About 800 pages of the earliest surviving Christian Bible have been recovered and put on the internet for public access at www.codexsinaiticus.org. When all the different parts are digitally united next year, anyone will be able to compare and contrast the Codex and the modern Bible.

This 1,600-year-old manuscript offers a window into the development of early Christianity and first-hand evidence of how the text of the Bible was transmitted from generation to generation.

Discovered 160 years ago, the oldest known Bible is markedly different from its modern equivalent. It shows there have been thousands of alterations to today’s bible. It contains two books which had been left out in the Authorised Version that most Christians are familiar with today. One is the Shepherd of Hermas, written in Rome in the 2nd century, the other the Epistle of Barnabas, which claims that it was the Jews, not the Romans, who killed Jesus. It omits some mentions of ascension of Jesus into heaven, and key references to the Resurrection. Nor are there words of forgiveness from the cross. Jesus does not say “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”.

Some argue that another early Bible, the Codex Vaticanus, is in fact older. There also exists earlier texts of almost all the books in the bible, though none collects all  books into a single volume.