BIBLE MANUSCRIPT

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 10, 22 December 1933, Page 9

BIBLE MANUSCRIPT

PURCHASE BY BRITAIN One of Most Ancient Extant £lOO,OOO TO BE PAID British Official Wireless Service. RUGBY, December 20. The British Museum trustees, with the approval of the Government, has agreed to purchase from the Soviet Government a fourth century manuscript known as the ciodex Sinaiticus. It was formerly •in the possession of the Czar of Russia. It is one of the oldest manuscripts of the Bible and is regarded as of paramount importance to the establishment of its i text. The Prime Minister stated in the House of Commons that the Government had undertaken to make a special •ontribution towards the purchase price of £1 for every £1 subscribed by the public. The purchase price is £lOO,OOO. Mr U. Flower, deputy-keeper of manuscripts in the British Museum, says that the price paid for the codex is the biggest the museum has ever paid for a manuscript, while the purchase is the most important the museum has ever made. The codex is written in Greek and is one of the most important manuscripts in the world. Forty-three leaves of it were discovered in 1844 by a German Biblical scholar, Herr Tischendorf, in a rubbish basket in the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. It was presented to the Leipzig Library. Herr Tischendorf in 1553 returned to Sinai and was shown additional manuscripts, which he recognised as the main bulk of that formerly obtained and which he sent to Tsar Alexander. The codex consists of a very large portion of the Old Testament translation by the Hebrew Septuagint, although some of the books are fragmentary. There is also a complete NewTestament, the Epistle of Barnabas and a treatise known as “The Shep herd of Hernias,” which was so popular with the early church and was nearly included in the canons of the Scriptures. The codex dates to the second half of the fourth century, and with the codex Vaticanus constitutes two of the earliest great Biblical manuscripts. The third is the codex Alexandrinus dating to the second half of the fifth century, which is already in the British Museum.