Transcript The Codex Sinaiticus Project
1.
An International Collaboration
2.
Codex Sinaiticus
3.
The Project
4.
The Website
Summary
The Codex Sinaiticus Project
An International Collaboration
Partners 9 March 2005
Dr Ekkehard Henschke The University Library, Leipzig Lynne Brindley The British Library His Eminence Archbishop Damianos St Catherine’s Monastery, Mt Sinai Dr Alexander Bukreyev The Russian National Library, St Petersburg
An International Collaboration
Collaborating Institutions
Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing, University of Birmingham Institute for New Testament Textual Research, University of M ünster The Centre for Retrospective Digitization, G öttingen State and University Library Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta
An International Collaboration
External Funders
Approximately £1 million budget, with external funding from: Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation Arts and Humanities Research Council Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Leventis Foundation Mariposa Foundation J. F. Costopoulos Foundation Hellenic Foundation American Friends of Saint Catherine's Monastery American Trust for the British Library
An International Collaboration
Organisation Project Curator
Juan Garcés
Project Manager
Claire Breay
PROJECT BOARD
Chair: John Tuck
Funding Working Party
Chair: Lara Jukes
Conservation Working Party
Chair: Helen Shenton
BL Conservation sub-group Technical Standards Working Party
Chair: Norbert Lossau
Scholarly Edition Committee
Chair: Scot McKendrick
Translations sub-group Website Working Party
Chair: Norbert Lossau
Technical sub-group Products Working Party
Chair: John Tuck
An International Collaboration
Aims and Means
aims
global access to a major MS treasure its preservation for the future understanding of its content and history
means
scholarship aided by modern technology close collaboration between curators conservators academics image specialists IT specialists
Codex Sinaiticus
What is it?
Codex Sinaiticus
Content and Significance
content
part of the Old Testament in Greek (Septuagint), including apocrypha (2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, 1 & 4 Maccabees, Wisdom, and Sirach) whole New Testament Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd by Hermas
significance
one of the oldest Bibles (mid-fourth century) earliest complete New Testament text – canon – book
Codex Sinaiticus
Significance: Text
one of the most important witnesses to the Greek text of the Septuagint and the New Testament primacy of position in the lists of consulted manuscripts ("
א
" or "01" for the New Testament) not only original base text, but many layers of revisions from 4 th to 12 th century from alteration of one letter to the insertion of whole sentences no other early manuscript of the Christian Bible has been so extensively corrected!
Codex Sinaiticus
Significance: Canon
mid-4 th century: wide, yet neither complete nor universal, agreement over the books to be considered as authoritative for Christian communities Codex Sinaiticus, being one of the earliest intact collections of such books, is essential for an understanding of the contents and the arrangement of the Bible, as well as the uses made of it Septuagint in the Codex comprises books not included in the Hebrew Bible and regarded in the Protestant tradition as apocryphal, such as 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, 1 & 4 Maccabees, Wisdom, and Sirach appended at the end of the New Testament are the apocryphal Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas idiosyncratic sequence of books: Hebrews is placed after 2 Thessalonians Acts between the Pastoral and Catholic Epistles
Codex Sinaiticus
Significance: Book
Christians preferred the codex over the roll from our earliest evidence onwards in contrast to earlier and most contemporary practice particularly, albeit not exclusively, when copying sacred literature parchment was increasingly used as the writing support for literary texts instead of papyrus from the fourth century onwards strikingly few traces remain of parchment codices produced before the Codex Sinaiticus Codex Sinaiticus is an outstanding example quality of its parchment advanced binding structure insight into professional Christian book production careful planning skilful writing editorial control
Codex Sinaiticus
Page Layout
pages measure 380mm x 345mm written in formal bookhand (Biblical majuscule) prose books written in 4 columns; poetical books in 2 columns multiple layers of corrections, starting with the original scribes Quire 38 folio 1 recto
Corrections in 12r (2 Esdras 13.13-14.7)
Codex Sinaiticus
What survives and where
Just over 400 leaves extant (out of approx. over 730 original leaves), but now distributed between four places: 347 leaves in the British Library 12 leaves and 40 fragments in St Catherine's Monastery, Mt Sinai 43 leaves in the Leipzig University Library fragments of 5 (or 6?) leaves in the National Library of Russia, St Petersburg
Codex Sinaiticus
Modern History
Mt Sinai 1859 (1869) 1844
Project
1933 St Petersburg Leipzig London
Codex Sinaiticus
Modern History
Account of how the distributed situation came about is to be researched, agreed and disseminated research has been undertaken in at all four holding locations report has been commissioned (draft) agreed account will be published in project outputs
The Project
Timescale
initial discussions in late 2002
partnership agreement signed March 2005
project work started in 2005
main strands of project to conclude in 2009
The Project
Timetable for Activities of Codex Sinaiticus Digitisation Project Year: 05 06 07 Month: 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 Conservation 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
BL conservation assessment of OT BL conservation of OT BL conservation assessment of NT BL conservation of NT
08 1
Leipzig conservation assessment NLR conservation assessment
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 09 1 2 3 4 5 6
St Catherine's conservation assessment St Catherine's conservation work
7 8 9 Imaging Transcription & curatorial work
Scholarly research for products
Products
Sampling and approval process BL digitisation of OT & image-processing BL digitisation of NT & image-processing
BL MSI Leipzig digitisation and image-processing Leipzig MSI NLR digitisation, image-processing & MSI St Catherine's digitisation, image-processing & MSI
Transcription Translations Publication of booklet Development of technical specification for website Choosing agency to develop website Development of alternative website designs and choice of final design Development of website Content added to website in Leipzig Content added to website in London
Filming and production of TV documentary Publication of popular book Production of facsimile
Production of DVD
Preparation for exhibitions Exhibitions Conference Production of volume of scholarly essays
History of Codex
Conservation
Digitisation
Edition
Dissemination
The Project
Overview
split, folio 1 recto
The Project
Conservation
New Finds leaves at St Catherine’s Monastery
Stretching frame with weights
Cockerell’s bindings and box
•
The Documentation Model
Fields in Excel format Model: Parchment Scribal (conservation) Codicological Previous treatments Condition Condition of repairs
The Project
Conservation
collaboration
work to be undertaken in partnership with conservation specialists at each archival venue
initial assessment
stabilise MS for digitisation preserve MS for the future
detailed assessment
physical condition of each leaf individual conservation requirements for stabilisation
conservation work
plan by Conservation working party
dissemination
outcome documented findings included in overall scholarly interpretation documentation in English, German, Greek, and Russian
The British Library’s Codex Sinaiticus Conservation Team
The Project
Digitisation Current internet image
low resolution taken from Lake facsimile (1911, 1922) not attributed
The Project
Digitisation
Images from the test phase
PhaseOne (FX) scanning rack 600 dpi resolution uncompressed TIFF files with embedded metadata
The Project
Digitisation
process
undertaken at each venue undertaken after conservation informed by scholarly review of Lake facsimile employs optimal methods tested and established by the Technical Standards working party minimal handling of MS
type of images created
high-quality images of all leaves as surrogates for the original manuscript leaves raking light images of selected parts multi-spectral images of selected parts
intended use of images
work of project teams (conservation and scholarly) project outputs
The Project
Edition
lead institutions
Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (University of Birmingham) Institute for New Testament Textual Research (University of Münster)
key elements
transcription - made from new images and capturing all layers of text and corrections searchable text and text features links to images – whole leaves and details
The Project
Website
developed by the University Library, Leipzig tender awarded to ACS Solutions ( 3-point concepts ) soon hosted by the British Library (mirrored) free to view areas directed at different readers (from general to specialist readers), but accessible to all English introduction, documentation, and commentary, with targeted multilingual parts
The Project
Website
Technical specifications
: bring together a variety of datasets and integrate into a unified user interface digital images of the leaves of Codex Sinaiticus XML files for the transcription Excel spreadsheets for the physical description XML files for translations, etc.
conform to technologies and standards supported by the British Library's IT infrastructure accessibility and long-term maintenance no plug-ins web standards such as HTML, CSS, Javascript and AJAX link image and text representations of the pages of Codex Sinaiticus in a way never before implemented in an online edition of a manuscript