Sacred relics aren't the only ancient artifacts located at the Monastery of St. Catherine. The monastery's library collection, which is second only the manuscript library of the Vatican, contains more than 3,500 volumes in Greek, Coptic, Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, Slavic, Syriac, Georgian and many other languages.

This, of course, brings us back to the Codex Sinaiticus and its checkered past.

The mysterious story of the Codex Sinaiticus
To most of us living in the modern age, the Bible is the Bible. Regardless of what religious background you hail from, the Bible is considered by most to be a fixed document, a collection of stories, guiding principles, laws, and values that, together, comprise the foundation for many modern-day religions.

But the Bible is anything but fixed. In fact, it has mutated over and over for thousands of years. And therein lies the foundation for an epic debate, a battle of words that's quite literally biblical in proportion.

To many devout believers throughout the world, what the Bible says defines their lives. Every aspect of their belief system is based on the fundamental truths they take from this single book. If it were possible to change what the book says, it would have a profound effect on all aspects of their lives, their beliefs, and their relationship with their religon.

Change what the book says and you rock their world.

The problem is, it's hard to really, really know what the Bible says. It's a document that has gone through many, many transformations, interpretations, and translations. Entire books, called the apocryphal works, contain biblical stories that at one time were considered part of the Bible itself. The Bible has been translated into more than 2,100 languanges and has been translated more times and into more languages than any other book.

One way that religious scholars and historians can determine with some accuracy the original intent in the Bible is to read original versions of the Bible. If you could, for example, read the Bible as it was written three hundred years or so after Christ was supposed to have lived, you're likely to get a much more accurate picture of the intent of the religion than you would reading the King James Version or the New American Bible.

This might help you understand why Constantine Tischendorf was so excited back in 1844. Tischendorf was a biblical scholar and was traveling throughout the ancient lands in search of manuscripts. This was before we had air-conditioned planes, trains, or automobiles, so you gotta pretty much assume the guy was dedicated in the extreme.

In time, his travels took him to the Monastery of St. Catherine. Apparently, the "circular file" existed back then as well. While working in the library, Tischendorf noticed a basket containing loose manuscript pages. Among those pages were several "leaves" of the oldest Greek writing he'd ever seen -- and which contained parts of the Greek Bible.