More than 1,600 years after it was written in Greek, one of the oldest copies of the Bible will become globally accessible online for the first time this week.
From Thursday, sections of the Codex Sinaiticus, which contains the oldest complete New Testament, will be available on the Internet, said the University of Leipzig, one of the four curators of the ancient text worldwide.
High resolution images of the Gospel of Mark, several Old Testament books, and notes on the work made over centuries will appear on www.codex-sinaiticus.net as a first step towards publishing the entire manuscript online by next July.
Here’s a thought
What I would probably find of more is interest is: Just how many people are there today who can read 1,600 year old Greek?
There is nothing that cannot be found offensive by someone, somewhere.
I know a few
I actually do know a few. Most of them are interesting chaps. My prof for Old Testament survey in undergrad actually worked with the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In religion programs at the schools related to the non-instrumental end of the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement, there is often quite a bit of Koine Greek taught. Quite a bit of that is in required classes. Some day I may hopefully take some classes in that.
In terms of numbers, I would hazard a wild guess that the number of people that can read Koine Greek is on par with the number of folks holding the MLS. In a number of cases, there will be overlap between those two groups.
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Stephen Michael Kellat, Host, LISTen