World's oldest Bible to go online

London, July 22 : Codex Sinaiticus, the world's oldest Bible, will go online from July 24.

The high definition images of the Codex will be available online to all from Thursday, as the first part of a project led by the British Library comes to fruition.

According to the library, the Codex is "a treasure beyond price".

More than 100 pages of the Bible will go online on Thursday, including 67 from the British Library and dozens from the University of Leipzig.

Within the next year pages will be added to the Codex website as digitisers scan more of its intricately inscribed vellum sheets.

Since it was discovered in Egypt more than 150 years ago by a German scripture expert, pages from the Codex have found their way to London, St Petersburg and Leipzig, reports Telegraph.

The remainder is still held by St Catherine's monastery in Sinai, Egypt, where scholar Constantine Tischendorf unearthed it in 1844.

Tischendorf returned with parts of the Codex to Leipzig and then presented Russia's Tsar Nicolas II with much of it in 1869.

Half a century later Josef Stalin, the Russian dictator, sold 694 pages to the British Library. The entire Codex comprises 1460 pages.

In 2005, a 650,000 pounds digitization project was launched to reunite the far-flung sections of the Codex.

Now, according to Ulrich Johannes Schneider, Leipzig's library curator, "more than 100 pages, those from Leipzig and 67 from the British Library, will be available online at www.codex-sinaiticus.net."

ANI