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Oldest Bible fragment found in Egypt

Other News Materials 2 September 2009 12:41 (UTC +04:00)
A fragment of the world's oldest Bible has been discovered by a British-based academic in St. Catherine's Monastery in Egypt.
Oldest Bible fragment found in Egypt

A fragment of the world's oldest Bible has been discovered by a British-based academic in St. Catherine's Monastery in Egypt, Press TV reported.

The 30-year-old Nikolas Sarris came across a previously unseen section of the Codex Sinaiticus, which dates back to the 4th century.

The academic spotted the fragment on Tuesday while he was searching through photographs of manuscripts in the library of St. Catherine's Monastery, which lies on the Sinai Peninsula, at the foot of Mount Sinai in Saint Katherine city in Egypt.

"It was a really exciting moment. Although it is not my area of expertise, I had helped with the online project so the Codex had been heavily imprinted in my memory. I began checking the height of the letters and the columns and quickly realized we were looking at an unseen part of the Codex," Sarris said, speaking from the Greek island of Patmos.

"We don't know whether we will find more of the Codex in those books, but it would definitely be worth looking," he went on to say.

"Even if there is a one-in-a-million possibility that it could be a Sinaiticus fragment that has escaped our attention, I thought it would be best to report it rather than dismiss it," he said in his e-mail to Father Justin, the monastery's librarian.

Father Justin confirmed that a previously unseen section of the Codex had indeed been found after closer inspection.

"Modern technology should allow us to examine the binding in a non-invasive manner," Father Justin told The Art Newspaper.

The Codex, handwritten in Greek on animal skin, is the earliest known version of the Bible.

The British Library has held the largest section of the ancient Bible since the Soviet Union sold its collection to Britain in 1933.

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