Codex Sinaiticus Rescriptus


The Codex Sinaiticus Rescriptus is an accumulation of sixteen or even eighteen Christian Palestinian Aramaic palimpsest manuscripts containing Old Testament and Gospel Lectionaries, various hagiographic texts, and the Catecheses by Cyril of Jerusalem originating in the Monastery of Saint Catherine. The manuscripts are recyled vellum material that were erased and reused by the tenth century Georgian scribe Ioane-Zosime for writing homilies and a Iadgari. Part of the parchment leaves had been brought by him from the Monastery of Saint Sabas, south of Jerusalem, when he moved to St Catherine and became there librarian. In the nineteenth century most of the codex was removed from the monastery at two periods. Constantin von Tischendorf took two thirds in 1855 with the Codex Sinaiticus to St Peterburg, now stored in The National Library of Russia and the remaining third left on a clandestine route and found its way into various European and later also into US collections. Only among the New Finds of 1975 in Monastery of Saint Catherine missing folios of some of the manuscripts were discovered.

Text editions