Codex Sinaiticus

Overview

Codex Sinaiticus (Latin for "Sinai Codex") is not a term found in the biblical text. It is the name of one of the ancient handwritten copies of the Bible. It was written in Greek uncial (capital) letters on parchment, which is prepared animal skin. Scholars date it to the fourth century. In scholarly literature it is designated by the Hebrew letter ℵ (aleph) or by the number 01.

The manuscript contains the entire New Testament. For the Old Testament, a substantial portion of the Greek translation known as the Septuagint survives. The manuscript also includes the noncanonical Epistle of Barnabas and part of the Shepherd of Hermas.

Discovery and Custody

The German scholar Constantin von Tischendorf found the manuscript at Saint Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai. He took some leaves in 1844, and in 1859 he obtained most of the manuscript and delivered it to the Russian tsar. In 1933 the Soviet government sold it to the British Museum. Today the manuscript is divided among four institutions: the British Library, Leipzig University Library in Germany, the National Library of Russia, and Saint Catherine's Monastery. In 2009 the entire manuscript was digitally photographed and made available online.

The circumstances under which the manuscript was acquired are disputed. Tischendorf wrote that he rescued the old parchment leaves when the monastery was about to use them as kindling. The monastery rejects this account and has maintained that the manuscript was lent and never returned.

Significance for the Study of the Biblical Text

The original manuscripts of the Bible do not survive. Scholars therefore compare the many existing copies in order to reconstruct the original text, a discipline known as textual criticism. Together with Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus is regarded as one of the most important manuscripts in this work. Both are classified as witnesses to the Alexandrian text type, named for Alexandria in Egypt.

Compared with later manuscripts, it shows several well-known differences:

• The Gospel of Mark ends at 16:8; verses 9–20 are absent.
• John 7:53–8:11, the account of the woman taken in adultery in the Gospel of John, is absent.
• The closing doxology of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:13, "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen," is absent.

Interpretation and Debate

Modern critical editions of the Greek text, and many translations based on them, rely on this manuscript as an important witness. Those who support the manuscript tradition widely used from the medieval period onward—namely the Textus Receptus, which underlies the King James Bible—take a different view. They point out that Codex Sinaiticus contains numerous corrections, and they question its reliability on the grounds that its text was not in long-standing use in the church. In the 1860s a Greek named Constantine Simonides claimed that he had forged the manuscript, but scholars have not accepted this claim.

Another question under discussion is whether textual variants conflict with biblical inerrancy. Many evangelical scholars hold that inerrancy is a property of the original autographs, and they describe the comparison of manuscripts as an effort to come closer to those originals.

In the Korean Church

The New Korean Revised Version, the New Korean Standard Version, and other translations place certain verses in brackets or add marginal notes such as "Some manuscripts do not have …" These markings reflect differences among ancient manuscripts, including Codex Sinaiticus. Some groups that regard the King James Bible as the only correct translation criticize such translations. The issue is frequently raised in debates over Bible translation.