The Sinai Codex is an ancient bible manuscript. The meaning of the Sinai Codex in the Orthodox tree encyclopedia

The Sinai Codex is one of the oldest complete codes of scripture in the New Testament and is a manuscript of the Greek Bible dating from the 4th century.

Unfortunately, we can now say that part of the Old Testament manuscript was lost, but the New Testament text is preserved in its entirety. It is the Sinai Codex that is the only Greek uncial manuscript with the full text of the New Testament and, in addition to biblical works, contains the text of the authors of the 2nd century: “The Epistle of Barnabas” and (partially) the Shepherd of Hermas (before the Sinai Codex was found, the first of the books has already been found, but in the Latin translation, that is, it was not that ancient and unique text, and the second was known exclusively by name). It is worth noting that in the scientific literature the Sinai Code is denoted by the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet? (Aleph) or number 01.

The Sinai Codex, along with the Vatican, underlies the twenty-seventh edition of Nestle Alland and the fourth edition of the United Bible Societies.

These texts are the modern critical editions of the New Testament.

The Sinai Monastery was never looted and that is why it contained the most valuable historical materials. It was in the Sinai Library that the Russian pilgrim traveler Archimandrite (later Bishop) Porfiry (Uspensky) and the famous scholar Konstantin von Tischendorf discovered the “Sinai Codex” in 1844, which is one of the oldest scriptures and is of great value to the history of Orthodox Christianity . At that time, in the monastery of St. Catherine, there were already about five hundred ancient manuscripts, but Konstantin von Tischendorf was very interested in restoring the original text of the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament and was a tireless seeker of ancient manuscripts, so he tried to scan them all as soon as possible.

But, as Porfiry (Uspensky) wrote:

“The Greek monks, under various pretexts, did not show him (Tischendorf) the precious manuscripts stored in the caches of their holy cloisters. These monks, long frightened by the Porta firms, authorizing European travelers to penetrate the sacristy and book depositories of Orthodox monasteries, and offended by unfavorable reviews about them in travel descriptions, partly rightly avoided Tischendorf’s requests that he did not and does not have the main attractive power, i.e. . the confession of the Orthodox faith. " The first trip to the Sinai Monastery in 1945 by Archimandrite Porfiry Uspensky. S. 148.

The history of the Sinai Codex tells that while working in one of the libraries of the Sinai Monastery, Tischendorf saw a basket full of sheets of ancient manuscripts. Tischendorf examined these manuscripts, and it turned out that they were the Septuagint, written in a beautiful uncial letter. He asked a librarian monk who was passing by where such letters still exist, and he answered that two such baskets were already put on fire and the contents of this basket were not burnt by accident and were also given to be put on fire. What was in the basket was 43 sheets, and the scientist found another 86 sheets of the same code in the library. In content, these were: the first book of Kings, the book of the prophet Jeremiah, the book of Ezra and Nehemiah, the book of the prophet Isaiah, the first and fourth books of MacKove. Tischendorf asked the abbot of the monastery to pick up these forty-three sheets and he was allowed to do so. Finding the pages, he later published in Germany under the name of the "Frederick-Augustinian" Codex, which was named in honor of the King of Saxony, who at that time patronized the scientist.

In April-May 1845, an archim came to the Sinai Monastery. Porfiry (Uspensky), who found the rest of the Old Testament and the complete New Testament. Not only from the number of 86 sheets found, but the entire text. That is, we can say that by a lucky chance, these valuable historical manuscripts were not burned.

According to Porfiry: “The first manuscript containing the Old Testament is incomplete and the entire New Testament with the message ap. Barnabas and the book of Hermas, written on the finest white parchment. / ... / The letters in it are completely similar to Church Slavonic. Their staging is direct and continuous. There are no aspirations and stresses over words, and speeches are not separated by any spelling signs other than dots. The entire sacred text is written in four and two columns in a gradual way and so cohesively, as if one long speech stretches from point to point. "

Later, when analyzing the text found, Archimandrite Porfiry suggested that this text dates back to the 5th century and was never used before worship, but was copied from the Alexandria list and possibly related to the Alexandrian catholic school. Later Tischendorf dated this text IV, after which Porfiry agreed to change the dating.

After these events, in 1859, under the auspices of the Russian Emperor Alexander II, Tischendorf returned to the Sinai Monastery, where he became acquainted with the finds of the archim. Porfiry and he manages to persuade him to give the remainder of the code as an offering to the Russian emperor and, having received this code, brings him to St. Petersburg, where he publishes it in 1862 as a facsimile edition under the heading: "Codex Bibliorum Sinaiticus Petropolitanus, rescued from darkness under the patronage of His Imperial Majesty Alexander II, delivered to Europe and published for the great good and glory of the Christian teaching by the works of Konstantin Tischendorf. "

By order of the Russian emperor, the code was transferred to the Public Library, where it remained until 1933 .. That was until the Soviet government considered it a burden for atheistically minded citizens of the USSR, after which it was sold for a more complete collection to the British Library for a hundred thousand pounds.

At the moment, most of the information practically does not mention the works of the archim. Porfiry, but already in the 19th century the outstanding Russian liturgist A.A. Dmitrievsky noted:

“The honor of opening this manuscript undoubtedly belongs to our scientist, the late Bishop Porfiry (Uspensky), who was the first to draw the attention of the monks of the Sinai monastery to it, but K. Tischendorf anticipated the publication and scientific study of this code, and he also acquired scientific laurels. Only the unenviable position of Russian scientists, their material groundlessness<…>   they’re doing what’s ours is becoming the property of strangers and we “from distant lands” receive, as a special mercy, miserable grains, at a time when we could have in our hands a whole loaf. ”

The final result of scientific activity archim. Porfiry became the book "Opinion on the Sinai Manuscript, which does not contain the Old Testament and the entire New Testament with the message of the Holy Apostle Barnabas and the book of Hermas" published in 1862 and the fact that it was the great Russian scientist who discovered the Sinai Codex, which became the basis for scientific works of entire generations.

The current location of the Sinai Codex.

Currently, the Sinai Codex is divided into three parts according to its location: Leipzig (forty-three sheets acquired by Tischendorf in 1844) and London (the remaining three hundred forty-seven sheets transported by him to Russia in 1859) and the library, St. Petersburg, where only fragments of three code sheets are currently stored. Later in 1975, the Sinai monks opened a secret room where they kept the remaining fourteen fragments and twelve sheets of codex.

Although at one time the Russian Emperor Alexander II sent nine thousand rubles to the Sinai monks as a token of gratitude, they still demanded to raise the question of the legality of the alienation of the Tischendorf monument, since they referred to the fact that Tischendorf had deceived the monk, promising him that he would return part of the codex to Sinai , after the end of scientific research and referred to the receipt left by him. As a result of this, Tishendrof was called the Sinai monks by the representative of the pirate archeology of the 19th century. Umanets A. Decree. Op. Part 1, p. 234-235. There is a date on the cancer - 1680. See: The Second Journey of Archimandrite Porfiry Uspensky to the Sinai Monastery in 1850. St. Petersburg, 1856.S. 250.

According to 2005 data, the owners of the four parts of the code agreed that it would be fully scanned and will be posted on the Internet for thorough familiarization and study by the masses of people in order to obtain reliable information about its contents.

Features of the Sinai Codex.

The Sinai Codex is written on thin parchment, 38.1 cm by 33.7-35.6 cm. The text on the sheet is arranged in four columns with 48 lines each. The color of the text is pale brown.

As in the vast majority of ancient manuscripts, words of the text are written without spaces, only dots at the end of sentences are used as separation. There are no signs of stress and aspiration. Quotations from Old Testament text are not highlighted in the letter. The partition of Ammonia and the canons of Eusebius are highlighted in red, and possibly added by another scribe. All text is written in Greek uncial letter. Description of Greek manuscripts of the monastery of St. Catherine. T. 1. St. Petersburg., 1911. Pages. XV - XVI.

Researchers believe that three scribes (called A, B, and D) worked on the Sinai Codex. In addition, it is obvious that from the 4th century to the 12th century, approximately nine scribes introduced corrections into the text.

At the moment, there is an assumption that the Sinai Codex is one of the fifty manuscripts of the Divine Scriptures, ordered around 331 by Emperor Constantine Eusebius of Caesarea. http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinai_Codex "02.10.2015. 01:32"

The Sinai Codex is a manuscript of the Christian Bible written in the middle of the 4th century AD, plus the first surviving full version of the New Testament.

The manuscript is written in Greek. The New Testament is set forth in Koin, i.e. ancient pan-Greek language (koine). The Old Testament is represented by the version known as the Septuagint, i.e., the text that existed among the early Greek-speaking Christians. In the manuscript of the Sinai Codex, the contents of the Old and New Testaments have undergone serious revision, the text is dotted with many notes from early scribes, editors and proofreaders.

The significance of the Sinai Codex for the reconstruction of the original texts of the Christian Bible, the history of the biblical tradition and the general history of the book is extremely great.

Value

The Sinai Codex is one of the greatest evidence of the Greek text of the Septuagint (i.e., versions of the Old Testament as revised by early Greek-speaking Christians), as well as the Christian New Testament. No other manuscript of the Christian Bible has so many notes.

Even at the first glance at the manuscript, one can see how many of these remarks (especially the Septuagint). They were already introduced by the first scribes in the 4th century. and finished in the XII century. The amendments consist of a change in the spelling of individual letters, as well as in the insertion of individual sentences.

The most important goal of the Sinai Codex project is to provide a deeper understanding of the manuscript text and related corrections. We must not only better understand the text of this manuscript, but also get a clear idea of \u200b\u200bthe ways in which Bible texts were copied, read and used.

In the middle of the 4th century there was widespread, although not complete agreement, on exactly which Bible books are needed by any Christian community. The Sinai Codex, being one of the two earliest collections of such books to us, is fundamental to understanding the content and composition of the Bible.

Books that are not part of the Jewish Bible and which are considered apocryphal in the Protestant tradition (e.g., the Second Book of Ezra, the Book of Judith, the Book of Tobit, the First and Fourth Books of the Maccabees, the Book of Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirachov) are in addition to The New Testament is served by the Epistle of the Apostle Barnaba and "On the Shepherd" of Hermas.

A special sequence of books is also noteworthy: in the New Testament, the Epistle to the Hebrews stands after the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Thessalonians, and the Acts of the Holy Apostles are placed between the message “On the Shepherd” and the Catholic epistles. The content and composition of the books of the Sinai Codex shed light on the history of the compilation of the Christian Bible.

The combination of these “canonical” books into a single collection-codex had a direct impact on the attitude of Christians to their sacred texts, on how they reflected on them, and the latter was directly dependent on the technical reading capabilities laid down in the Sinai Codex. The quality of the parchment of the manuscript, a new binding method required to combine more than 73 large-format sheets, made the Sinai Codex one of the remarkable examples of book production and at the same time opened up the possibility of embodying the very concept of the “Bible” as a Book of Books. To implement such an ambitious project that gives us the most valuable insight into the process of producing early Christian literature, careful planning, skillful writing, and tight editorial control were required.

About the name "Codex Sinaiticus"

The name of the manuscript “Codex Sinaiticus” literally means “The Book of Sinai.” Two important aspects are reflected in this: the form of the manuscript and the very special place of the name in the history of this work.

‘Codex’ means “book.” During the creation of the Sinai Code, literary works were increasingly written on sheets, which were then folded and bound into books in the format that we use today. The format of the book quickly replaced the scroll format, which was so popular just a century ago, when texts were written on one side of a series of sheets glued to a scroll. Scrolls could be made from leather (like most Dead Sea manuscripts) or from papyrus (traditional material for writing Latin or Greek texts).

The use of papyrus for codes is a hallmark of early Christian culture. The Sinai Codex, on the contrary, is inscribed on dressed leather or parchment. This marks an important transitional frontier in book history. From this moment, many Greek and Latin texts, executed in the form of scrolls, “go out of fashion”, and parchment book becomes the norm.

Throughout its history - and especially in modern history - parts of the Sinai Codex have changed names. So, 43 pages stored in the Leipzig library, in 1846 were published as the “Codex of Friedrich-Augustus” in honor of the Saxon King Friedrich Augustus I, patron of German biblical studies in general and publisher of the Sinai Codex Konstantin Tischendorf. In particular, the 347 sheets stored today in the British Library were formerly named “Codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus” by the name of the city of Saakt-Peterburg, where this part of the manuscript was from 1863 to 1933.

Dating

In general, the Sinai Codex dates from the 4th century, sometimes more precisely - the middle of the century. This conclusion is based on the study of the text of the manuscript, i.e. on paleographic analysis. In addition to the Sinai Codex, only one, almost complete manuscript of the Christian Bible has survived from this time - the so-called Vatican Codex, which is stored in the Vatican library in Rome. The manuscripts of the Christian Bible, which can be safely dated to an earlier time than the Sinai Codex, have been preserved only in the form of very small fragments.

In the form that has reached us, the Sinai Codex consists of more than 400 sheets of processed leather 38 x 34.5 cm in size. On these parchment sheets are written about half of the Old Testament, apocryphal texts (Septuagint) and the complete New Testament, as well as 2 early Christian tests that are not included in modern Bibles. Most of the first section of the manuscript (the so-called historical books from Genesis to the First Book of Chronicles) is missing today and is considered lost.

The Septuagint includes books that many Protestant churches classify as apocryphal. In the surviving part of the Septuagint, which is part of the Sinai Codex, these are two books of Ezra, the book of Tobit and the book of Judith, the first and fourth book of the Maccabees, the Book of wisdom of Jesus the son of Syrah.

The number of New Testament books presented in the Sinai Codex is the same as in modern Western Bibles. However, the order of the books is different. Thus, the Epistle to the Hebrews is placed after the Second Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Thessalonians, and the Acts of the Holy Apostles is between the Pastoral Epistles and the Catholic epistles.

Two other Christian texts are the message of an unknown author, calling himself the Apostle Barnaba, and the “Shepherd”, which belongs to the pen of Germa, a Roman author of the 2nd century.

Manufacture

The Sinai Code was subjected to repeated correspondence. Konstantin Tischendorf identified 4 different copies, however, in the future, researchers agreed that only three copies can be said with full confidence, and the fourth - if one exists - does not exactly coincide with the Tischendorf. Each of the three identified manuscripts is distinguished by a special, only inherent type of writing that can be learned to distinguish with a particular training. Some features are also noticeable in the writing of vowels, often built on a phonetic basis.

In the process of manuscript production, scribes had to solve a number of problems, the main of which were the following:

1. Format definition (only a very few surviving manuscripts have 4 columns on one page)
2. Material distribution,
3. Parchment sheet preparation, including layout of columns and rows,
4. Preparation of texts to be copied,
5. Providing enough feathers and ink
6. Actually rewriting work,
7. Verification of the written
8. Connect all parts of the copy in the correct order.

History (XIX-XX centuries)

The Sinai Codex owes its name to the monastery of St. Catherine in the city of Sinai, where the manuscript has been kept for many centuries. In general, it is customary to attribute it to the 4th century AD. Separate sheets and fragments of the manuscript were at different times (1844, 1853 and 1859) taken from the monastery to Germany by Konstantin Tischendorf for the purpose of publication. In 1933, the bulk of the surviving Sinai Codex (347 sheets) was purchased from the Soviet government and is currently owned by the British Library. 43 sheets belong to the library of the University of Leipzig. Individual parts (6 sheets) are stored in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg. 12 sheets and 40 fragments are still in the monastery of St. Catherine - in June 1975 they were discovered by monks at the northern wall of the monastery

In March 2005, four institutes signed an agreement regarding the conservation, digitization, transcription and publication of surviving sheets and fragments of the Sinai Codex. Since then, many steps have been taken to implement the tasks. The objectives and plans for cooperation on the project also include the following:

“The study of the history of the Codex [...], the provision of an objective historical presentation, which will be based on the results of studies and consider documents in their historical context. The candidatures of the authors of the statement must be approved by all four parties to the agreement. The research results are published on the project website and in the relevant print media. "These publications should include the full texts of the documents under study (either in transcription or in digital form) whenever it is possible to obtain the consent of the owner of the document for such a publication."

Today, the recent history of the Sinai Codex is still under study. The results of the historical description will be based on documents that have not yet been published. The results of this work will allow us to achieve a clearer than ever before understanding of the recent history of this important manuscript.

The monastery in the Sinai, after some hesitation, joined other partners in this project in London, Leipzig and St. Petersburg. All partners respect the principles formulated in the agreement of March 9, 2005, and interact with each other to achieve common scientific and spiritual goals.

Project “Codex Sinaiticus”

The Codex Sinaiticus project includes five main areas of activity:

On-line presentation of the Sinai Codex

The electronic version of the Sinai Codex is the core of the Sinai Codex website. Here, through an extensive system of links, the most diverse results of work on the project are presented:

• highest quality electronic images using standard lighting,
• and side light, applications of multispectral image analysis methods of the Sinai Code,
• page transcription of texts, including all corrections, selective translation,
• detailed physical description of each page.

General form

1. Content: transfers the sequence of chapters in the specified text
2. Picture: a specific fragment is transmitted in its relation to this sheet as a whole; can also be used to navigate with the mouse and move to another part of the text.
3. Navigation arrows and zoom: clicking on the arrow allows you to move the image in the desired direction, using the zoom provides a smooth increase and decrease of the image.
4. Additional viewing options
5. Bible text navigation:: Three selection modes:
   • "Book" shows all the books available for viewing
   • after selecting a book, clicking on the word "Chapter" allows you to go to the specific page on which the chapter is located
   • “Verse” provides more accurate navigation, which is important if the chapter takes more than one page

6. Image Navigation:

   • “Standard Lighting” presents the page in uniform lighting (standard view)
   • "Side lighting" shows the page from above at a slight angle, which makes it possible to distinguish the slightest features of parchment

7. Manuscript Sheet Navigation:: Three selection modes:

   • "Destiny" (Sheet) refers to a group of double pages folded in the middle to create a single binding
   • “Folio” refers to individual fragments of the List (as a rule, the Sinai Code List contains 8 folios)
   • "R / v" each folio has a front (r \u003d recto) and a reverse side (v \u003d verso)
8. Context Information:: Help information can be obtained by clicking on the "Information" button
9. Screen options
10. Transcription options

Navigation

There are several different ways to view the Sinai Codex:

• Search by word (“Simple Search”) or by physical description (“Advanced Search”)
• The Sinai Codex contains books, chapters, and verses that can be downloaded directly. The “Navigate through the Bible text” pointer located in the upper left corner of the window provides this transition to the corresponding text fragments. Through "Transcription" you can find the search word on this page. Double-clicking on any selected word will bring up the corresponding image on the display.
• Using the Folio Navigation pointer, you can open specific Codex pages. The Sinai Codex project identifies each page through the sheet number of which this page is a part, and through a specific folio number within the sheet, as well as through indications of the front or back of the sheet
• The program allows you to flip the manuscript back and forth from any page

Screen options

The path to the online version of the Sinai Code is provided each time by pressing the corresponding button in the very top menu. The default setting is an image of the full page on the left and the corresponding text transcription on the right. In cases where there is a translation of transcription, it is also placed on the right. Any user can set the desired image using the appropriate On and Off buttons. A website can save individual settings through the loading of cookies.

The website allows you to build the following series of options in the upper right corner of the screen:

• Image, transcription and translation can be presented both simultaneously and in any sequence.
• Access to the physical description of any page of the manuscript is opened by selecting the appropriate image option. Each physical description is provided with a link to the corresponding place of the manuscript, as well as links to the glossary, which were used by the project participants responsible for conservation.

In addition to these options, there are also various options for accessing and transcribing individual sheets:

• As a rule, images are presented in normal lighting, but they can also be seen in the side lighting mode. Separate pages are also available in multispectral analysis mode.
• The transcription text can also be viewed in two modes: as it is presented in the manuscript, in columns and rows (“page view”) or verse by verse (“verse view”)
• Translations of some fragments of the text are available in several languages, as indicated on the website by a certain indication.

Links

Image and transcription are linked by a link system. Clicking on a single word in the transcription highlights the corresponding letter group in the manuscript, highlighted in red. Each detail of the image is also linked by transcription links. In addition to using the zoom, you can click on individual words of the image on which there is a corresponding marking.

Biblical Manuscripts: Papyrus Unials Minuscules Lectures

Title

The Sinai Codex of the Bible (Latin Codex Sinaiticus) is a list of the Bible in Greek, with an incomplete text of the Old Testament and the full text of the New Testament (with the exception of a few gaps). It is currently considered the oldest uncial parchment manuscript of the Bible. Along with other ancient manuscripts, the Sinai Codex is used by textologists for constructive or consolidated criticism in order to restore the original Greek text of the Bible. The codex was discovered by German scientist Konstantin von Tischendorf in 1844 in the Sinai Monastery. Since then, the manuscript has been called the Sinai Codex.

General information

The Sinai Codex, along with the ancient papyri, as well as the Alexandrian, Vatican and some other ancient codes, is one of the most valuable sources that allow textologists to recreate the original text of New Testament books.

The Codex was written in the 4th century and until the middle of the 19th century was located on the Sinai Peninsula in the library of St. Catherine’s Monastery. Part of the Old Testament manuscript was lost, but the New Testament text has been preserved in its entirety. The Sinai Codex is the only Greek uncial manuscript with the full text of the New Testament. In addition to biblical texts, the manuscript contains two works by early Christian authors of the 2nd century: The Epistle of Barnabas and partially the Shepherd of Hermas. In the scientific literature, the Sinai Codex is indicated by the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet (Aleph) or number 01. Some parts of the old manuscript are in good condition, some in very poor condition. This suggests that the code was divided and stored in several places of the monastery.

The Greek text of the manuscript reflects the Alexandrian type of text, but also contains a certain layer of discrepancies from the western text of John. 1: 1-8: 39). The manuscript is assigned to category I Alanda.

Lacunae

  Matthew 6: 4-32   Additional phrase John 21: 7   John 7: 52-8: 12, no 7: 53-8: 11

The text of the Old Testament Codex today contains numerous gaps. In the Old Testament, the code contains:

  Genesis 23:19 - 24:46 - fragments; Book of Numbers 5:26 - 7:20 - fragments; 1 Chronicles 9:27 - 19:17; Ezra - Nehemiah (from Ezra 9: 9); Psalm - The Wisdom of Sirach; The book of Esther; Tobit; Judith; The Book of the Prophet Joel - The Book of the Prophet Malachi; Book of the prophet Isaiah; Book of the Prophet Jeremiah; Lamentations; The First Book of Maccabees - The Fourth Book of Maccabees.

In the text of the New Testament there are gaps:

Skipped verses:

Matthew 12:47; 16: 2b-3; 17:21; 18:11; 23:14; 24:35; Gospel of Mark 7:16; 9: 44.46; 11:26; 15:28; 16: 9-20 (Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus); Luke 17:36 Gospel of John 5: 4; 7: 53-8: 11 (see picture John 7: 53-8: 11 "); 16:15; 20: 5b-6; 21:25; Acts 8:37; 15:34; 24: 7; 28:29; Romans 16:24.

Missed words:

  Matthew 5:44 -?, (Bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you); Matthew 6: 13b -? (For Thy kingdom and power and glory forever. Amen); Matthew 10: 39a -?, (He who has saved his soul will lose it; a); Matthew 23:35 - (the son of Varahiyin); Mark 1: 1 - (Son of God); Mark 10: 7 - (and will cleave to his wife); Luke 9: 55b-56a -?,?; (and said: you do not know what spirit you are; 56 for the Son of Man came not to destroy the souls of men, but to save); Luke 11: 4 - (but free us from evil); John 4: 9 - (for the Jews do not communicate with the Samaritans).

Some additions

Matthew 8:13

(the centurion returned to the house, at this hour, found the servant recovered). Addition taken from Onions. 7:10, contain his manuscripts: C (N), (0250), f1 (33, 1241), g1, syrh.

Matthew 10:12

(say: Peace be to this house), most manuscripts in this place have (this). Addition taken from Onions. 10: 5, found in manuscripts: D, L, W,?, F 1, 1010 (1424), it, vgcl.

Matthew 27:49

?, (but one took a spear and pierced His ribs, and immediately water and blood flowed out). Addition taken from John. 19:34 and is a characteristic feature of the manuscripts of the Alexandrian tradition (manuscripts 03, 04, 019, 030, 036).

Some changes

History

Early history of the manuscript

  Konstantin von Tischendorf in 1870   Monastery of St. Catherine (lithography of a drawing by archimandrite Porfiry (Uspensky), 1857)   Lithograph of the drawing of the Chapel of the Burning Kupina (Sinai) from the album of Archimandrite Porfiry Uspensky

According to the unanimous opinion of the researchers, the manuscript paleographically dates from the 4th century. It could not be written before 325 because it contains a partition of Ammonius and the Canons of Eusebius. However, it could not be written later than 360, since it contains marginal references to the Church Fathers.

Until the mid-19th century, the Sinai Codex was located on the Sinai Peninsula in the library of St. Catherine’s Monastery. The manuscript was probably seen in 1761 by an Italian traveler, Vitaliano Donati, when he visited the Monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai. In his diary, which was published in 1879, he wrote:

In this monastery I found several parchment manuscripts ... Among them are those that may be older than the seventh century, especially the Bible, written on thin fine parchment in large, square and round letters; also contained in the Greek church Apracos, written in gold letters, must be very old.

Original text (Italian)

In questo monastero ritrovai una quantita grandissima di codici membranacei ... ve ne sono alcuni che mi sembravano anteriori al settimo secolo, ed in ispecie una Bibbia in membrane bellissime, assai grandi, sottili, e quadre, scritta in carattere rotondo e belissim; conservano poi in chiesa un Evangelistario greco in caractere d’oro rotondo, che dovrebbe pur essere assai antico

The words from the diary - "Bibbia in membrane bellissime ... scritta in carattere rotondo e belissimo" - probably refer to the Sinai Codex.

Opening

  Monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai

The Sinai Code was discovered by German scientist Konstantin von Tischendorf in 1844 by accident. While in one of the libraries of the monastery of St. Catherine, Tischendorf noticed the sheets of an ancient manuscript prepared for destruction. As it turned out later, these were 43 sheets of some books of the Old Testament (1 Chronicles, Book of Jeremiah, Book of Nehemiah, Book of Esther). After examining the library, a German scientist discovered 86 more sheets of the same manuscript, which, with the permission of the monks of the monastery, he exported to Europe and published under the title "Frederic-Augustinian Codex", dedicating it to his patron - the king of Saxony.

In 1845, Archimandrite Porfiry (Uspensky) saw the codex together with sheets that Tischendorf did not find.

The first manuscript containing the Old Testament is incomplete and the entire New Testament with the message ap. Barnabas and the book of Hermas, written on the finest white parchment. (...) The letters in it are completely similar to Church Slavonic. Their staging is direct and continuous. There are no aspirations and stresses over words, and speeches are not separated by any spelling signs other than dots. The entire sacred text is written in four and two columns in a gradual way and so cohesively, as if one long speech stretches from point to point.

In 1846, Captain K. MacDonald, who visited Mount Sinai, saw the codex and bought two manuscripts at the monastery (495 and 496). In 1853, Tischendorf visited the monastery a second time in the hope of acquiring the rest of the codex. However, without success, the monks did not even show him the manuscript. In 1859, Tischendorf, being under the auspices of the Russian Tsar Alexander II, returned to Sinai. The day before his departure, the monastery economist brought him a manuscript wrapped in red cloth. Tischendorf discovered that the document contains not only a significant part of the Old Testament, but also the complete New Testament in excellent condition. Tischendorf tried to set a price for the manuscript, but to no avail. Two months later, Tischendorf, his bookseller and pharmacist rewrote 110 thousand lines of manuscript text. After lengthy negotiations, the manuscript was ceded to the Russian Tsar. In 1862, a facsimile edition of the text of the manuscript appeared in four volumes.

In the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation in 2010, an agreement was found, signed in 1869 by the Archbishop of St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai and a representative of the Russian Empire. In the document, the Archbishop of Sinai, Callistratus III, on behalf of the entire monastery, confirmed that the manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments from the monastery library were transferred to the Russian emperor. The deed of honor was handed over to Count Ignatiev, with whom Archbishop Callistratus met in Cairo. For the Codex the monastery was paid nine thousand rubles. Having received the code, Tischendorf brought it to St. Petersburg, where its facsimile edition was carried out. The emperor handed the priceless scroll to the Public Library, where it remained until 1933.

At the same time, Konstantin Simonides (1820-1867), a paleographer, falsifier and seller of ancient manuscripts, announced in the newspaper The Guardian (September 13, 1862) that the code discovered by Tischendorf belongs not to the IV century, but to 1839 and was written by Simonides himself at the age of 19; he called this work "a bad craft of his young years." Simonides claimed that the basis for him was one Moscow edition of the Bible, which he compared with the Athos manuscripts. Tischendorf replied in the German newspaper Allgemeine Zeitung on December 22, 1862 that already in the New Testament in many places the Sinai Codex differs significantly from all Moscow publications and from all other manuscripts. Henry Bradshaw, in The Guardian (January 26, 1863), asked how the manuscript could be delivered from the monastery in Athos to Sinai. He also recalled that the manuscript contains the Epistle of Barnabas, which until now was not in the Greek manuscript.

Further history of the manuscript

At the beginning of the 20th century, Vladimir Beneshevich (1874-1938) discovered parts of three sheets of the manuscript in other manuscript books in the library of the Sinai Monastery. These fragments were acquired by the Russian Empire and brought to St. Petersburg.

  Facsimile of Tischendorf (1862); 1 Par 9: 27-10: 11

In 1933, the Soviet government, considering the Christian relic a burden for an atheistic state, sold the entire code to the British Museum for £ 100,000. The sale was carried out by personal order of I.V. Stalin. The British collected money for the purchase in 1 day. In St. Petersburg there were only fragments of three sheets of the code acquired by Beneshevich. The codex is currently broken, fragments of it are in Leipzig (43 sheets acquired by Tischendorf in 1844) and London (the remaining 347 sheets brought by Tischendorf in 1859 to Russia). In addition to the fact that Emperor Alexander II sent 9,000 rubles to Sinai in gratitude, modern monks raised the question of the legality of the alienation of the monument by Tischendorf. According to them, a German scientist, being a representative of "pirate archeology" of the XIX century, misled the abbot of the monastery. In support of their innocence, they refer to the surviving receipt, in which the scientist promises to return the parchments to the monastery immediately after the completion of their scientific publication.

Skate and Milne, employees of the British Museum, using an ultraviolet lamp, very carefully examined corrector corrections for parts of the manuscript that have been in the British Library since 1973. As a result of their work, an article was written by Scribes and Correctors of the Codex Sinaiticus.

In May 1975, during repair work in the monastery of St. Catherine, a room with a collection of manuscript books was discovered. Among them, 14 fragments of the Sinai Codex were found, as well as 12 full sheets of it: 11 sheets of the Pentateuch and 1 sheet of the “Shepherd” of Hermas. Other manuscripts were found with them (among them 67 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament). On September 1, 2009, British scholar Nicholas Sarris discovered a new, still unknown, fragment of the manuscript in the library of the Sinai Monastery.

In 2005, all four owners of the codex sheets entered into an agreement that a high-quality scanning of the manuscript will be carried out in order to post the full text on the Internet. The first digital photographs were published on July 24, 2008 and are available to everyone at www. codex-sinaiticus. net. Since July 6, 2009 texts are fully available.

Features

  Petersburg edition (1862)

The Sinai Codex is written on thin parchment. Of the entire text of the Old Testament, only 199 sheets remained, while 148 sheets of the New Testament were preserved. Initially, probably, the manuscript consisted of 730 sheets.

The size of each page is 38.1 by 33.7-35.6 cm. The text on the sheet is located in four columns with 48 lines in each. The color of the text is pale brown. Some words are abbreviated. The following abbreviations are used in the manuscript:

- (God), - (Lord), - (Jesus), - (Christ), - (spirit), - (spiritual), - (son), - (man), - (heaven), - (David), - (Jerusalem), - (Israel), - (mother), - (father), - (Savior).

Words of the text are written without interword spaces and hyphenation signs (in the vast majority of ancient manuscripts they are not). Only dots at the end of sentences are used as separation. There are no signs of stress and aspiration. Quotations from Old Testament text are not highlighted in the letter. The partition of Ammonia and the canons of Eusebius are marked in red and may have been added by another scribe. All text is written in Greek uncial letter.

Researchers believe that three scribes (called A, B, and D) worked on the Sinai Codex. Obviously, in the period from the 4th to the 12th centuries, at least 7 census takers made corrections to the text (a, b, c, ca, cb, cc, e). Readings, the scribes are responsible for the insertion before the manuscript left the scriptorium, were designated as a in the critical apparatus. Later (possibly in the 6th or 7th centuries), a group of proofreaders, working in Caesarea, introduced a large number of corrections into the manuscript text (? Ca,? Cb). From these readings, one can judge that the text was tried to be edited according to another model. Tischendorf, studying the part of the book available at that time (2/3), concluded that about 14,800 corrections were made to the text.

Tischendorf believed that the Sinai Codex was one of the fifty manuscripts of the Divine Scriptures, commissioned around 331 by Emperor Constantine Eusebius of Caesarea (De vita Constantini, IV, 37). With this assumption agreed: Pierre Batiffol, Skrivener and Skate.

  Ancient Bible Texts Coming Soon
  Scientists who are digitizing the Sinai Codex said that in the near future a copy of the famous manuscript will appear on the Internet. It is possible that after the publication of the ancient text, all religious denominations without exception will have to revise many established dogmas. The fact is that the Sinai Codex contains the full text of the Bible. It includes the oldest version of the full text of the New Testament in the world, as well as the text of the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which is known as the Septuagint, which includes books that are now considered apocrypha.

Scientists believe that the manuscript made on parchment is one of the 50 copies of scripture ordered by the Roman emperor Constantine after his conversion to Christianity. In the past 20 years, only four researchers have been admitted to the original text. The manuscript is named after the storage place - the monastery of St. Catherine on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. As you know, the monastery is located at the foot of the mountain, where Moses received the Ten Commandments.

The scrolls were in the monastery until the middle of the 19th century, until the German explorer Konstantin von Tischendorf, who visited him, took part of the document to Germany and Russia. The monastery is still convinced that the manuscript was stolen. However, history tells us the following.

Indeed, Konstantin Tischendorf arrived in Egypt with one single purpose - at any cost to get an ancient manuscript, which he learned about even during his studies at the University of Leipzig. He was driven by a desire to restore the true text of the New Testament, since numerous translations, in his opinion, could lose something important. For several years he traveled to many cities in Europe, where he studied ancient biblical sources.

He first read the Code of Ephraim, which is also known as the “Paris Codex”. To do this, he had to scrape off the parchment later text on the parchment and read the original ancient Greek text of the Bible. It was assumed that it was written in the 5th century BC. In 1843, the persistent Tischendorf issued a palimpsest (a monument of writing, in which the original text was erased and replaced with a new one - author's note) of the Efremov Code and got the opportunity to study the "Alexandrian Code" and sought permission from the Vatican to touch the "Vatican Code".

Following this, the German goes to Egypt. When he reached the monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai, there remained only 18 monks. The monks were not predisposed to communicate with a Gentile, but the latter did not intend to give up and discovered 129 parchments. It was a Greek translation of the Old Testament of the Septuagint ("Translation of 70 Explanators"). The texts of the New Testament were not found then.

In 1853, Tischendorf again sent to the monastery of St. Catherine and invites the monks to sell the remaining parts of the codex. The monks refused. Then Konstantin decides to turn for help to the Russian government, which patronized the monastery of St. Catherine.

Returning to the monastery, Tischendorf met a more friendly attitude of the monks, and the abbot handed over to the researcher the old manuscript, which was kept in his cell. Tischendorf's joy knew no bounds! He received the primary sources containing the entire New Testament, as well as two apocryphal books. Neither the Vatican nor the Alexandrian codes of texts of the New Testament were completely. In addition, the found manuscript turned out to be older than two already known codes! The find contained most of the books of the Old Testament and the entire New Testament, and, in addition, the Epistle of the Apostle Barnabas and the "Shepherd" of Hermas.

First, this code was transferred to Tischendorf in temporary possession. But then the great explorer gets acquainted with the no less great Russian prince Konstantin, and the monks donate the manuscript to Russia. For the anniversary celebrations of the millennium of the Russian state, Konstantin Tischendorf published the Sinai Codex and brought the book to St. Petersburg. In Leipzig, she came out under the heading: "Codex Bibliorum Sinaiticus Petropolitanus, rescued from darkness under the auspices of His Imperial Majesty Alexander II. European monarchs and the Pope himself congratulated Tischendorff on success. In Russia he received hereditary nobility.

But the most important merit of the scientist is the comparison of four manuscripts: the Sinai Code, the Alexandria Code, the Paris Code and the Vatican Code. Thus, Tischendorf proved that the New Testament in the modern Bible without distortion came from the 4th century to the present. But, as you know, by this time the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea had already approved the canonical Gospels. Therefore, then this did not cause additional outbursts from the apologists of Christianity.

Subsequently, the Sinai Code was presented to the Russian Tsar. In 1933, it was sold to England and exhibited at the British Museum in London. In total, four fragments of the manuscript are known in the world, the largest of them - 347 of 400 pages - is stored in the British Library, the rest is in the library of the university in Leipzig (Germany), the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg and in the monastery of St. Catherine.

However, the tradition of public contemplation of ancient manuscripts is only the first step towards the discovery of many new places in the Old Testament. The so-called apocrypha, non-canonical books, have been the subject of increased study by both theologians and enthusiasts. The Qumran manuscripts found in Israel in 1947, among which there are many apocrypha, interpreting controversial passages in the Bible in a new way, have already become the subject of controversy between priests rooted in dogma and trying to get to the bottom of the true scholars. And if earlier the main sources were kept under locks in religious and secular libraries, now ancient texts are beginning to come out bit by bit. When comparing such primary sources, dismissively referred to as apocrypha, the incomplete narration of the Old and New Testaments becomes apparent. And this is not about secondary events, but about root ones. But, according to the predictions of many prophets and saints, at the end of time, many secrets of the Earth and the Universe should be revealed to people. And from how they will be able to use it, the future of Humanity will be determined.

Note (The Septuagint is a translation of the Old Testament, made by order of King Ptolemy by Seventy Explanators (hence the name). It is the basis for Orthodoxy. All translations into national languages \u200b\u200bhave been made from it. The Catholic Church uses the translation made by Bl. Jerome - Vulgate).

  Andrey Polyakov

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Among the manuscript treasures now stored in the Russian National Library - the first public library of the Russian state, the manuscript-book heritage occupies a worthy place monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai   - one of the oldest Christian monastic monasteries. Has gained particular fame Sinai Codex   - IV century manuscript, which is the earliest and most complete list of scripture that has been preserved to this day in Greek translation (Septuagint). The manuscript written on parchment with a biblical uncial in four columns is of great scientific interest not only in content and respectable age, but also in its remarkable history.

The circumstances of the creation of the Sinai Code are hidden in the darkness of centuries. It is believed that this manuscript is one of the 50 copies of the Bible that Emperor Constantine (272-337) instructed to make to Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (260-339) for the churches of Constantinople. It is also possible that the magnificent manuscript was the contribution of Emperor Justinian in creating the monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai and building the monastery church (548-560). For a millennium, the manuscript was kept in the Sinai Monastery - the center of ascetic and mystical theology - and became known to the scientific community only in the 19th century.

Despite the fact that Tischendorf did not leave the thought of the other 86 sheets of codex remaining in the Sinai monastery, he could not find funds for a second trip to the Sinai.

Composing descriptions of the monastery libraries of the East, Bishop Porfiry received fragments of manuscripts for his paleographic studies, ordered copies of miniatures, and he was also given icons. All these materials brought from the East, made up an interesting collection of important scientific value. Since 1883 collection of Porfiry (Uspensky) stored in the funds of the Department of manuscripts of the National Library of Russia. The collection contains 3 fragments of sheets of the Sinai Code (code: Greek 259). Two fragments leave no doubt that parchment sheets of the ancient manuscript were later used in the monastery to repair bindings. Fragments of the Sinai Codex from the collection of Porfiry (Uspensky) were published by Tischendorf.

In 1853, Tischendorf visited the Sinai for the second time. However, he could not see the manuscript that interested him in the first place, since it was prudently hidden by the monastery brethren. Studying other manuscripts, Tischendorf discovered a small fragment of a sheet from the Sinai Codex. This leaflet played the role of a bookmark in one hagiographic collection. The found fragment entered the famous tischendorf collection   , in 1858 it entered the funds of the Imperial Public Library and is now stored in the NLR (code: Greek 2). The fragment is presented in several authoritative publications.

To carry out the planned research, Tischendorf turned to the Russian government for support and was successful. Thanks to the funds received in 1859, the scientist’s third trip to the Sinai took place. This time he managed to see all the sheets of the Sinai Codex known at that time: 86 sheets from among those that were discovered by himself, and 260 sheets first recorded in the Description of Bishop Porfiry - a total of 346 sheets. A valuable manuscript was shown to Tischendorf by the housekeeper of the monastery in his cell.

From that moment, Tischendorff began preparing the publication of the Sinai Codex, which was implemented at the expense of the Russian government and became world famous. This exceptional project of that time was coupled with the act of donating the codex by the Sinaites to the Russian Emperor Alexander II. Diplomatic preparation of the gift lasted several years. All the vicissitudes of this complex process are traced in the article by A. V. Zakharova, “The History of the Sinai Bible Acquisition by Russia in the Light of New Documents from Russian Archives”. In September 1859, Tischendorf, by agreement with the Sinai, took the Sinai Codex from the monastery to St. Petersburg with a view to preparing the publication, and only in November 1869 the Cathedral Fathers of St. Monastery. Catherine and the Cathedral of the Fathers of the Cairo Metochion signed a deed of gift. In return, the Russian government sent to the monastery of St. Catherine 9000 rubles, and in the future the monastery received the constant support of Russia.

The four-volume edition of the main part of the Sinai Codex was published in 1862 under the title "Bibliorum Codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus" with a dedication to the Russian Emperor Alexander II.

The publication was prepared in record time (in just three years) and impressed with its printing quality and luxury. Photographic and lithographic works were carried out in St. Petersburg and partly in Leipzig, while the printing was entrusted to the Leipzig printing house of Gieseke and Devrien. Part of the print run was performed on special paper that had a vegetable base and imitated parchment. The circulation of the publication was 327 copies, of which, as well as presented to outstanding personalities. In the monastery of St. Catherine was sent two copies - to the monastery library and the library of the Cairo compound. The cost of the publication amounted to 20,000 rubles, not including the cost of transporting copies. The publication of the lithographic facsimile edition of the Sinai Codex caused unprecedented public and scientific resonance and opened up broad prospects for research.

On November 10, 1862, a ceremonial audience was held in Tsarskoye Selo, at which Tischendorf handed over the facsimile edition to Emperor Alexander II and the original Sinai Codex, which had been with Tischendorf for the preparation of the publication until that time. In 1869, the Sinai Codex entered the Imperial Public Library, where it was stored in the Manuscript Department along with the most valuable manuscripts, such as Ostromir Gospel 1056-1057   - The oldest surviving dated East Slavic manuscript book. In December 1933, the Sinai Code was sold by the Soviet government to the British Museum and moved to London. Since 1978, since the founding of the British Library, the most valuable manuscript has occupied a worthy place in its collections. In London, the pages of the ancient manuscript were carefully preserved, divided into two volumes and bound.

Several stages of identifying parts of the Sinai Codex in the monastery of St. Catherine at Sinai, associated with the names of Konstantin Tishendorf and Bishop Porfiry (Uspensky), and the grand facsimile edition of the monument did not, however, put an end to the history of the discovery of the ancient manuscript. Over time, other parts of the Sinai Code were discovered, as well as new successful attempts to facsimile the publication of the monument using sophisticated technical means.

A fragment from the OLDP meeting is reproduced in the facsimile edition of the Sinai Code, which was undertaken by Helen and Kirsopp Lake. Unlike Tischendorf’s publication, Leyki chose not a lithographed, but a photographic method of reproduction. The Sinai Codex was shot in the summer of 1908 in St. Petersburg. A fragment of the OLDP was shot in 1916 by the famous master of photography Karl Bulla. The Leikov edition was published in two volumes in 1911 and in 1922.

In 1932, a collection of manuscript books of the Society of Ancient Writers was received at the Public Library. Since that time, another fragment of the Sinai Codex has been stored in the NLR (code: OLDP. O. 156).

In 1950, in a manuscript of the collection of Bishop Porfiry (RNL. F. p. I. 83), a very small fragment of parchment sheet with Greek text was found. On the basis of paleographic features, Eugenia Eduardovna Granström established that it was part of a sheet of the Sinai Codex and identified the text (a fragment of the Shepherd of Germa). The found fragment is included in the Greek manuscripts fund under the Greek code. 843.

The history of the opening of the Sinai Codex is completed by interesting findings in the Sinai Monastery of St. Catherine. On May 26, 1975, in the course of construction work, an abandoned building was discovered under the chapel of St. George at the northeastern wall of the monastery, which once served to store damaged and worn books. Among these books were 12 sheets and 24 fragments of sheets of the Sinai Codex.

More recently, on September 3, 2009, a curious message about yet another sensation appeared on the Internet, citing the newspaper The Independent. Nicholas Sarris, a participant in the Codex Sinaiticus project, looking at photographs of binders from the library of St. Monastery Catherine discovered a previously unknown fragment of the Sinai Codex pasted into the binding of one of the books. Archimandrite and librarian of the monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai, Father Justin confirmed that the sheet belonged to the Sinai Code and identified the text - the beginning of verse 10 from the first chapter of the book of Joshua is read.

It is difficult to say whether fragments of the Sinai Codex will continue to be found. Now, however, parts of the most valuable manuscript have been concentrated in four world-famous repositories of manuscript heritage - this is the monastery of St. Catherine (Sinai), the British Library (London), the University Library (Leipzig) and the Russian National Library (St. Petersburg). In March 2005, in London, official representatives of these institutions entered into a partnership agreement to implement an international project. "Codex Sinaiticus"   , which should be completed in 2010 by solving the following tasks: 1) preservation of all sheets of the Sinai Codex according to a single standard; 2) the production of a digital copy of all parts of the code in a single format; 3) transcription of the text and scientific commentary; 4) publication of the code on-line; 5) a study of the history of the codex. Currently, the tasks set by the Project are close to implementation, and the experience of international cooperation in the preservation, study and publication of monuments of written heritage of world significance laid the necessary foundations for the continuation of this noble humanitarian activity.

As part of the Codex Sinaiticus Project, the Russian National Library holds an international conference "Codex Sinaiticus: manuscript in the modern information space" (Fifth Zagreb Readings)   . An exhibition of manuscript rarities has been prepared for the participants and guests of the conference in the old rooms of the Manuscript Department. The materials of this exposition are presented in this on-line exhibition, which makes accessible to all those who are interested the rarest monuments of world culture from the collections of the Russian National Library. The virtual version of the exhibition was created by the staff of the Manuscript Department of the Russian National Library, E. V. Krushelnitskaya, I. N. Lebedeva, J. L. Levshina, T. V. Romanova, and E. A. Borisovets, a teacher of the Department of General History of Arts at Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov A.V. Zakharova, web-master V.A. Chernousova, designer I.V. Podoprigora and translator I.V. Rozhkova.

E.V. Krushelnitskaya,
head sector
  Old Russian funds

The fragment is presented in the following publications: 1) Tischendorf K. Monumenta sacra inedita. Nova collection II. Leipzig, 1857. S. XXXXVI, 321-322, Table 6; 2) Tischendorf K. Appendix codicum celeberrimorum Sinaitici Vaticani Alexandrini. Lipsiae, 1867. S. XVI, 3-7; 3) J.-B. Thibeaut. Monuments de la notation ekphonétique et hagiopolite de l "église grecque. St. Petersburg, 1913. 2. Ill. 2; 4) H. Lake, K. Lake. Codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus (et Friderico-Augustanus Lipsiensis). The New Testament ... preserved in the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg (The Old Testament etc.) now reproduced in facsimile from photographs ... with a description and introduction. I-II. London, 1911-1922.

  ["Bibliorum Codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus. Auspiciis augustissimis imperatoris Alexandri II, ex tenebris protraxit in Europam transtulit ad iuvandas atque illustrandas sacras litteras edidit ... T. I-IV. I: Prolegomena. Commentarius. Tabulae prior; II: Vetlegi Veteris Testamenti pars posterior; IV: Novum Testamentum cum Barnaba et Pastore. Petropoli, 1862. Reprint: Hildesheim (Georg Olms), 1969.]

Description of Greek manuscripts of the monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai. T. I: Remarkable manuscripts in the library of the Sinai Monastery and the Sinaia Juvani Compound (in Cairo). Described by Archimandrite Porfiry (Uspensky) / Edition of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, executed by Bishops bequeathed to her. Porfiry means. Edited and supplemented by V. N. Beneshevich. St. Petersburg, 1911.S. 639-642. Reprint: Hildesheim, 1965.

H. Lake, K. Lake. Codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus et Friderico Augustanus Lipsiensis. The New Testament ... preserved in the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg (The Old Testament etc.) now reproduced in facsimile from photographs ... with a description and introduction. I-II. London, 1911-1922.