London, England, Jul 7, 2009 / 11:49 am
The British Library has announced that the pages of 4th century biblical manuscript called the Sinaiticus Codex have been scanned and posted online after four years of work.
The manuscript was written in Greek and dates to the time of the expansion of Christianity under Constantine. It can now be viewed with translations in English, German and Russian at www.codexsinaiticus.org
For centuries it was kept at the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, until it was divided up in the 19th century and sent to the University of Leipzig library in Germany, the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg and the British Library. Some portions of the manuscript remained at the Mount Sinai monastery.
The project to digitalize the manuscript cost more than one million dollars.
The Codex, written by three scribes, also includes texts from the 1st century and is one of the best preserved manuscripts of the era.