Extract

The famous biblical manuscript Codex Sinaiticus has seldom been out of the limelight since Constantine Tischendorf secured parts of it for scholarship towards the end of the nineteenth century. Most of its surviving leaves were acquired by the British Museum in 1933 and these have been exhibited to the general public ever since. To coincide with another momentous milestone in this codex’s history, the digitization of the entire manuscript (the London leaves as well as pages in Leipzig, St Petersburg, and St Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai), the British Library in association with the other participating institutions asked D. C. Parker to write a book about the manuscript, its importance and history. The Library and (before it) the British Museum regularly had for sale to its visitors a brochure on the codex written by successive Keepers of Western Manuscripts. This latest work is more substantial than the earlier publications, but its cost is comparable to those. The present £20 for nearly two hundred pages plus colour plates may be in proportion to the 35-page booklet with its six photographic plates on Codex Sinaiticus (and Codex Alexandrinus) reissued in 1951 at one shilling and nine pence!

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