The Codex Sinaiticus Project
"The Codex Sinaiticus Project is an international collaboration to reunite the entire manuscript in digital form and make it accessible to a global audience for the first time. Drawing on the expertise of leading scholars, conservators and curators, the Project gives everyone the opportunity to connect directly with this famous manuscript."
The Codex Sinaiticus Website
"The first release of the Codex Sinaiticus Project website will be launched on 24 July 2008. The website will be substantially updated in November 2008 and in July 2009, by when the website will have been fully developed."
http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4387300.ece
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article4387070.ece
Now I realize old manuscripts are not everyone's cup of tea. But as a librarian I can't resist them. (Biddie, you get a week off; nothing to read this time.) The history of this manuscript is exciting in itself and the cultural significance of this book for Western civilization is, well, profound.
17 comments:
My only concern is the statement "Its heavily corrected text ....". What and why was it necessary to correct the original (I assume) text? One of my biggest beefs with religious books that have survived Antiquity is that all most all have been modified in some way. Either by translation or for "other reasons".
The easiest way I can explain it is to suggest you read chapter 10 of a book named "One" by Richard Bach. It is written as a first person narrative but you can ignore the characters themselves in this chapter but watch how it is explains the beginning of a new religion. I would expect you could read the entire chapter in about 10to 15 minutes in the library or a bookstore.
Just food for thought...possibly could it be back in the day that humanity had the fascination with celebrity that they hold to this day....could it be an antiquated version of the National Enquirer that through the ironic twists & turns of human history now has gathered much weight & esteem just by merely surviving the decades.
There's a story in the making...
(( laughing )) P: I don't think that I could easily find a copy of this on Amazon (new or used)!!
I also picked up on the phrase "heavily corrected text" - it conjured up the picture of scribes taking older works and copying them into this codex which then, over time, had over-writings (corrections) entered into the codex - how did the people entering the corrections know that there were corrections to be entered - did they have access to the older original works? Or was it some self-interest that was behind the corrections?
Fascinating history - it's a shame that there were so many enemies and self-interested forces over the centuries that caused the loss and destruction of so many older texts.
However, I must confess - several times thru out the years, I sat down to read the bible - every time, I lost interest after 30 pages or so. Sure have to admire those that could actually read the bible and then study it - whether in our current day english or the more ancient scripts!!
You're right, it isn't an easy read. I read it one time many decades ago and the more I thought about the different translations the more I became sure that some things were changed for special interest people such as those who wanted more control and income from the believers. My reference to "One" indicates that and that some of the reasons could easily have been innocent and for clarity but not necessarily accurate. Like having a line of people and whispering a secret to the first person and having that person whisper it to the next, etc. Then see how the secret changes when it comes out the other end of the line.
"how did the people entering the corrections know that there were corrections to be entered?"...that is exactly the point, Biddie. There were earlier documents which were acknowledged to be accurate and they copied (by imperfect people called copiest)to make the various books. They haven't survived (nor have the first drafts of Shakespeare's plays, for that matter, tho they must have existed)And those works in turn rested on oral tradition, what contemporaries of Jesus and the Apostles remembered. (People had great memories in those days as literacy was rare). Being a Christian was a dangerous and unremunerative life in the early centuries. To assume they practiced a cult of celebrity would transfer our own obsessions to those completely different days. This manuscript contains the Old Testament also, a novel idea.
Oppy, you say "modified in some way" as if you knew exactly how they SHOULD read. Do you? We don't know the whole story, i.e., how much untrue garbage they tossed out by agreement, etc. Let's give the ancients credit for knowing how to manage the project that consumed their lives.
...called copiers.
Sorry...had to delete the above as I caught a major spelling error..arrgh! Anyways, here's the post~
"Being a Christian was a dangerous and unremunerative life in the early centuries. To assume they practiced a cult of celebrity would transfer our own obsessions to those completely different days."
Good point.
The only response I can offer is that while the periphery has indeed changed, it seems that one thing hasn't...and that would be human nature. It seems to be the one thing that is inviolate to the force of evolution. To paraphrase a quote..."Those who don't understand history are destined to repeat it"
Well, here we are again. In a world that is shaking at it's core due to religious zealotry.
To me, it doesn't seem like people have moved beyond the mentality of the Inquisition days when it comes to religion. While it seems to be the most honest and simple of tenets...tolerance of your fellow man seems to be the furthest from our grasp. Hence my suspicion of any formal religious doctrine. Religion throughout history up to our time has been twisted and used as a tool to further human not Godly agendas.
I say this with no disrespect meant to anyone else's beliefs...just meant to further the discussion.
I agree with you Cheryl. Religion has been used to control people, witness that lack of women with authority until recently. Yes, there are some but they were rare by comparison. And this control is a big part of my point and the point of chapter 10 in "One". Consider if we "copied" the bible now and made changes because of political correctness. (I dislike what that term stands for)
I'm trying NOT to get into a discussion of religious beliefs because I feel all the major religions have this problem.
Tolerance of others beliefs (there are limits to this in my mind) and viewpoints is necessary to be able to work together in peace.
And I DON'T know how things should read because I wasn't there and can only dimly imagine what life was like in those times. Human nature has its negative side which seems to be still present.
people who are very intense about their religion make me uncomfortable - Christian or otherwise. Religion, like race is used to isolate one group from another - sometimes I wonder if it is an extension of a primal drive of a group to survive by eliminating an unlike group.
I'd like to rewrite the phrase ..."Those who don't understand history are destined to repeat it" to read something like this: ..."Those who don't understand human nature and drives are destined to repeat history". I wish that those destructively aggressive and intolerant-of-the-different elements could be eliminated from the human gene pool - come back aliens - where are you when we need you?
However, none of my, perhaps, eccentric paragraph above negates my appreciation for those elements in our makeup that allow for historical research and a drive to extract a vein of continuity in our (i.e., human) search for some greater meaning to our lives - even as we happen to find it in such fragmented pieces.
My goodness, I just wanted to point out a cultural artifact whose survival and now dissemination via digital means, seems like an amazing thing. And it turned into an anti-religious tirade. You guys are so eager to display your contempt for the human race (i.e., religious people) in a seeming defense of the human race! I've been reading Roman history all summer. Now those were bloody times! We live in paradise in comparison, with all our constitutional rights, daily comforts, and literacy. You take all this and the peacefulness of your daily lives for granted and point to a few nut cases as reasons why religion is evil. Yeesh!
I'm not saying religion is evil!
Each of us has, and should use, their freedom to decide how to explain to ourselves what to believe in, how/who created the universe, why we're here, and where we are going. SOME people use religion for personal gain and I don't mean just making a living. I mean gain at the expense of those they convince to follow them.
I have my way of looking at it and, since it's fairly easy to explain some of the above questions, I'd be willing to give my views. I don't expect or want to convert anyone! I'd just be giving my ideas in the hope it might cause someone to pause and think.
I respect others ideas and ways of looking at these same questions. In addition I will NOT pass judgement on them. There are some ideas I will be judgemental about. For example, human or animal sacrifices (sp?) (meaning deaths) are not acceptable to me!
Politics & religion can often elicit lively conversations. I'm sorry that I misinterpreted this thread as such.
I don't hold contempt for religious people, I think faith is a beautiful thing. Nor do I think religion is "an evil" thing...just the corruption of it.
Once again, please accept my apologies, I absolutely meant no disrespect towards anyone's beliefs.
I didn't take it as disrespect. I took it as things as you see them which added to the DISCUSSION (not argument). I have no problem DISCUSSING religion or politics but I do not want to ARGUE the various points since that's a form of judgement.
I don't think you need to apologize unless someone has taken offense and nothing I've read here indicates that to me. But if you feel you may have mislead us in some way then apology accepted and let's move on to other discussions.
Easy with the verbal flogging there, girl! No one blasted the process of finally getting those precious few documents up for all the world to read. No on blasted your appreciation of this focus. No one blasted you for even posting the notice. It was interesting to see documents like this to finally get to the light of day.
However, what you have just witnessed is typical in a chain of comments that are made up of freely associated attitudes, opinions and experiences that are spawned off your original post.
This has happened to me many a time over the past when I post something that is of importance to me but the free association processes take the people that come to comment off in directions that I never expected or imagined. It can be very frustrating for sure.
Please understand that while we didn't respond as you would have liked, we did respond because what you made us start thinking about turned out to have important tangentials associated with it.
Well I finally caught up and read all these comments, I don't have anything to contribute but it was interesting reading!
Interesting comments all around.
The first time I tried to access the Codex digitally it wouldn't let me in and gave the message "users in excess of 10,000 trying to use database" or some such wording. It seems someone besides me is interested in the manuscript!
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