Sinai Monks in Historic Agreement with British Library

Ownership dispute has been set aside for joint study and digitisation of the world’s oldest bible

An emotional reunion took place in the vaults of the British Library last month, when the archbishop responsible for St Catherine’s Monastery on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt was shown the Codex Sinaiticus, the world’s oldest Bible. The manuscript, which had almost certainly been at the desert monastery from the sixth century onwards and possibly from two centuries earlier, was taken to Russia in the 19th century in controversial circumstances. It is so precious that only four scholars have been allowed full access to the manuscript in the past 20 years.

Archbishop Damianos told The Art Newspaper about the moment when he was finally able to look at the Old Testament. He turned to the Psalms, the pages of which are worn at the edges from the fingerprints of generations of monks. “I felt spiritual shock, a feeling of electricity. I was completely overcome by emotion and a sense of continuity with the past, but also spiritual peace,” the archbishop said.

In a remarkable deal, the Greek Orthodox monks of Sinai and the British Library have agreed to set aside their differences on the question of who is the manuscript’s rightful owner and will now work together to digitally reassemble the Codex Sinaiticus. The British Library owns the main part of the manuscript, which is claimed by St Catherine’s, but in 1975 the monks discovered 12 more leaves which had been left behind in the monastery. The University of Leipzig library and the National Library of Russia, which have further sections of the codex, are also co-operating.

A formal agreement between the four parties was signed in London on 9 March, following years of delicate negotiations. Although hurdles remain to be overcome, the project could provide a model which might be used to handle other restitution claims faced by libraries and museums around the world.

The Codex Sinaiticus project will, for the first time, give full access to what is arguably the world’s most important single Christian manuscript (the Dead Sea scrolls are earlier, but they comprise numerous manuscripts and only cover the Old Testament). The Codex Sinaiticus is also the earliest known book, in the sense of a substantial bound volume.

The manuscript arrived in Russia unbound, and was rebound in the UK in 1935. Although originally in one very large volume, it is now in two: the Old Testament is kept in the vaults and the New Testament is on permanent show in the library’s Ritblat Gallery, currently open at the concluding verses of St John. On this page, ultraviolet light has recently revealed that the last verse was originally omitted, and a concluding design was later blotted out and the missing words added.

Although a very scarce facsimile was published in Oxford in 1911-22, its quality is unsatisfactory for a detailed examination of the text.

The codex was written by three scribes, and the use of computer images that reveal details invisible to the naked eye may well make it possible to determine who made the corrections. Some are contemporary with the original manuscript, while others are later. The texts will be examined in depth. For instance, in Codex Sinaiticus the Gospel of St Mark ends at chapter 16, verse 8, with the discovery that Christ’s tomb was empty, although later Bibles have another 12 verses on the Resurrection. The study may well transform our understanding of the development of early Biblical texts.

Last month’s agreement is remarkable because the Codex Sinaiticus has long been the subject of a restitution claim. St Catherine’s Monastery believes that the manuscript was wrongly taken by the German scholar Constantine Tischendorf in the mid 19th century. All parties have now agreed to participate in international historical research, to document how the codex left Sinai.

“We want to discover the truth, even if it turns out not to support our position. But if at the end of the research there is no firm evidence either way, then we reserve the right to maintain our claim”, says Archbishop Damianos.

The British Library takes a similar position, expressed in more secular terms. Clive Field, collections director, put it succinctly in a private meeting with the monks: “Complete transparency, depth of scholarship; that is our commitment.”

The key question to be addressed is the arrangement which the Czar’s government negotiated with St Catherine’s. This is assumed to be reflected in a letter sent on 18 November 1869 by Archbishop Callistratus of St Catherine’s. Only brief extracts of the letter have been published, and it is also unclear whether it was signed by all the monks, which the present archbishop argues would have been necessary for such an important decision.

This letter is believed to be in the archives of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, since Tischendorf was acting as an agent for the Czar. Astonishingly, the Russian authorities recently refused a request to open the file, but the hope is that it will be supplied now that the director of the National Library of Russia is behind the project. Letters written by Tischendorf to his wife from Egypt also survive with his descendants in Germany, and it is hoped that Leipzig University library may be able to facilitate access to these.

The British Library describes the Codex Sinaiticus Digitisation Project as a “blockbuster of scholarship”. It encompasses four main strands: conservation, digitisation, transcription and scholarly commentary. On the conservation front, the section most in need of work are the 12 leaves discovered at Catherine’s in 1975, since these are cockled and fragile, and have never been conserved. The main part of the text, in London, is in remarkably good condition. Only after conservation, can digitisation be undertaken.

The text will be transcribed, and translated into English, German, Spanish and modern Greek. There will be a full scholarly commentary on the texts, along with a history of the manuscript. The facsimile and commentary will then be published in various forms: on the web, in a CD-Rom and in a high-quality printed facsimile, as well as in popular publications. The four-year project will cost £680,000, and £150,000 has already been committed by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

The Codex Sinaiticus was one of the original 50 Bibles copied in Greek at the order of Emperor Constantine, or a direct copy of the period. It dates from the mid-fourth century and it is likely to have arrived at St Catherine’s in Sinai when the monastery’s church was erected in the mid-sixth century.

The manuscript was “rediscovered” in 1844 by the German scholar Constantine Tischendorf. He then managed to acquire 43 leaves, which are now at the University of Leipzig. Tischendorf revisited the monastery in 1859, eventually borrowing a further 347 leaves, which he had requested for copying. He then left for St Petersburg, since his mission was sponsored by the Czar. Tischendorf presented the original to the Czar and published the text. The terms under which Tischendorf took the codex only became clear in 1960 when an 1859 letter was discovered in the monastery’s archive. In this, Tischendorf promised to “return [the codex], undamaged and in a good state of preservation, to the Holy Confraternity of Mount Sinai at its first request”.

For the next decade Tischendorf and Russian officials attempted to regularise the acquisition, putting pressure on the monks to confirm it as a gift. In 1869, the Czar promised Archbishop Callistratus a donation of 9,000 rubles (around $2,600) for the monastery and some Imperial decorations, and in a letter dated 18 November 1869 the Archbishop apparently offered the codex to the Czar as a gift.

In 1933, the Soviet government sold the Codex Sinaiticus, to raise hard currency. It was bought by the British Museum Library (now the British Library), through London dealer Maggs Bros. The price was £100,000, the highest sum ever paid for a manuscript or book. Six fragments which had found their way to St Petersburg through various routes remained in the Imperial Public Library, now the National Library.

In 1975, a further discovery was made behind a bricked-up doorway at St Catherine’s. Dubbed the “new finds”, these comprised 1,200 manuscripts including 12 leaves (and a further 15 fragments) of the Codex Sinaiticus. The best preserved leaves are on display in the monastery’s recently opened museum.

The story doesn't mention that Tschendorf found the book in a basket next to the fireplace. Monks were using its pages as kindling to start their fires. This could possibly be because they did not consider the text authoritative since it was of the Alexandrian tradition, a textual lineage perpetuated by individuals that did not take a literal view of inspiration.

The Antiochian tradition provided a more faithful transmission of the originals according to many textual critics... and perhaps by the monks who were burning the pages of this particular book.

St Catherine's is an amazing place. There's more there than meets the eye, for certain. This article makes me wonder what other artifacts have been hidden away or stolen over the centuries.

But I'd bet that St Kat's is mere chump change when compared to the hidden knowledge contained (or sequestered) in the depths of the Vatican. The archaeology, the history, and the truth to many events will never see the light of day.

I must say that I've always been rather cynical about that story. If I were a 19th century scholar filchinng a relic, the best way to bolster one's own claim is an argument along the lines of "Well it would have been destroyed...didn't know what they had...etc".

It might be true, but the odds are very high against it.

It is just incredible to me that you accept Tschendorf's story at face value, about the monks using its pages as kindling. You are not skeptical in the slightest?

Notice terms the monastery required to loan the text to him. -- "return [the codex], undamaged and in a good state of preservation, to the Holy Confraternity of Mount Sinai at its first request”. Does this sound like a document the monastery did not value at all? Did you read about the pressure Tischendorf placed on the monastery over 10 years to try to get them to give the document permanently? Do you think Tischendorf had a particular interest in defaming the monastery's guardianship of the text, to justify the manipulations and change the attitudes of his patrons?

Think man, think.

**Think man, think.**

Especially since the "fragments to be burnt" were not the bible. It was kept in another room wrapped in a red cloth to be kept as something of value and was not to be burnt at all.

I have a book around here somewhere called, Secrets of Mt. Sinaticus: The Story of the Worlds Oldest Bible. From memory: It describes T.'s belief that the monks ,and there were only a few at the time, maybe 11, as being dirty, smelly, suspicious, and ignorant. The majority of the codex was found in a 'graveyard' for old books in a stone chamber below the monastary after they had been worn out. The chamber was full of thousands of old pages. He describes the monks attitude toward the chamber as indifferent.

the Alexandrian tradition, a textual lineage perpetuated by individuals that did not take a literal view of inspiration.

That's certainly not true.

Alexandria was the site of a vibrant Christian community. Athanasius lived there at the time this text would be composed, and frankly, without the efforts of Athanasius, we would all have been Arians, rather than orthodox Trinitarians.

Furthermore, it was Alexandrian scholars who gave Christianity a solid grounding in the Old Testament. Before Origen's Hexapla, which analyzed the text of the Septuigent, the Old Testament was not uniformly held to be Christian Scripture. There were a fair number of heretics out there who taught that the Yahweh of the Old Testament was distinct from the Theos of the New; that the Old Testament Deity was a vengeful, evil local deity and that the God of the New Testament was the Universal God of the Universe. (This is the teaching of Marcion in a nutshell). Origen was instrumental in countering the false claims of Marcion, and got the church's ball rolling in deciding what was and what was not in the canon.

The Antiochian tradition provided a more faithful transmission of the originals according to many textual critics...

The "Antiochian tradition" (more accurately, the Byzantine Greek tradition) texts we have all date from 1000 AD or later.

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