CODEX SINAITICUS, a very ancient and valuable manuscript of the Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament (including the Apocrypha), the whole of the New Testament, the Epistle of Barnabas, and a part of the Shepherd of Hennas/ discovered in the monastery of Saint Cathenne, on Mount Sinai, by the German scholar Tischendorf, 4 Feb. 1859, while traveling in the East by the desire of the Tsar Alexander II. When the discovery was made Tischendorf endeavored to persuade the monks to make a present of the manuscript to the Tsar, and although he was not immediately successful, he was allowed to talce it to Saint Petersburg on loan. Ultimately, in 1869, the manuscript was formally prestnted to the Tsar as Tischendorf had desired. In IWO an account of the manuscript was pub lished by the discoverer at Leipzig. It iS writ ten on parchment in four columns, in early unical characters, and bears every mark of pos sessing great antiquity, perhaps being even older than the Vatican manuscript, which, be fore the discovery of the Sinaitic manuscript, was recognized as the oldest known manuscript of the Old and New Testaments. It is assigned by Tischendorf himself to the 4th century. The
Old Testament in this manuscript is defective, but the New Testament is complete, not a word being wand% which is the more remarkable, inasmuch as it is the only manuscript of the New Testament whic.h is complete. From this circumstance, as well as from its great age, it acquires a value in relation to the text of the New Testament, which can scarcely be overesti mated. Two gaps in the Old Testament part of the manuscript are curiously supplied by another manuscript which Tischendorf had dis covered in the same monastery in 1844, and which he had brought to Germany and named Codex Friclerico-ilugustanus, in honor of the king of Saxony. From this coincidence, as well as the general resemblance of the two manu scripts, it is inferred that the last-named manu script is really a part of the Codex Sinaiticus, wbich is generally believed to be the case. A splendid facsimile of the manuscript was pub lished by Tischendorf under the auspices of the Tsar at Saint Petersburg, in four volumes folio, toward the end of 1862. This was followed in 1863-04 by two smaller editions of the New Testament part of it.