As the media bomb us with announcements of a forthcoming online publication of Codex Sinaiticus, many readers\u00a0of Ellopos\u00a0ask my opinion on the value of this publication. Let me\u00a0start with\u00a0an important incident of the previous century (1932). <\/p>\n
The place is Mt Athos, when a\u00a0Catholic scholar visited the monastery where St. Siluan lived. He asked what books the monks read, and a\u00a0father answered him that they read St John of the Divine Ladder, Dorotheus, Theodore Studites, Cassian, Ephraem, St. Macarius the Great<\/a>, Isaak Syrus, Symeon the New Theologian<\/a>, Niceta Stethatus, Gregory Palamas<\/a>, Maximus Confessor<\/a>, etc.\u00a0<\/p>\n The visitor was surprised that monks read such books, and remarked that in the West only professors read them. Of course, all of these books were written for just Christians, not for professors, there is nothing strange in monks reading them. The interesting (and most relevant to this post) fact is that when St. Siluan learned about this conversation, he made the following comment:<\/p>\n “You could have said to Dr. B.. that our monks not only read these books, but they could themselves write similar books… They don’t do it because\u00a0many great books\u00a0already exist and they are satisfied with them. Yet, if those books, for any reason, disappeared, monks would write new ones”. (From St Sophrony Sakharov, St Siluan the Athonite<\/a>, Essex 1995).<\/p>\n Perhaps\u00a0this statement sounds exaggerated; it is accurate. Christianity is not a faith of books<\/strong>. <\/p>\n If\u00a0Orthodox\u00a0believers\u00a0came to the point of not being able to know firsthand what the authors of such books\u00a0knew and wrote,\u00a0no book would be able to help them. Wisdom is not\u00a0hidden in ancient manuscripts. Wisdom lives in between us, or it does not live at all for us<\/strong>.<\/p>\n As for the New Testament text, we have it already. It is the text used\u00a0for two millennia in Byzantium<\/a>. <\/p>\n No special codex, of any age, even if it were of the second or third and not of the fourth century, no special codex can really advance our knowledge of the New Testament.<\/p>\n The publication of Codex Sinaiticus may be of some interest to\u00a0scholars of the philological tradition of the text, but for a\u00a0person who uses the Bible in order to\u00a0reflect on\u00a0his faith, this publication is of no importance whatsoever.<\/p>\n