The Modern History of the Codex Sinaiticus

Together with other such documents, they formed the collection now known as the New Finds [18.2]. Once European researchers discovered the Codex Sinaiticus in the library of the monastery where it had been kept for centuries, however, following the general trend of several scientific missions of the time of plundering the treasures of the East, several pages or lesser fragments of the Codex were extracted from the Library. Hence, we know that forty three pages were removed in 1844 by Biblical theologian K. Tischendorf and taken to Leipzig (now kept in the Leipzig University Library), while smaller fragments of the manuscript were taken to Russia by Archimandrite Porphyrius Uspenskij (now kept in the Russian National Library in Saint Petersburg). In both these cases, the monastery of Sinai maintains a well-documented claim on the rightful property of these parts of the Codex, since the current owners lack any legitimate acquisition documents.

In any case, the remaining body of the Codex Sinaiticus was still preserved in the monastery Library until 1859, when it was loaned out to K. Tischendorf under a letter of guarantee by the Russian ambassador to the High Porte prince A. Lobanov, so that he could study it further and publish it. Still, the Lobanov letter of guarantee as well as the receipt signed by Tischendorf explicitly stated that it was to be returned to the monastery, which remained its rightful owner.

In 2003-2006, Associate Professor A. Zacha- rova, of the Lomonosov State University of Moscow, conducted extensive research in the State Historical Archive of Saint Petersburg and in the Archive of the Exterior Ministry of the Russian Empire in Moscow, on the precise circumstances of the loan of the Codex and its subsequent fate. At the same time, the scholars Archbishop Damianos of Sinai and monastery librarian Hieromonk Justin, and several other fathers, along with a scholarly committee of the Mount Sinai Foundation under Prof. P. Nikolopoulos of the University of Athens and Dr. N. Fyssas, also conducted research on the same subject in Monastery Archives in Sinai and in the Cairo Monastery Dependency. The as of yet unpublished documents discovered in the course of this research have cast more light on the tragic circumstances of the time, under which the main body of the Codex Sinaiticus manuscript was not returned to the monastery’s library, despite its strong wish to the contrary. [18.3-4].

The aforementioned new data was collected after meticulous study of the archival material, and was presented in scholarly conferences within the framework of the project to digitally bring together the Codex Sinaiticus, in the British Library (London, July 6-7th 2009) and in the Russian National Library (St. Petersburg, November 12-13th 2009); a full edition of the collected archival material is expected to be published in the near future. NF