LITERARY TREASURE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 721, 22 December 1933, Page 5

LITERARY TREASURE

(Press Assn.

CODEX SINA1TICUS TO BE PURCHASED FROM SOVIET FOR BRITISH MUSEUM PRICE ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND

— By Telegraph — Copyright).

(Rec. 9 p.m.) Rugfty, Dec. 20. The British Museum Trustees, with the approval of the Government, have agreed to purchase from the Soviet Government the fourth century manuscript known as the Codex Sinaiticus. It was formerly in the possession of the Czar of Russia and is regarded as of paramount importance to the establishment of the text of the Bible. The Prime Minister stated in the House of Commons that the Government had undertaken to make special contributions to the purchase price of £1 to every £1 suhscribed by the public. The price is £100,000. Mr. R. Flower, deputy keeper of manuscripts at the British Museum, says the price paid for the Codex is the biggest the Museum has ever paid for a manuscript, while the purchase is the most important the museum has ever made and is one of the most important manuscripts in the world. Forty-three leaves of it were discovered in 1844 by the German biblical scholar, Herr Tischendorf, in the rubbish basket of the Monastery of St. Catherine, on Mount Sinai, and were presented to the Leipzig library. Herr Tischendorf, in 1853, returned to Sinai and was shown additional manuscripts which he reccgnised as the main hulk of that which he had formerly obtained and these were sent to Czar Alexander. . The Codex consists of a very large portion of the Old Testament translation of the Hebrew Septuagint, althougli some of the books are fragmentary. Also a complete New Testa.ment, the Epistle of Barnabas and the treatise known as the Shepherd of Hermas which was so popular with the early church and was nearly ineluded in the canon of the s'cripture. The Codex dates back to the second half of the fourth century and, with the Codex Vaticanus in Rome, constitutes two of the earliest great biblical manuscripts. The third is the Codex Alexandrinus (dating back to the second half of the fifth century) which is already in the British Museum.