer pressure, honor, whatever you want to call it, it's a very powerful motivator for tribal creatures such as ourselves, much more so than abstract nationalistic interests or ideology - which is why so many varied nations and ideologies have little trouble raising armies to fight and die for them. I quote:
- World War II Infantry Tactics By Stephen Bull, Mike Chappell
Re:Inferior translated holy works (Score:3, Interesting)
Modern democracy is based on Judeo-Christian principles. I'll quote from an insightful essay on the matter:
"It is this point that I wish to make, and it is also one of the points made by Nietzsche in his Master-Slave morality, that the concept of equality, of legal, political and social equality is derived from Judeo-Christian morality. As Nietzsche puts it in Section 202 of his book Beyond Good and Evil, 'the Democratic movement is the inheritance of the Christian movement.'" (http://quantumleap42.blogspot.com/2009/06/religious-origins-of-our-democratic.html)
For every bad thing done in the name of religion, I can counter with many more good things done in the name of religion. We shouldn't resort to straw man arguments.
I do not live in Denmark but I too am glad that the Danish government did not bow to pressure from extremist Muslims. Besides, Islamic terrorists hold a very twisted view of Islam that very few other Muslims hold. What the few do that's negative in the name of religion should not reflect on broader religious beliefs. That's like focusing only on what America "destroys" while completely ignoring all the good that comes from America (this example holds true for Denmark as well).
Re:Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:4, Interesting)
He was already polluted with Hellenised Judeo/Roman Levantine religion: he was an enforcer of the Orthodoxy before his conversion. Christianity had no orthodoxy at his arrival on the scene - so he constructed it for his unresolved needs and the social/psychological needs of intended mission.
Absolutely right, it seems to me. However, to someone (i.e. me) who specialises not in early Christianity but in Greek culture, it looks like there's basically no way of reconstructing pre-Pauline Christianity (assuming there were any point in doing so), as the gospels seem to me to be almost as infected with Hellenised philosophical and religious thought as Paul's writings. The ideas of the divinity as a saviour with a personal relationship to the saved, redemption after death, the roles of revelation and gnosis in salvation, and the Eucharist, are pretty well inseparable from the gospel accounts of Jesus, and they're all pretty much straight adaptations of aspects of Orphic/Dionysiac religion. There are various other lesser resemblances (the accounts of the nativity have some passing resemblances to an early poetic account of the birth of Apollo, for example).
So I'd venture the hypothesis that these are all thoroughly and pervasively informed by Paul's theology too. So I'm curious: what is left once you remove the Pauline shell?
Re:Potential for translations (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.hereticalideas.com/2009/06/book-review-misquoting-jesus-by-bart-ehrman/ [hereticalideas.com]
More saliently, Ehrman notes other portions of the Bible that appeared to have been subtly altered in order to combat specific heresies. Particularly, alterations were made in order to counter heresies that contended that Jesus was part of a trinity and was, in fact, the Son of God. Here's one example:
A similar phenomenon happens a few verses later in the account of Jesus as a twelve-year-old in the Temple. The story line is familiar: Joseph, Mary, and Jesus attend a festival in Jerusalem, but then when the rest of the family heads home in the caravan, Jesus remains behind, unbeknowst to them. As the text says, "his parents did not know about it." But why does the text speak of his parents when Joseph is not really his father? A number of textual witnesses [later texts - Ed.] "correct" the problem by having the text read, "Joseph and his mother did not know it."
It's significant to note that both the King James version and the New King James version of the Bible both repeat this alteration in the text. This is significant because these translations are probably the most widely used among American evangelicals. They are also, as Ehrman notes, based on some very bad Greek texts due to the paucity of available Greek manuscripts at the time.
There are many examples of changes in the text. The version of Genesis which has two creation stories has been all but removed from modern Bibles, though it was present in the 50s and 60s. This is not new - Church leaders have hidden the truth from their followers for centuries, but now nearly everyone is literate, so religion is continuing to disappear where people are given the choice. Some notable exceptions would be the middle east, where lack of education and religious fundamentalism are so intertwined it hardly requires comment.
But what else would you expect from a God who waited tens of thousands of years to tell the "truth" to humans, and then gave it to "stupefied, illiterate, bronze age peasants" as Hitchens puts it. Not the smartest move for an omniscient God interested in presenting a coherent religion.
Re:Inferior translated holy works (Score:3, Interesting)
True, religion has destroyed so much; however, much much more has been destroyed by the anti- or non-religious (e.g., Stalin's Communism or Nazism {even though Nazis called themselves Christians, the atrocities of the Nazis were not done "in the name of religion" other than trying to eliminate those of particular belief sets and/or religions [most prominently Jewish]}).
Bullshit. It's amazing how hard christians try to hide the fact that Hitler was a lifelong catholic and so were his followers. Hitler sought -- and received -- support from the catholic church. Later on that proved to be quite an embarrassment for which the church had to apologize.
Stalin is an interesting case. He was educated in a religious primary school and then in a seminary. He gave up his christian faith only to create a state-based religion with him as some sort of demi-god. [Similar examples can be seen in ancient Egypt (pharao was "god"), imperial China, modern North Korea, etc.]
Modern democracy is based on Judeo-Christian principles. I'll quote from an insightful essay on the matter:
Bullshit again. Show me where the bible or torah or whatever advocates a democratic system of government. Don't quote what some guy said about some other guy who wrote some book you never read. You are a christian -- go directly to the supposed source of your values, the bible. The bible I'm familiar with advocates slavery, genocide, torture, rape, collective punishment, human sacrifice, etc.
For every bad thing done in the name of religion, I can counter with many more good things done in the name of religion. We shouldn't resort to straw man arguments.
I would argue that there are far more bad things than good that are done in the name of religion. The chief problem with it is that it requires you to surrender critical thinking. It values unquestioning obedience, even when someone tells you to do something clearly immoral.
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Re:The validity of this manuscript ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey, do you mind if I ask you a tangential question since it seems like you know what you're talking about? A while back I ran across some discussion over whether Jesus was an actual historical figure or a mythical one. There's a Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] with a summary and a much longer article [rationalrevolution.net] with some more detailed arguments, for instance. Have you heard of any of this, and if so, do you have an opinion on it? I've been hoping to find another point of view, but most of what I've run across is from Christians who seem more interested in defending their faith than anything else.
Re:Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:3, Interesting)
Speaking as an armchair theologian, AFAIK there isn't any belief of early Christianity that can't be directly correlated with a pagan religious tradition, whether it be from the Greek and Thracian culture or various "Middle Eastern" religions/folklores. Early Christianity can easily be viewed as a synthesis of Judaism and pagan religion/folklore.
Co-option and synthesis has been a major theme of Christianity from the very beginning through modern times. St. Augustine's writings were heavily influenced by the Manichean religion he followed as a younger man. The Catholic Church, when evangelizing around the world, consciously co-opted aspects of pagan religions in order to convert the pagans to Christianity. Common examples in our society would be Christmas, Easter, the Virgin of Guadalupe, etc. Some of the major dogmatic changes the Catholic Church underwent in the early 2nd millennium were caused mainly by the rediscovery and synthesis of pre-Christian ideas (most famously Aristotle), which led to the Renaissance and Reformation.
It's a silly question to ask what is left of early Christianity after removing Paul's personal theology. Since he wrote the earliest dogma that has survived and been accepted into modern Christianity, and later authors (such as those that wrote the gospels) almost certainly read his writings, his letters (from our perspective) can be viewed as the beginnings of Christianity. Paul's version of Christianity is the earliest version that we know. Unless we find writings earlier than Paul's (unlikely) the epistles are the furthest we can look back, and anything else is just extrapolating and generalizing about pre-Christian influence on the religion.
Re:Inferior translated holy works (Score:3, Interesting)
Modern democracy may be based on Judeo-Christian principles. But so were monarchies, dictatorships, theocracies, feudal states, slave states, apartheid states, genocidal states, etc.
As much as I dislike religion (I don't think I need to go into why), it is a powerful force for good as well as evil. Just as any human institution can be a powerful force for good or evil. Equal amounts of good and evil are done by the religious and non-religious alike.