Friday, May 09, 2008

Sinaiticus Goes On-line

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Via Jim West's blog.

The Leipzig University Library has published their portion of Codex Sinaiticus on-line at www.e-manuscripts.org. One is required to first download an add-on for the web-browser, Microsoft's Silverlight. After installment and restarting the browser it is possible to view superb images of the manuscript.

There is also a press-release in Der Standard.

Now we are just waiting for the other three libraries who are holding parts of the manuscript to follow suit (St Catherine's, the British Library, and the Russian National Library. Read about the whole undertaking at the ITSEE website.

7 comments

  1. That works well.
    Leipzig: 1 Chron 11.22-19.17; 2 Esdras [i.e. Greek Ezra-Neh] 9.9-end; Esther, Tobit 1.1-2.2; Jer 10.25-end; Lam 1.1-2.20

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  2. That works well.
    Leipzig: 1 Chron 11.22-19.17; 2 Esdras [i.e. Greek Ezra-Neh] 9.9-end; Esther, Tobit 1.1-2.2; Jer 10.25-end; Lam 1.1-2.20

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  3. Oui, Monsieur, merci.

    Malcolm ;-)

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  4. The Sinaiticus (NT) has been on www.csntm.org for quite a while. Are you referring to OT portions only?

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  5. Anon,

    The facsimile edition has been on www.csntm.org for quite a while, but these are high-resolution images of the real thing! For the manuscript geeks among us this is a very different thing. Let me give you an example from my own experience. In m work on Jude (25 verses), I remember sending five questions on readings to co-blogger Dirk Jongkind, who then had access to the manuscript in the British Library. These issues could not be resolved by looking at the facsimile edition.

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  6. Tommy:

    Thank you for that information. I had no idea it was that different. I've read some of the Sinaiticus at www.csntm.org and didn't have a difficult time with any of the verses. I just assumed they were all readable. Sorry. I'll go take a look at Jude.

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  7. Anon:

    It is not easy to know what I referred to by looking at the facsmile. I had access to other transcriptions, and when you compare there are divergences which then become issues to be resolved, e.g., is this or that a smudge or a correction, etc. If you are just looking for the text in general, the facsmile is fine. If you need to be exact as to what is going on at every point then you need good images, or better to see the physical manuscript itself (for example, if you are studying the scribal habits and need to record all errors, corrections, etc). In fact, very detailed transcriptions (digital with tagging) of Sinaiticus are also being produced by experienced scholars in this major project, and they will be accessible, and searchable in a number of ways. There was an interesting article by D. C. Parker in JSNT some years ago describing this aspect of the work on Sinaiticus; "Through a Glass Darkly" I think was the title.

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