The Vatican Manuscript is located in the library of the Vatican in Rome. This library was founded by Nicholas V. about 1448 A.D. This document was known by scholars to exist in 1475 when it was listed in a catalogue and the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) portion of the manuscript was published in 1587 under the papacy of Pope Sixtus V. However, its New Testament contents were kept a guarded secret. This portion was not seen by scholars until 1815 when Napoleon captured Rome and brought the manuscript back to Paris, where it was studied for a short time.

    Dr. Samuel Tregelles, one of the important figures in Biblical research in the 19th century, was 2 years old when the Vatican Manuscript was brought to Paris. Later in his life, with knowledge of the New Testament portion of the manuscript now a matter of public record, Tregelles traveled to Rome to view the manuscript. However, when he arrived, guards searched his pockets before he could look at the manuscript, allowed him no writing instruments or paper, and two priests were assigned to watch him and distract him when he spent too much time on any particular passage.  They also took the book away from him when he stayed on one page too long. Still, Tregelles managed to tell the scholarly world enough of what was in the manuscript that Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) was forced to make copies of the Vatican Manuscript available to the leading libraries of the world. This pressure was aided by another noted researcher, Constantin von Tischendorf. Before Tregelles ever viewed the text, Tischendorf had waited several months and was finally allowed to see it for six hours. Later, after Tregelles’ visit, Tischendorf returned and was allowed to view the text under similar circumstances as was Tregelles. However, Tischendorf managed to copy 20 pages of the text.  When the priests found out, the text was immediately taken from him. He published those leaves in 1867, and then in 1868 the Vatican published the entire New Testament. It was not until 1881 that the Septuagint was released.  Photographs were released in 1889-90.

    The passage to the right is part of I Esdras.

    There are, of course, particularly interesting things about each of the manuscripts that have been discovered. Among the fascinating facts about the Vatican Manuscript is the close of the gospel of Mark (Mark 16:9-20), which was left blank as if the scribe intended to fill in the script at a later time.

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    The Sinaitic Manuscript.  In 1844, the German scholar Constantine Tischendorf was touring the East in search of old manuscripts, that is, documents written by hand. In the library of the monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai he noticed a basket filled with pages of an old manuscript. Tischendorf was shocked!  This was the oldest Greek writing this seasoned scholar had ever seen, and the pages were from the Greek Old Testament. Taking 43 pages out of the basket, Tischendorf asked the librarian about them. To his horror he learned the pages had been placed in the trash basket for fuel, and two basket loads of such papers had already been burned! Though the monks admitted there were more pages of the manuscript, Tischendorf’s enthusiasm made them wary, and they would not show him any more. The y did allow Tischendorf to take the 43 pages he had rescued with him, however, and Tischendorf urged the monks to use something else in their fires!

    In 1853 Tischendorf returned to the monastery, but the monks would not show him the remainder of the manus cript. Six years later, Tischendorf again returned to the Sinai monastery, this time under the patronage of the Russian Tsar Alexander II, patron of the Greek Orthodox Church. On this visit, a monk took Tischendorf to his room and pulled down a cloth-wrapped manuscript which had been stored with some cups and dishes on a shelf above the door. Tischendorf immediately recognized the pages as the remainder of the book whose pages he had rescued from the trash pile. He suggested the monastery present the manuscript to the tsar of Russia as protector of the Greek church, which they agreed to do. When the communists took over the Russian government, they had little use for such a Christian manuscript, so in 1933 the Soviet Union sold the manuscript to the British Museum for £100,000.

    The manuscript became known as the Codex Sinaiticus (book from the Sinai), also known as Codex Aleph. Dating from about the middle of the fourth century, Sinaiticus is one of the earliest complete manuscripts of the New Testament we have.  Some have even speculated this might be one of the fifty Bibles the Emperor Constantine commissioned Eusebius to prepare after he had made Christianity a legal religion in the Roman Empire.

    The Sinaiticus Manuscript consists of 245 pages of the finest vellum. Each page is 15 inches square with 4 columns per page. It contains the entire New Testament with all 27 books complete. Additionally, it contains most of the Old Testament, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Shepherd of Hermas. The page above contains Romans 6:23-8:15.

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