MOUNT SINAI (Egypt): The world’s oldest monastery plans to use hi-tech cameras to shed new light on ancient Christian texts preserved for centuries within its fortress walls in the Sinai Desert.
Saint Catherine’s Monastery hopes the technology will allow a fuller understanding of some of the world’s earliest Christian texts, including pages from the Codex Sinaiticus — the oldest surviving bible in the world.
The technique, known as hyperspectral imaging, will use a camera to photograph the parchments at different wavelengths of light, highlighting faded texts obscured by time and later overwritings.
It should allow scholars to understand corrections made to pages of the Greek Codex Sinaiticus, written between 330 and 350 and thought to be one of 50 copies of the scriptures commissioned by Roman Emperor Constantine.
“If you look at all the corrections made by each scribe then you can come out with a principle on which he was correcting the text,” said monastery librarian Father Justin.
In a joint project with the monastery, libraries in Britain, Germany and Russia, which together hold the bulk of the manuscript, will also scan pages and fragments of the text to digitally reunite the work in a facsimile.—Reuters
