This Day in History: The Codex Sinaiticus was discovered in Egypt on this day in 1859. This Codex is the oldest major manuscript of the New Testament, with sections of the Old Testament as well. This was a major find in the area of Textual Criticism. Alongside the Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Vaticanus, these three set the ground for newer translations of the Bible with a move away from the later Greek text (Textus Receptus) of the King James Bible.
Constantin von Tischendorf found them in a monastery in Egypt with an interesting story. He wrote that during his first visit to the Saint Catherine's Monastery, he saw some leaves of parchment in a waste-basket. They were "rubbish which was to be destroyed by burning it in the ovens of the monastery", although this is firmly denied by the Monastery. After examination he realized that they were part of the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament), written in an early Greek uncial script. He retrieved from the basket 129 leaves in Greek which he identified as coming from a manuscript of the Septuagint. He asked if he might keep them, but at this point the attitude of the monks changed. They realized how valuable these old leaves were, and Tischendorf was permitted to take only one-third of the whole, i.e. 43 leaves.
"If you were to name one of the most important books in the world, your first choice isn’t likely to be the Codex Sinaiticus. But if you did, you’d be correct!...Handwritten in the fourth century, it also contains the oldest complete copy of the New Testament." Source
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