5 ms·

Codex Sinaiticus: the earliest manuscript of the complete New Testament

44 points by Petiver 11y ago

bediger4000 11y ago
Bravo, it's on line. Now, how close is it to, say, the King James New Testament? Why is it different?
- mcooley 11y ago
  Earlier versions (or fragments of earlier versions) exist for most parts of the New Testament. I believe the interesting thing about this work is that it's "complete". The original texts are in Greek, and the King James version is an English translation. Differences between the original and a modern English version would have less to do with uncertainty about the original text than with the difficulties of doing translations. The various English versions in use take different approaches to translation: some attempt to stay true to the original wording, while others are less rigid and attempt to use phrasing that is more intelligible to a modern reader.
- wl 11y ago
  It's fairly close, but of course there are differences. The King James translators were basing their Bible off of previous English translations and guided by the Textus Receptus rather than this manuscript or critical editions (which didn't exist yet). There were some politics involved that biased translations here and there, but the theological implications aren't that significant. And there are some mistakes in translation that slipped through. The most significant difference between this text and the King James is probably the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_Johanneum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_Johanneum , which is likely a forged addition to later Greek editions of the New Testament providing explicit textural support for the doctrine of the Trinity. The King James translation is rather dated, though. Some modern translations are much, much better in the sense that they come from a reconstructed text using the earliest manuscripts and they use our modern knowledge of Koine Greek.
  - themodelplumber 11y ago
    > Some modern translations are much, much better Not that this issue is really closed for debate or anything...far from it
- lotharbot 11y ago
  There's an entire field of study called "textual criticism" devoted to this sort of question. On the broadest scale, there are about 1.25 million pages of ancient Greek New Testament text, made up of everything from tiny fragments to complete copies, spanning the course of several centuries and initially spread over three continents. Among these 1.25 million pages there are about 250,000 errors (places where one manuscript differs from another), the vast majority of which are simple spelling mistakes or grammatical mistakes (often repeated in every manuscript from a particular region.) So there's about one mistake for every 5 pages of ancient text. Moving a bit more narrow: the New Testament of the King James Bible was translated using an incomplete set of Greek Manuscripts which were supplemented with translations from Latin back to Greek, which is collectively called the "Textus Receptus". Most modern translations are made using what's called the "Majority text", which is an attempt to uncover the origin of various textual differences by looking at timelines and common patterns in variants (like dropping words that start with the same letter as the previous word, or much more sophisticated methods like taneliv mentioned in another comment). There are around 2,000 variants between the Textus Receptus and the Majority text (there's a comprehensive list in the back of Jay P. Green Sr.'s "The Interlinear Bible".) The Codex Sinaiticus is more similar to the Majority than to the Textus Receptus, and 2,000 total variants is a pretty good estimate for how different it would be from what was used to translate the KJV. As before, the vast majority of the differences are spelling errors and such that wouldn't even survive the translation process (for example, in Matthew 1:6 there's a spelling variant of "Solomon" in some texts.) There are less than 10 differences large enough to be worthy of discussion, which are listed at the end of the wikipedia link wl posted in a sibling comment -- the longer ending of Mark and the story in John 8 about the woman caught in adultery, for example. All of the doctrines I'm aware of that are expressed in the disputed passages also find fairly broad support in other passages, as well as in other ancient church writings that aren't part of the Bible, though not necessarily as explicitly. So the overall answer to "how different" is "enough to show the text wasn't perfectly stable, but not enough to overturn any widespread doctrines or beliefs". (If you're interested in seeing the practical application of the process of textual criticism, try the NET Bible at net.bible.org -- any of the footnotes marked "tc" are about textual criticism, and they generally explain why the translator chose a particular variant, and in some cases they'll point to a book or journal article for deeper discussion. It's not perfect, but it'll give you an idea of the overall state of knowledge.)
snockerton 11y ago
Fascinating stuff for history buffs. There's a great subreddit for this kind of thing, /r/AcademicBiblical, that has similar gems for those interested... https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/
ommunist 11y ago
What is fascinating, how true can be description of the acts after 400 years? At the best its a legend. At the worst - Roman imperial propaganda. By the way I admire the codex layout. Calligraphy is astonishing.
- taneliv 11y ago
  Well, there are fragments and quotations in letters even from the first century that have survived, so you can make a diff between any overlap. If the topic is of interest, one could even use stemmatology to figure out the most likely original using something like what was done here: http://agenda.albanova.se/getFile.py/access?contribId=263&resId=250&materialId=slides&confId=2436 http://agenda.albanova.se/getFile.py/access?contribId=263&am...
- jasonjei 11y ago
  I'm not sure why you're reducing its worth despite 400 years since the letters and gospel were put together. Many exhibits in museums such as Taipei National Palace Museum might be what you call a "legend" or Chinese "imperial propaganda." These artifacts provide volumes of anthropological insight to the people of that era, even if the supposed acts are years removed (or for Buddhist or Taoist writings, there might not even be a measurable date for such recordings or chronicles).
- Natsu 11y ago
  They could be roughly as accurate as our accounts of Galileo. http://mashable.com/2009/08/24/galileos-telescope/ http://mashable.com/2009/08/24/galileos-telescope/
  - ommunist 11y ago
    This is what I am talking about. The article you are referring contains image of the 19th century, it has nothing to do with the original telescope.
    - Natsu 11y ago
      And I could just as easily say that it's typical to focus on later sources and ignore the fact that there are earlier ones :) The Codex is just everything gathered together: the items gathered were much older.
jorangreef 11y ago
People not used to working with history sometimes think that an entire copy of the original manuscript of the New Testament is required to have confidence that we read the original documents as they were written. If that can't be produced then it must be myth. Take this comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10504940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10504940 This may be the popular influence of 20th century liberalism and postmodernism (just another form of ancient skepticism) which would trade the historical method and the primary evidence for poor late-dated gnostic sources and sociological reconstructions (which have little data to go on). And sadly, sometimes people just believe that the Da Vinci code was non-fiction, and that the church was in cahoots in the 3rd century. In fact, the historicity of the New Testament is astounding. If you wanted to take seriously the claims of Jesus, you couldn't ask for better. Here are a few examples off the top of my head: 1. Primary sources dated as close as 22-25 years and as late as 70 years after the event of Jesus' death and resurrection. 2. Thousands of transcribed copies in several ancient languages, from different locations and periods. 3. Many manuscript fragments with early dates, e.g. the earliest, the John fragment (Papyrus P52) at the John Rylands Library in Manchester in England, dates from as early as 125 AD. 4. Multiple independent accounts of eye witness testimony including hostile sources. 5. Biographical accounts written as history. 6. The evidence and weight of the incidental accounts, the New Testament letters, which contain numerous historical details, facts, references and mutual understanding, taken for granted and mentioned in passing. 7. The disciples are frequently portrayed in a negative light in the gospels. 8. The testimony of women is relied on at various key points in the gospels, something which a 1st century fraud would not likely have included. 9. Integrity of the eye witnesses under intense pressure and scrutiny and brutal persecution. Most of the original apostles died horrific deaths, refusing to recant what they saw and heard (1 John 1). In contrast, the Watergate scandal lasted all of a few days before the group fell apart. 10. Many accurate geographical and political references, often of a very technical nature (e.g. various political offices and ranks, shipping navigation, climates, architecture). In summary, Christianity is an historical claim about an historical person, Jesus of Nazareth. Anyone is free to investigate these claims for themselves, according to the historical method. For more on this, read Paul Barnett's "Jesus and the Logic of History" (http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-History-Studies-Biblical-Theology/dp/0830826033 http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-History-Studies-Biblical-Theolog...), or "New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?" by FF Bruce (himself a Rylands Professor).

44 points by Petiver 11y ago

bediger4000 11y ago

Bravo, it's on line. Now, how close is it to, say, the King James New Testament? Why is it different?

mcooley 11y ago
Earlier versions (or fragments of earlier versions) exist for most parts of the New Testament. I believe the interesting thing about this work is that it's "complete". The original texts are in Greek, and the King James version is an English translation. Differences between the original and a modern English version would have less to do with uncertainty about the original text than with the difficulties of doing translations. The various English versions in use take different approaches to translation: some attempt to stay true to the original wording, while others are less rigid and attempt to use phrasing that is more intelligible to a modern reader.
wl 11y ago
It's fairly close, but of course there are differences. The King James translators were basing their Bible off of previous English translations and guided by the Textus Receptus rather than this manuscript or critical editions (which didn't exist yet). There were some politics involved that biased translations here and there, but the theological implications aren't that significant. And there are some mistakes in translation that slipped through. The most significant difference between this text and the King James is probably the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_Johanneum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_Johanneum , which is likely a forged addition to later Greek editions of the New Testament providing explicit textural support for the doctrine of the Trinity. The King James translation is rather dated, though. Some modern translations are much, much better in the sense that they come from a reconstructed text using the earliest manuscripts and they use our modern knowledge of Koine Greek.
- themodelplumber 11y ago
  > Some modern translations are much, much better Not that this issue is really closed for debate or anything...far from it
lotharbot 11y ago
There's an entire field of study called "textual criticism" devoted to this sort of question. On the broadest scale, there are about 1.25 million pages of ancient Greek New Testament text, made up of everything from tiny fragments to complete copies, spanning the course of several centuries and initially spread over three continents. Among these 1.25 million pages there are about 250,000 errors (places where one manuscript differs from another), the vast majority of which are simple spelling mistakes or grammatical mistakes (often repeated in every manuscript from a particular region.) So there's about one mistake for every 5 pages of ancient text. Moving a bit more narrow: the New Testament of the King James Bible was translated using an incomplete set of Greek Manuscripts which were supplemented with translations from Latin back to Greek, which is collectively called the "Textus Receptus". Most modern translations are made using what's called the "Majority text", which is an attempt to uncover the origin of various textual differences by looking at timelines and common patterns in variants (like dropping words that start with the same letter as the previous word, or much more sophisticated methods like taneliv mentioned in another comment). There are around 2,000 variants between the Textus Receptus and the Majority text (there's a comprehensive list in the back of Jay P. Green Sr.'s "The Interlinear Bible".) The Codex Sinaiticus is more similar to the Majority than to the Textus Receptus, and 2,000 total variants is a pretty good estimate for how different it would be from what was used to translate the KJV. As before, the vast majority of the differences are spelling errors and such that wouldn't even survive the translation process (for example, in Matthew 1:6 there's a spelling variant of "Solomon" in some texts.) There are less than 10 differences large enough to be worthy of discussion, which are listed at the end of the wikipedia link wl posted in a sibling comment -- the longer ending of Mark and the story in John 8 about the woman caught in adultery, for example. All of the doctrines I'm aware of that are expressed in the disputed passages also find fairly broad support in other passages, as well as in other ancient church writings that aren't part of the Bible, though not necessarily as explicitly. So the overall answer to "how different" is "enough to show the text wasn't perfectly stable, but not enough to overturn any widespread doctrines or beliefs". (If you're interested in seeing the practical application of the process of textual criticism, try the NET Bible at net.bible.org -- any of the footnotes marked "tc" are about textual criticism, and they generally explain why the translator chose a particular variant, and in some cases they'll point to a book or journal article for deeper discussion. It's not perfect, but it'll give you an idea of the overall state of knowledge.)

snockerton 11y ago

Fascinating stuff for history buffs. There's a great subreddit for this kind of thing, /r/AcademicBiblical, that has similar gems for those interested... https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/

ommunist 11y ago

What is fascinating, how true can be description of the acts after 400 years? At the best its a legend. At the worst - Roman imperial propaganda. By the way I admire the codex layout. Calligraphy is astonishing.

taneliv 11y ago
Well, there are fragments and quotations in letters even from the first century that have survived, so you can make a diff between any overlap. If the topic is of interest, one could even use stemmatology to figure out the most likely original using something like what was done here: http://agenda.albanova.se/getFile.py/access?contribId=263&resId=250&materialId=slides&confId=2436 http://agenda.albanova.se/getFile.py/access?contribId=263&am...
jasonjei 11y ago
I'm not sure why you're reducing its worth despite 400 years since the letters and gospel were put together. Many exhibits in museums such as Taipei National Palace Museum might be what you call a "legend" or Chinese "imperial propaganda." These artifacts provide volumes of anthropological insight to the people of that era, even if the supposed acts are years removed (or for Buddhist or Taoist writings, there might not even be a measurable date for such recordings or chronicles).
Natsu 11y ago
They could be roughly as accurate as our accounts of Galileo. http://mashable.com/2009/08/24/galileos-telescope/ http://mashable.com/2009/08/24/galileos-telescope/
- ommunist 11y ago
  This is what I am talking about. The article you are referring contains image of the 19th century, it has nothing to do with the original telescope.
  - Natsu 11y ago
    And I could just as easily say that it's typical to focus on later sources and ignore the fact that there are earlier ones :) The Codex is just everything gathered together: the items gathered were much older.

jorangreef 11y ago

People not used to working with history sometimes think that an entire copy of the original manuscript of the New Testament is required to have confidence that we read the original documents as they were written. If that can't be produced then it must be myth. Take this comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10504940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10504940 This may be the popular influence of 20th century liberalism and postmodernism (just another form of ancient skepticism) which would trade the historical method and the primary evidence for poor late-dated gnostic sources and sociological reconstructions (which have little data to go on). And sadly, sometimes people just believe that the Da Vinci code was non-fiction, and that the church was in cahoots in the 3rd century. In fact, the historicity of the New Testament is astounding. If you wanted to take seriously the claims of Jesus, you couldn't ask for better. Here are a few examples off the top of my head: 1. Primary sources dated as close as 22-25 years and as late as 70 years after the event of Jesus' death and resurrection. 2. Thousands of transcribed copies in several ancient languages, from different locations and periods. 3. Many manuscript fragments with early dates, e.g. the earliest, the John fragment (Papyrus P52) at the John Rylands Library in Manchester in England, dates from as early as 125 AD. 4. Multiple independent accounts of eye witness testimony including hostile sources. 5. Biographical accounts written as history. 6. The evidence and weight of the incidental accounts, the New Testament letters, which contain numerous historical details, facts, references and mutual understanding, taken for granted and mentioned in passing. 7. The disciples are frequently portrayed in a negative light in the gospels. 8. The testimony of women is relied on at various key points in the gospels, something which a 1st century fraud would not likely have included. 9. Integrity of the eye witnesses under intense pressure and scrutiny and brutal persecution. Most of the original apostles died horrific deaths, refusing to recant what they saw and heard (1 John 1). In contrast, the Watergate scandal lasted all of a few days before the group fell apart. 10. Many accurate geographical and political references, often of a very technical nature (e.g. various political offices and ranks, shipping navigation, climates, architecture). In summary, Christianity is an historical claim about an historical person, Jesus of Nazareth. Anyone is free to investigate these claims for themselves, according to the historical method. For more on this, read Paul Barnett's "Jesus and the Logic of History" (http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-History-Studies-Biblical-Theology/dp/0830826033 http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-History-Studies-Biblical-Theolog...), or "New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?" by FF Bruce (himself a Rylands Professor).