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Juan Garcés' profile

‘There are so many questions that might be answered with careful research.’

Juan Garcés, the Greek Manuscripts Digitisation Project Manager, leads the project to digitise the Codex Sinaiticus, the earliest existing Christian Bible. ‘It is an international collaboration to reunite one of the world’s most important manuscripts in digital form and make it available to a global audience for the first time,’ he says.

Produced more than 1,600 years ago, the Codex contains the oldest complete copy of the New Testament. It was preserved for centuries at St Catherine’s Monastery near Mount Sinai in Egypt before its pages were dispersed. Handwritten on parchment, it is regarded as critical to understanding the history of the Christian Bible and the development of Christianity.

The major collaboration is a partnership between the four institutions where surviving pages are located: the British Library, Leipzig University Library, the library of St Catherine’s Monastery and the National Library of Russia.

July 2008 saw the first step with the launch of the Codex Sinaiticus website, offering access to more than 25% of the manuscript. This was the landmark first phase of the extensive online initiative to reunite the different parts of the Bible.

‘It is the website which starts to bring the strands of the project together and makes them accessible in the most innovative form,’ says Juan Garcés. ‘The user will not only find information on the project and the Codex Sinaiticus itself but an integrated digital edition of each page.’

Users can view pages in standard or angled light, revealing physical features of the parchment. Next to the image, a full transcription of the original Greek text shows all the corrections added throughout its long history. Translations of selected books and passages are provided in English and German. Images and transcription are fully cross referenced.

In the next phase, the full text of the manuscript will be accessible in one place, for everyone to research and enjoy, by July 2009. A print facsimile edition, a popular book and scholarly essays are also being produced and an international conference and exhibition are planned.

The project could reveal much more about the Codex and its history. ‘There are so many questions that might be answered with careful research,’ says Juan Garcés. ‘New technologies allow us to see features that are not visible to the naked eye, giving access to layers that have been erased or written over.’

www.codexsinaiticus.org

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