Codex Sinaiticus (~350 AD)

Codex Sinaiticus is one of two great uncial codices from the mid-fourth century (the other being Codex Vaticanus). Hand-copied on vellum around 350 AD, it contains the earliest complete copy of the New Testament and about half of the Greek Old Testament. Constantin von Tischendorf discovered it at St. Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai in 1844, with additional leaves emerging in 1853 and 1859.\n\nSinaiticus was instrumental in the development of modern textual criticism. Its readings often preserve an earlier text form than the Byzantine majority text that underlies the Textus Receptus and the King James Version. Careful comparison with Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, and the later-discovered papyri (including P46 for Paul, P75 for Luke-John) has allowed scholars to reconstruct the early text of the New Testament with high confidence.\n\nSinaiticus is not itself evidence of inspiration, but it is a durable piece of manuscript tradition evidence. The fact that a fourth-century copy preserves a text recognizably the same as the text preserved in modern critical editions — with small textual variants that have been thoroughly cataloged — supports the apologetic claim that we know with reasonable certainty what the earliest Greek text said. It is now digitized and freely accessible at codexsinaiticus.org.