Oldest Bible, Newest View

You can now read (or at least look at) 800 pages of the 1600-year-old Codex Sinaiticus online,
thanks to the British Library.

The oldest known text of the Bible, it includes the Septuagint version of the Old Testament -- that's the Greek version used at the time of Christ -- and the New Testament in "Koine," the original vernacular Greek.

Found in a monastery at Mt. Sinai in 1844, the book is a codex -- a bound manuscript -- rather than a scroll. The text is written in four narrow columns. Corrections and glosses are written in the wide margins, which makes it particularly interesting to scholars.

Why should it be particularly interesting to you? For one thing, the web page is an amazing bit of technology. Take a look at any page (for instance, this one) and you'll see the complete image on the left side, a transliteration on the right (great if you can read Greek, which I can't), and an English or German translation. You can switch between translations, if you're multi-lingual. You can move the page around, and you can magnify it, and you can even look at it in "raking light," which makes it hard to read but shows you every wrinkle in the parchment.

Every scholar in the world can now look at this book from his or her computer -- no need to travel to one of the four countries that have the original pages. Amateurs can look at them without credentials. People with tangential interest in the volume, such as calligraphers, historians, and bookbinders, can see it. And all without paying a dime.

But beyond that, there's another reason. Contrary to what some seem to believe, the Bible wasn't written yesterday. Contrary to what people like Dan Brown would have us believe, it's been around, and in the form we know, for a very long time. Take a few minutes to look at this book, this very copy of which was used by Catholics for hundreds of years. This is their book. It's also our book.