Image Details

Courtesy of St. Catherine’s Monastery

SAVED IN SINAI. According to ancient Bible hunter Constantine Tischendorf, he saved the precious Codex Sinaiticus from ending up as fire kindling during a chance encounter at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai. His delight over discovering the manuscript raised the suspicions of the monks, but they allowed him to remove 43 pages of the codex for further study and return to Leipzig, Germany, with them. It took multiple petitions and several trips, but eventually Tischendorf, with the aid of the Russian government, was able to remove the majority of the manuscript, which made its way to Russia and was eventually sold to Britain. Great controversy surrounded the removal of the manuscript and Tischendorf’s role in the process. Today parts of Codex Sinaiticus can be found in London, Leipzig, St. Catherine’s Monastery (from a later secondary discovery) and Russia, but the complete manuscript has been placed in a virtual online museum. The significance of Codex Sinaiticus is manifold, but not least of which is the preservation of two apocryphal texts, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas. This page is one of the few that remain at the monastery in Egypt.