And that's how, in 1859, the Codex Sinaiticus, shown in Figure B, wound up traveling from Mount Sinai, in Egypt to Saint Petersburg, in Russia.

FIGURE B


One of the oldest Bibles in existence, this document sure does get around. Roll over picture for a larger image.

We're not yet done with the 19th-century, or Constantine Tishendorf. Our intrepid biblical scholar seemed to get his nose into everything. In the late 1850s, his nose got a whiff of another Constantine, one Greek named Constantine Simonides. Seems this Constantine had a little larceny in his soul and had been creating a considerable sensation by manufacturing Greek manuscripts claiming to be of astounding antiquity. When these documents were exposed as forgeries, one of the scholars turning the screws on Simonides was no less than our very own Tishendorf.

In a twisted attempt to get back at Tischendorf, Simonides determinedly maintained that all his documents were original, except for one. That one he claimed he'd forged. Can you guess which document Simonides claimed he'd forged? Of course you can: the Codex Sinaiticus. The joke really ticked off Tishendorf, but was later disproved. The Codex Sinaiticus has been declared genuine.

At this point, the Constantines Simonides and Tishendorf fade into history and our story moves to the U.S.S.R. of 1933.

While earlier Russian leaders aligned themselves with the church, the Soviet leadership under Ioseb Jughashvili (who we know as Stalin) had little use for religious artifacts and considerable use for cash. Although the Soviet government conducted some negotiations with an American cartel for the sale of the Codex Sinaiticus, the British Museum managed to land this priceless manuscript for a mere 100,000 pounds.

42 years later, in May 1975 during restoration work, the monks at St. Catherine's monastery discovered a room under the St. George chapel which contained parchment fragments. Among these fragments, 13 missing Old Testament pages from the Codex Sinaiticus were found.

And this brings our story up to present day.

Portions of the Codex Sinaiticus are now, in 2005, located in the British Library in London, St. Catherine's Monastery, the Leipzig University Library, and the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg.

So here we have one of the earliest copies of the Bible, and it contains both the Old and New Testaments. Intrigue, thievery, and church politicing aside, this document gives biblical scholars a unique chance to see what was really written in the Bible, way back when the Bible was being written.

Or...does it?

What's got the collective knickers of biblical scholars in a collective bunch is that what's written in the book is not necessarily what was originally written in the book.

Enter the Wikipedia
This'll make a lot more sense if we first discuss another document that changes over time and also has scholars' up in arms: the Wikipedia.

The Wikipedia (at http://www.wikipedia.org) is a collectively-written encyclopedia available online. At this moment, there are more than 600,000 articles in the Wikipedia, many of which are extremely professional in their presentation and discussion.