The region of South Sinai and Mount Sinai - St. Catherine Monastery
St. Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai. Built at the foot of Mount Moses,
Sinai, St. Catherine’s Monastery was constructed by
order of the Emperor Justinian between 527 and 565.
(Ordered first by St. Helena the mother of emperor
Constantine) It is built on the traditional site of
Moses’ Burning Bush, which has a chapel built
above it. It was built to house the bones of the
Christian martyr St. Catherine. It is one of the oldest
continually-working monasteries in the world, a
Greek Orthodox holy place connected with the
Prophet Moses and the exodus of the Jews from
Egypt.
The Library
Considered one of the largest and most important of its type in the
word, the library contains a rich collection of 4,500 manuscripts,
mainly Greek, but also Arabic, Coptic, Syriac, Slavonic and others.
It also contains a small piece of the Codex Sinaiticus of the mid
fourth century, and another from the 6th century. The UNESCO
presented a copy of Microfilm of these manuscripts and books to
the university of Alexandria, faculty of literature, through the effort
of the late Dr. Soriel Atia Soriel.
The regrettable story of one of the most precious manuscripts in the
world, the Codex Sinaiticus, is well known. The most important
existing three manuscripts of the scriptures is the Codex
Alexandrine, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus.
Codex Sinaiticus (4th century)
This manuscript, usually designated S, was brought to the attention
of C. von Tischendorf in 1859 at the Monastery of St. Catherine at
the foot of Mt. Sinai (in the south central Sinai Peninsula) after a
partial discovery of 43 leaves of a 4th-century biblical
codex there in 1844. Though some of the Old
Testament is missing, a whole 4th-century New
Testament is preserved, with the Epistle of Barnabas
and most of the Shepherd of Hermas at the end. There
were probably 3 hands and several
later correctors.
It was said Tischendorf convinced the monks that
giving the precious manuscript to Tsar Alexander II
of Russia would grant them needed protection of
their abbey and the Greek Church. Tischendorf subsequently
published S at Leipzig and then presented
it to the Tsar. The manuscript remained in
Leningrad until 1933, during which time the Oxford
University Press in 1911 published a facsimile of the
New Testament portion from photographs of the
manuscript taken by Kirsopp Lake, an English biblical
scholar. The manuscript was sold in 1933 by the
Soviet government to the British Museum for £100,000.
The text type of S is in the Alexandrian group, although it has some
Western readings. Later corrections representing attempts to alter
the text to a different standard probably were made about the 6th
or 7th century at Caesarea.
World’s oldest Bible goes global: Historic international digitization
project
An ambitious international project to reinterpret the oldest Bible in
the world, the Codex Sinaiticus, and make it accessible to a global
audience using innovative digital technology and drawing on the
expertise of leading biblical scholars is officially launched today. (11
March 2005, The British Library)
Copyright © 2006 Saint Antony Coptic Orthodox Monastery, California, U.S.A. The above article may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of Saint Antony Coptic Orthodox Monastery, California, U.S.A. |
