British Museum Sacred Documents

I just discovered this site. It has a selection of the British Museum's sacred documents online. They tend to focus on the illustrations in the ancient texts rather than the words themselves (which is somewhat ironic since they are sacred texts).

The museum has a portion of Codex Sinaiticus, one of the oldest copies of the entire New Testament that we have (it dates to the 350's). Here is a picture of one of the pages. Notice the all-capital Greek letters and the lack of spaces or punctuation. Now, say a prayer thanking God for the Greek scholars who waded through this and countless other manuscripts to give you your English Bible! To learn more about this document, click here.

One thing that a seminary education has provided me is a greater appreciation for the scholarship that goes on behind the scenes to provide us with the variety of Bibles on the shelf at Lifeway. There are thousands of manuscripts that have to be sorted through to better understand what the original text of the Bible said. It is a blessing to have so many copies, but quite a task as well. Praise God for the men and women who have devoted their lives to this task (Its called textual criticism. If you want to learn more, skim this article)

You can also find the Gutenberg Bible, William Tyndale's New Testament (1 of 2 that survives), Original King James Bible (AV1611), as well as many more.