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RSS feedsPeople around the world will be also able to explore high resolution digital images of all the extant pages of the book for free starting today.
Written on more than 800 pages of animal skin parchment, the pages of the oldest Bible were scattered between the British Library, Germany, Russia and St Catherine's monastery in Egypt's Sinai desert. Its literature and images were the work of several scribes and had its text revised and corrected over the course of the following centuries.
Pieced together under one site, the online project is the effort of a four-year collaborative agreement between the owners of these different parts of the document, including British Library which possessed over 300 pages.
Professor David Parker from the University of Birmingham's department of Theology, who directed the team funded by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), which made the electronic transcription of the manuscript said: “The process of deciphering and transcribing the fragile pages of an ancient text containing over 650,000 words is a huge challenge.
“The transcription includes pages of the Codex which were found in a blocked-off room at the Monastery of St Catherine in 1975, some of which were in poor condition,” added Parker. “This is the first time that they have been published. The digital images of the virtual manuscript show the beauty of the original and readers are even able to see the difference in handwriting between the different scribes who copied the text.”
Researchers, academics and general public can search all the surviving text and study the Greek text, which contains information not found in the modern Bible
The British Library is hosting an exhibition in September to mark the launch of the reunited Codex with a range of historic items linked to the manuscript.
View the oldest surviving Bible at: http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/.
