“Codex Sinaiticus” from 300s is complete copy of both Old & New Testaments?

[Multicolored Lemur]

Codex Sinaiticus - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

“ . . is a fourth-century Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old Testament, including the deuterocanonical books, and the Greek New Testament, with both the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas included. . “

fourth century = the 300s

deuterocanonical books = books which are only in the Catholic Bible, such as 1st and 2nd Maccabees. These books are also in the Eastern Orthodox Bible

.

.

“ . . Along with Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus is considered one of the most valuable manuscripts available, as it is one of the oldest and likely closer to the original text of the Greek New Testament. . ”

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Please notice that it says “one of the oldest.”

Ideally, I’d like to pull from Catholic, Protestant, evangelical, mainstream, non-christian sources, etc, etc. But you can’t always find what you want, even on the Internet.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

That's very good information to know. That info. shows that most of the writings we have in the Bible today were already collected into one body since 4th century CE. Interestingly, the Epistle of Barnabas and Shepherd of Hermas are not part of the NT today, and I'm curious on why.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

Epistle of Barnabas

?

If Christians accepted that into the canon today, then it would change our understanding of the OT drastically, imo. And perhaps that's why it wasn't included in the Bible canon despite it being dated as early as 1st century CE.

Here's some information on its message:

The central message of the Epistle of Barnabas is that the writings comprising the Hebrew Bible—what would become the Old Testament of the Christian Bible—were, from even their times of authorship, written for use by Christians rather than the Israelites and, by extension, the Jews. According to the epistle, the Jews had misinterpreted their own law (i.e., halakha) by applying it literally; the true meaning was to be found in its symbolic prophecies foreshadowing the coming of Jesus of Nazareth, who Christians believe to be the messiah. Furthermore, the author posits that the Jews broke their covenant from the very beginning and were misled by an evil angel. After explaining its Christian interpretations of the Jewish scriptures, the epistle concludes by discussing the "Two Ways", also seen in the Didache: a "Way of Light" and a "Way of Darkness".

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_of_Barnabas

Here's another fatal problem it would present to Christianity, this according to Google Ai search results when I searched "is the epistle of barnabas authentic":

The epistle contains theological errors, such as portraying Jesus as a prophet rather than divine, and suggesting that Judas Iscariot was switched with Jesus on the cross.

Would this mean that Jesus didn't die on the cross?

Crossed out part actually applies to the Gospel of Barnabas, which is different than the Epistle of Barnabas.

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

Codex Sinaiticus - See The Manuscript | Mark |

Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important books in the world. Handwritten well over 1600 years ago, the manuscript contains the Christian Bible in Greek, including the oldest complete copy of the New Testament. The Codex Sinaiticus Project is an international collaboration to reunite the...

www.codexsinaiticus.org

This appears to be a mainstream source of a combined project of the British Library, the National Library of Russia, etc.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

For some reason that link didn't open anything for me. Just keeps loading. Looks like it was a manuscript of Mark? Then again, if it's a site hosted somewhere in Russia I might not care to open it as I've had a lot of spam activity from Russian bots

sometimes just called The Shepherd, is a Christian literary work of the late first half of the second century, considered a valuable book by many Christians, and considered canonical scripture by some of the early Church Fathers such as Irenaeus. The Shepherd was popular among Christians in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries. It is found in the Codex Sinaiticus.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shepherd_of_Hermas

In my view, not being written by one of the disciples are probably a deal breaker. I believe all of the NT is thought to be written by apostles of Jesus, except for the writings of Luke. I'm surprised we even have a "Gospel" of Luke seeing that Luke was not one of the original followers of Christ. He was likely a later convert.

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

For some reason that link didn't open anything for me. Just keeps loading.

Codex Sinaiticus - Home

Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important books in the world. Handwritten well over 1600 years ago, the manuscript contains the Christian Bible in Greek, including the oldest complete copy of the New Testament. The Codex Sinaiticus Project is an international collaboration to reunite the...

www.codexsinaiticus.org

This is the home page. Maybe next time you’re in a restaurant with free Wi-Fi ? ?

PS I hope it’s hosted in the UK!

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

I believe all of the NT is thought to be written by apostles of Jesus, except for the writings of Luke.

Ouch.

I think Matthew is just a “traditional” name later put on this Gospel. And same for Mark and John. And I think most scholars today agree with the idea that all 4 Gospels were anonymous at the beginning. Except the scholars who start off with really strong conclusions due to religious reasons.

And I realize my saying that the Gospels were anonymous is potentially such a tectonic shift . . .

that I’m going to talk about ethics like I sometimes do, because one of my big goals here at our site is to give readers a soft landing if I can.

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

Consequentialism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

plato.stanford.edu

“Consequentialism, as its name suggests, is simply the view that normative properties depend only on consequences.”

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Yes, the ends justify the means. In fact, the ends are the only thing which can justify the means. However, with all our skills and experiences as human beings.

For example, think of a baseball or softball manager who’s almost always trying to achieve multiple goals—

win this particular game, develop the skills of the players, help a player work out of his or her slump but don’t overdo that, not playing dirty because were not going to feel good about that kind of victory, but payback “not entirely off the table” in case the other team plays dirty, when you have to give players bad news like they’re being traded or sent back to the minors, keep it brief and decent [and with experience, you’ll know the right amount of brief]

all the texture we have learned in life.

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

This book is now old school,

But it’s the best book on ethics in the English language [that I know about], especially the last three chapters on capital punishment, war, and what Jonathan calls “Moral Distance.”

And this last one explains a lot of the features of our modern world.

 

[Multicolored Lemur]

and really, philosophy can be so abstract that any halfway good book on coaching just leaves it in the dirt!

and sports has a certain purity, and clarity of feedback, and feedback on a human time scale, that it’s often performed at a very high level.

* Many of the most successful things in life have multiple factors, all of which must be “good enough” or above!