Jennica & Matthew Geddert's Ramblings

Aug 6 Sinaiticus! by Jennica

Not only do I acknowledge that I am a New Testament geek, occassionally I revel in it. Today we went to the British Library where I saw one of the two oldest and best complete manuscripts of the New Testament (the other one is in the Vatican).
Shivers of excitement were tingling up and down my spine as we approached the room of treasures. Brushing past original copies of the works of Handel, Mozart, Jane Austin, and Shakespeare, I made a beeline for Sinaiticus. Most tourists lingered over the Magna Carta in the next room, but I stood there, deciphering what I could. It was open to the last two pages of John and even though it was all in Greek capital letters and had no spaces between words or punctuation, I could read parts of it!

Let me explain why I was so excited. After the Greek Christian cities fell to the Muslems (Jerusalem, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Carthage), Christianity consolidated in Latin Rome. All the bibles were copied in Latin until the Renessance when people started looking at Greek manuscripts again. There were only a few copies in circulation and no one knew which were the best ones. The King James version was based on those few manuscripts that they had (King James’s copy of the King James Bible, first edition was in the room of treasures too).

About a hundred years ago an adventurer discovered Sinaiticus in a monastary on Mout Siani where they were using it for scrap. He rescued it and it eventually ended up in the British Library. It has since become accepted as one of the two most complete and accurate versions of the New Testament we have today. That just may be the closest I’ll ever get to seeing an original New Testament. Pretty cool, eh?

For any other New Testament geeks reading this: Alexandrinus, Petropolitanus, and a scrap of papyri of the Gospel of Thomas were there too!

After the British Library, we went to the British Museum. We’ve nicknamed this establishment, “the dragon’s horde.” The treasures of the world are there, neatly tagged and labeled, but without context and thus without soul. We did not stay long.