Libri, 2007, vol. 57, pp.

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Copyright Saur 2007 Libri ISSN 0024-2667

Project Report

Digitising the Hand-Written Bible: The Codex Sinaiticus, its History and Modern Presentation
Ekkehard Henschke Oxford, UK

The German theologian Konstantin von Tischendorf discovered the oldest manuscript of the Bible in the middle of the 19th century. Thereafter its parts were dispersed and stored in famous libraries in London, Leipzig and St. Petersburg, and in St. Catherines Monastery near Mount Sinai, its original home. An international consortium of libraries has been formed to preserve and research all the parts of this manu-

script and then to unite them in digital form. This will result in a virtual Codex Sinaiticus on the Internet, though there will also be a printed version. Standards for preservation, transcription and digitisation have been established with the help of European and U.S. experts. This joint venture, supported by a number of research councils and foundations, began in 2006 and will be completed by 2010.

The high-quality digitisation of documents of national importance has become a well-known method of conserving them as well as presenting them to an international public via the Internet. The National Digital Library Program of the Library of Congress (LoC 1995) and the Oxford Digital Library (ODL 2001) are only two of an increasing number of such large-scale projects. These projects gain international resonance when they contain documents of worldwide relevance, such as medieval manuscripts and early imprints. In 2000, for instance, the 600th anniversary of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of letterpress printing, was honoured by Gutenberg Digital, an ambitious project of the State and University Library of Lower Saxony at Gttingen. The famous vellum Gutenberg Bible, originally printed in 1454, was part of this project which was presented on the In-

ternet as well as on a CD-ROM (Gutenberg Digital 2000). The Bible is part of the worlds cultural heritage and the Codex Sinaiticus (see Figure 1) is the most important ancient manuscript of the Bible. The history of this manuscript is closely connected with the German theologian and adventurer Konstantin von Tischendorf, who found this codex in the Egyptian desert of Mount Sinai in the middle of the 19th century. He discovered and published the earliest complete copy of the New Testament and large parts of the Old Testament. According to the German Institute for New Testament Textual Research at Mnster, there are 5,746 surviving manuscripts of parts of the New Testament in Greek but only 60 of them include the whole New Testament. Only nine of these 60 manuscripts were written before the eleventh century (Mc-

Dr. Ekkehard Henschke was Director of Leipzig University Library, Leipzig, Germany, from 1992 to 2005. Now retired, he lives in Oxford at 9 Wren Road, Oxford OX2 7SX, UK; E-mail: ekkehardhenschke@yahoo.de An early version of this paper was delivered at the Edinburgh Conference of the Society of Biblical Literature on July 4, 2006.

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Ekkehard Henschke Kendrick 2006, 35). Next to the Codex Sinaiticus, in terms of completeness and antiquity, are the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Alexandrinus. Due to circumstances detailed below, the Codex Sinaiticus was dispersed. At the beginning of the 21st century, librarians and theologians from a number of countries decided to put the different parts together and present them to the international public by means of modern technology. Though more than 130 years has passed since Tischendorfs death, he has remained a key gure for every project concerning the Codex Sinaiticus. vorno to Egypt in 1844 in search of further manuscripts. In those days, the East was a region full of tensions and the biblical Mount Sinai, the site of Saint Catherines Monastery, was part of the huge Ottoman Empire. For about 15 years from 1844, Tischendorfs adventures and discoveries took place in this region with its many Coptic monasteries and famous cities. Though himself a Lutheran, Tischendorf was in touch with prominent Catholics and members of the Orthodox Church, and his numerous reports and personal letters provide a lively picture of these adventurous years (Bttrich 1999b, 18f; 92f). In May 1844 he found 129 parchment sheets in a basket in the library of Saint Catherines Monastery, the pearl of all my researches, as he called them (Tischendorf 1866). These folios contained the text of a Greek translation of the Old Testament compiled in the fourth century A.D. This was a real sensation. Tischendorf was allowed to take 43 folios with him and he donated them, together with other Oriental manuscripts, to the Saxon Government, intending them for Leipzig University Library. Tischendorf called the Sinaitic fragments the Codex Frederico-Augustanus in acknowledgement of the patronage given by the king of Saxony. Tischendorf reported: I published them in Saxony in a sumptuous edition, in which each letter and stroke was exactly reproduced by the aid of lithography (Tischendorf 1866; Bttrich 1999c, 17). But he was not content with the reproduction of these fragments carried out in Leipzig in 1846. He kept the place of his discovery a secret. In 1853 he went to the monastery for a second time to get the remaining 86 folios. All knowledge of them had been lost, so he had to return six years later. Early in February 1859 he was informed by the monasterys steward of a much larger parchment manuscript which proved to be the 86 folios of the Old Testament, as well as the folios of the whole New Testament, the epistle of Barnabas and a part of the pastor of Hermas. Tischendorf had discovered the oldest complete manuscript of the New Testament. The ongoing story of these folios and their publication is very complicated for theological, political and nancial reasons. Many scholars were envious of Tischendorfs success (Bttrich 2005, 254 seq.; 1999b, 21f). However at the end of February 1859, Tischendorf was allowed to take the

Tischendorf and his crucial work

Konstantin von Tischendorf (18151874), the German theologian and palaeographer, began his career in Leipzig, Germany, a city with a well-known trade fair and an old university. Tischendorf commenced his theological studies in Leipzig, taking his doctorate in 1838. His postdoctoral thesis or habilitation of 1840 dealt with the prolegomena to a rst critical edition of the Greek New Testament. This book received a lot of attention and Tischendorf went on to publish 24 further editions of biblical texts up to 1874. According to Christfried Bttrich, Tischendorf travelled to the Bibliothque nationale in Paris in 1840 where he worked on a parchment manuscript considered unreadable (Bttrich 1999a, 1999b, 1999c). It was a palimpsest, rst written in the fth century and mostly containing the Greek New Testament. The pages of this so-called Codex Ephraemi Syri Rescriptus had been cleaned and another text written on them during the following centuries. Tischendorf was able to decipher the underlying text, thereby making his name as a palaeographer. His edited work of the original text of this palimpsest was published by Bernhard Tauchnitz in Leipzig in 1843 and 1845 (Bttrich 1999b, 1416; 1999c, 1617). Leipzig was an important printing and publishing centre at that time. Thereafter, Tischendorf visited libraries in the Netherlands, England, Southern France, Switzerland and Italy where he discovered other manuscripts containing biblical and apocryphal texts. In 1843 he was even allowed to study the Codex Vaticanus for six [sic] hours after getting an audience with Pope Gregory XVI (Bttrich 1999b, 7988). Tischendorf was red up with ever-greater enthusiasm for his discoveries, setting off from Li46

Digitising the Hand-Written Bible folios to Cairo. Most signicantly Tischendorf was not only allowed to bring the Sinaitic fragments to Russia as a loan to the Tsar in 1859, but he also succeeded in publishing a magnicent facsimile in four volumes in St. Petersburg in 1862, the year of the thousandth anniversary of the Russian monarchy. The lithographic work for the Bibliorum Codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus was again carried out in Leipzig. Though published in St. Petersburg in 1862, it was printed in Leipzig by Giesecke & Devrient and has since been reprinted in Hildesheim by Georg Olms in 1969. At this time, Tischendorfs travels were funded by Tsar Alexander II who was the patron of the Orthodox Church. After several diplomatic missions in Constantinople and St. Petersburg, Tischendorf also succeeded in closing a very difcult deal. As far as we know, in 1869 the Sinaitic folios were given to the Tsar as a gift from Saint Catherines monastery and in return the Tsar made a donation to the monastery of 9,000 gold rubles and some other material support. The 347 folios moved from the Russian foreign ministry, where they had been on loan, to the Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg. But this deal did not mean the end of the folios travels. For nancial reasons, the Soviet government sold the Codex through the London booksellers Maggs in 1933. In England a national campaign to raise the money was supported by the Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, the Archbishop of Canterbury and many other important gures. In this way the purchase of the Codex for 100,000 was secured. The folios went into the British Museum at the end of 1933 and together with other precious manuscripts and books they were transferred to the newly established British Library in 1973 (McKendrick 2006, 2427). Tischendorf never grew rich and was several times subject to the criticism and abuse of his competitors (Bttrich 1999b, 27, 36f). Though he was able to ll kings and princes with enthusiasm for his scholarly ventures, he held a non-tenured position at Leipzig University from 1845 and was not appointed to a full professorship until 1859. In 1869 he received a hereditary peerage from the Russian Tsar. He went on publishing manuscripts and improved editions of the biblical texts, mainly of the New Testament, until he broke down from overwork in 1873. He died on December 7, 1874 at Leipzig. After his death his personal library was purchased by the Free Church College (subsequently Trinity College) in Glasgow and was transferred with the rest of the College Library to the University of Glasgow in 1974. The American theologian Caspar Ren Gregory, who became a friend of Tischendorfs family after his death, continued Tischendorfs work in Leipzig (Glasgow Tischendorf Collection 2007; Bttrich 1999b, 9, 47f).

The Codex Sinaiticus and its present condition

The Codex dates to the middle of the fourth century when Constantine the Great commissioned many copies of the Holy Bible. It was possibly produced in one of the big cities of the Mediterranean, maybe Alexandria, Caesarea in Palestine or Rome. It is a bound book [sic] written in Greek, with links to the time of the Emperor Constantine the Great (McKendrick 2006, 3, 18). The approximately 400 leaves that survive were written on exquisite animal skins. As Scot McKendrick reports, as many as 365 large animal skins would have been required, if, as seems likely, only one doublepage spread could be made from one skin (McKendrick 2006, 14). Three different scribes wrote the text in four columns on each page. But, more importantly, to include so many texts in one volume conrming the approved selection of Christian scripture, required a large number of manuscripts of individual texts or smaller groups of texts from which to copy the text of the Codex. It also required the development of a substantial binding structure capable of supporting and containing within one volume over 730 large-format leaves (McKendrick 2006, 14). Between the fourth and the seventh century, alterations to the Greek text were entered onto the folios. These alterations, which are of supreme interest, have yet to be deciphered. The Bible and its origins have always received international attention (e.g. Scholl 2006, 3136), as could be seen in recent years when the Gospel of Jude from the second century was discovered and published by National Geographic in 2006 (Cockburn 2006, 7895), provoking a worldwide discussion. The outcomes of the international Codex Sinaiticus project should arouse much greater general and scholarly interest. Parts of the Codex Sinaiticus are held today in four different places. Only 12 fragmentary leaves 47

Ekkehard Henschke
Figure 1. The Codex Sinaiticus (leaf 12 recto) from the collection of the Leipzig University Library.

and 14 small fragments, found in 1975, have remained in Saint Catherines Monastery to this day, though the Codex formed part of its possessions from early times. These folios are from the beginning and the end of the Codex. The monasterys origins go back to the fourth century, though its fortied buildings at the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt date to the sixth century. Leipzig University Library, founded in 1543, has owned 43 leaves since 1844. These folios contain parts of the Old Testament, starting with parts of the rst Book of Chronicles and ending with parts of the Book of Jeremiah. The National Library of Russia, founded in 1795 as the Imperial Public Library in St. Pe48

tersburg, still owns parts of ve folios. The British Library, including the Library of the British Museum, founded in 1753, possesses 347 leaves of the Codex, containing the complete New Testament and parts of the Old Testament. Scot McKendrick, the British Librarys expert, estimates that around 330 further leaves originally formed part of the Codex and completed the Old Testament. They are still missing and may be lost (McKendrick 2006, 8). The leaves have survived in different conditions. The dry climate in the Sinai desert may have helped to preserve them well for centuries. But the varying hot, cold and humid conditions in

Digitising the Hand-Written Bible Leipzig produced a lot of damage, arising especially from oxidisation of the ink. Because of this, some characters have fallen out of some of the leaves and have thereby caused gaps in the text. The leaves were stored in a walk-in safe with special air-conditioning only after 1998, when the rst part of the main library building, which had been in ruins since the end of the Second World War, was reconstructed. Like many other valuable manuscripts and books which were stored in old castles and fortresses during the war, this part of the Codex had suffered from humidity. The Leipzig folios had been bound into one volume in Tischendorfs time, so this binding was undone in 2004. The leaves owned by the British Library are in a better state. But all these different parts of the Codex have to be examined for conservation and preservation purposes. a partnership agreement in London. According to this agreement the property rights in all digital images, source material and reference data belong to the supplying member of the relevant portion of the Codex. Five different jurisdictions had to be considered: the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, Egypt (where Saint Catherines Monastery is now situated), and Greece, the centre of the Greek Orthodox Church. These are the aims and objectives of the joint project, some of which have already been initiated. There must be a full conservation, codicological and palaeographical examination of the Codex. This has begun according to a detailed protocol worked out by the Department of Collection Care of the British Library. It has been translated into German to ensure that German colleagues are working to exactly the same rules. The conservation work has to stabilise the Codex for digitisation and to preserve it for the future. This work has started in London, Leipzig and St. Petersburg. Scholarly work is required to support the presentation of the digital images in any outcomes of the project. It will include the history of the Codexs dispersal in the past, embodying research already begun by experts from Europe and the U.S.A. There is strong support from the Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Mnster, Germany, from the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing in Birmingham, England, and the Septuagint Venture of the Academy in Gttingen, Germany. The main part of the work will be the digitisation of all the parts of the Codex held in each members collection. The British Library and Leipzig University Library have undertaken several experiments with special equipment to nd out the best digitising techniques, advised by experts from Bielefeld University Library as well as from Britain and the U.S.A. The technical standards were then dened. There will be a range of electronic and printed outcomes created from the digital images and associated scholarly work. The main outcome will be a free-to-view website including both the original and enhanced digitised images of the whole manuscript. Among other modern techniques, the British Librarys turning the pages technology will be used, and there will be different interfaces for scholars and the general public as well as dif49

The organisation of conservation, research and digital publication by an international consortium

The present condition of the Codex demands preservation, conservation and tranquillity for all folios of this very valuable parchment document. This means no further public display, so the challenge is to make the Codex available by other means. In spite of the early editions and Tischendorfs lithograph version, the collotype facsimile made between 1911 and 1922 and the landmark reappraisal by Milne and Skeat in 1938 (Lake 1911, 1922; Milne and Skeat 1938; McKendrick 2006, 27, 48), the scholarly world of today needs a complete and modern edition of the Codex Sinaiticus, presenting to both ordinary people and scholars all over the world the traditional texts of the Bible and the amendments within the text. Every effort to make the Codex accessible must make use of digital storage and communication, as well as draw on the expertise of leading biblical scholars. The four institutions owning the different parts of the Codex decided to undertake this task. Shortly after beginning the planning of the project in 2002, the partner institutions, together with specialist advisers, set up special working parties to formulate specic objectives and achievable goals and to work out a partnership agreement. As a result on March 9, 2005, the British Library Board, the University of Leipzig, Saint Catherines Monastery and the National Library of Russia signed

Ekkehard Henschke ferent language options. The website will include a transcription of the whole text and translations of the most important parts. The rst steps towards a pilot website have been undertaken by Leipzig University Library supported by Bielefeld University Library and the State and University Library at Gttingen. The production of CD-ROMs or DVDs, including the digital images, the transcription and selected translations, is still under discussion. Such a great project needs external funding. Leipzig University Library has already received a grant from the German Research Foundation for the Web presentation. The British Library has secured nancial help from the Niarchos Foundation and a number of other foundations. St. Catherines Monastery is also supported by a Greek and an American foundation. All partners will be assisted by the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing in Birmingham which has been awarded a grant by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of Great Britain. The public presentation of the project began in 2006. English and German illustrated booklets on the Codex and the project, aimed at the general public, have already been printed. Leipzig University Library organised a presentation of the Codex in December 2006. Building on the work of the lone scholar Konstantin von Tischendorf, the international consortium hopes to present the virtual Codex Sinaiticus as scheduled in 2010.

Note
For the online project, see http://www.codexsinaiticus.net. As of February 2007, the website is currently under construction, but it will go live shortly.

References
Bttrich, Chr. 1999a. Konstantin von Tischendorf (1815 1874). Universittsjournal. Universitt Leipzig 7 (1999). URL: http://www.uni-leipzig.de/journal/ heft799 [viewed 26 January, 2007] Bttrich, Chr. 1999b. Tischendorf-Lesebuch: Bibelforschung in Reiseabenteuern. Ed. and introduced by Christfried Bttrich. Leipzig: Evangel. Verlagsanstalt. Bttrich, Chr. 1999c. Bibliographie Konstantin von Tischendorf (1815-1874). Compiled and introduced by Christfried Bttrich. Leipzig: Leipziger Universittsverlag. Bttrich, Chr. 2005. Constantin von Tischendorf und der Transfer des Codex Sinaiticus nach St. Petersburg. In: Gner, A, ed. Die Theologische Fakultt der Universitt Leipzig. Personen, Prole und Perspektiven aus sechs Jahrhunderten Fakulttsgeschichte. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt: 254f. Gutenberg Digital 2000. The Gttingen Gutenberg Bible. Niederschsische Staats- und Universittsbibliothek Gttingen. URL: http://www.gutenbergdigital.de/ gudi/eframes/index.htm [viewed 26 January, 2007]. Lake, H. and K. Lake. 1911. Codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus: preserved in the Library of St. Petersburg. Ed. with a description and introduction to the history. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lake, K. 1922. Codex Sinaiticus Petropolitianus et Friderico- Augustanus Lipsiensis: the Old Testament preserved in the Public Library of Petrograd, in the Library of the Society of Ancient Literature in Petrograd, and in the Library of the University of Leipzig. Ed. with a description and introduction to the history of the codex. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Library of Congress. 1995. National Digital Library Program. Library of Congress. URL: http://memory. loc.

Project management
The four working parties, responsible for conservation, the scholarly edition, the website and the digital and printed outcomes, report formally to the project board, whose members are mostly composed of representatives of the partner institutions and external experts. The project management is based in London at the British Library, the project leader. The timetable for the project is 2006 to 2010. There are special agreements relating to the division of labour between the four members and the supporting institutions. At the end of this huge international project, a virtual Codex Sinaiticus will have been created. Next to the electronic outcomes there will be a range of printed products and other media:
A high-quality printed facsimile of the whole text as well as single sheet facsimiles of selected passages with translations will be printed. Scholarly essays concerning the history and the meaning of the Codex will be published in a printed volume. An exhibition as well as a TV-lm documentary will present the Codex and the joint project. A scholarly conference will be held during the exhibition and present the research done during the project.

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Digitising the Hand-Written Bible

gov/ammem/dli2/html/lcndlp.html [viewed Jan. 26, 2007] McKendrick, S. 2006. In a Monastery Library. Preserving Codex Sinaiticus and the Greek written Heritage. London: British Library. Milne, H. J. M. and T. C. Skeat. 1938. Scribes and Correctors of the Codex Sinaiticus. London: British Museum. Oxford Digital Library. 2001. Oxford Digital Library. Oxford University. URL: http://www.odl.ox.ac.uk/ collections/index.html [viewed Jan. 26, 2007] Scholl, R. 2006. Texte aus dem historischen Umfeld des Codex Sinaiticus. In: Schneider, UJ, ed. Codex Sinaiticus. Geschichte und Erschlieung der Sinai-Bibel. Leipzig: Universittsbibliothek Leipzig: 31-36. Tischendorf, K. von 1866. When were our gospels written? An argument by Constantine Tischendorf. With a narrative of the discovery of the Sinaitic manuscript. New York: American Tract Society 1866. URL: http: //rosetta.reltech.org/TC/extras/tischendorfsinaiticus.html [viewed 26 January, 2007]

Editorial history: paper received 9 January 2007; accepted 13 February 2007.

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