In my Greek review class, we've been slowly making our way through the original Greek of John 8. Today, our prof showed us Codex Sinaiticus online. And it is pretty much the most awesome thing I have seen all week.
Codex Sinaiticus is the one of the oldest and most complete manuscripts of the Greek Bible that we have today, including much of both the Septuagint (Old Testament) and the New Testament. It was probably copied some time in the fourth century. These days, it's on display in a museum where people come to look at old manuscripts. Except they're usually more excited about the Beatles manuscripts on display next to it.
This is what John 1:1-38 looks like in the ancient Greek of Codex Sinaiticus. It isn't very easy to read (for a Greek beginner like me, anyway) because books back then were written as was convenient for the scribe, not for the reader, since they were so valuable and took such a long time to make. Hence, the letters are all capital, there's no punctuation, and there are no spaces between the words. But I can recognize the letters and some of the words, especially since the museum people have kindly transcribed it into lowercase words with spaces. And that's just so awesome. I'm looking at a manuscript from some 1600 years ago, and I can read it. I can pronounce "Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἧν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἧν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἧν ὁ λόγος. οὗτος ἧν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν." I know that it means "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning."
The Bible is so cool.
I don't really know if I'm a grammar nerd or a classics nerd or a Greek nerd or a Bible nerd or what. Whatever I may be nerdy about, I'm not ashamed of being a nerd. In fact, I quite enjoy it. Why? Because:
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