TRIUMPHAL JOURNEY

Taranaki Daily News, 31 March 1934, Page 21 (Supplement)

TRIUMPHAL JOURNEY

brown paper parcel. CODEX SINAITICUS COMES HOME. For two weeks a constant stream of people has been flowing into the British Museum to view its new treasure, the £lOO,OOO Bible from Mount Sinai (says the Children’s Newspaper). Has there ever been such a rush hour in the museum before, we wonder ? Over three thousand people filed past this. Bible during the first five hours it was on view. They could not stay and gaze at this invaluable manuscript as they would have liked, for each had only six seconds for a glance; but few then or since have passed on without putting something toward its cost in the collecting-box beside it. There was one man that clay who was more glad than anypne else that the Bible was safe in the British Museum. It was the man who had for several nights slept with it under his pillow. THE JOURNEY FROM LENINGRAD. He was sent over from London with a companion to collect these precious pages. In Leningrad he saw them lying loose in a tin box, the ancient binding having.long since gone. They lay in a padding of cotton-wool in this box that had been enamelled crimson, and the courier took box and all, wrapped it up in brown paper, tied it with string, and set off back to London with the parcel under his arm. It might have been a very eventful journey had anyone guessed what was in that brown paper parcel, but it did not look tempting enough for even the ordinary train thief. The courier fed with it under his elbow and slept with it under his pillow; and, arriving in London, took it straight to a strong room at the Moscow Narodny Bank in Moorgate. HISTORIC SCENE AT BUSH HOUSE. The next morning it was taken under guard to Bush House, where the Arcos and the Russian Trade Delegation have their offices. Here came Mr. Maggs and Dr. Ettinghausen of Maggs Brothers, the purchasing agent, and with a portrait of Lenin looking down from the walls the Bible was handed across the office, table and a receipt was signed for it. ./ Returned to its wrappings the Codex Sinaiticus proceeded on its triumphal journey. Press photographers and cinema men were waiting for it at Maggs bookshop in Conduit Street. Again it was unwrapped and laid on a table in a blaze of light; Even a talkie was made when Mr. Maggs turned to Dr. Ettinghausen saying, “Shallwe undo the parcel?” AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM. Then on to the British Museum, where the crowds-had collected as if to welcome royalty. They cheered the brown paper parcel as it passed through the museum doors, meeting again a battery of cameras and -flashlights and the whir of the cinema as it-was handed over to the Director, Sir George Hill. A hurried examination by the experts, and the pages were taken to the glass case-, waiting for them in the entrance hall. Then the great procession began, and it has hardly ceased, for everybody is interested in this wonderful book. But. not everyone who has gazed on these pages during the last fortnight has quite realised their significance. “Has this Codex Sinaiticus been translated into English ?” somebody asked a museum official. “There are already in existence two excellent translations,” came the cutting reply, “the Authorised and Revised Versions of the Bible.”