Uncial Codex א (aleph) or S

| Codex א or S: hover over the image to enlarge the papyrus text | download HERE |

Codex Sinaiticus - א (S)

א (Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet) stands for the famous Codex Sinaiticus (sometimes designated by the letter S), one of the two oldest copies (apart from the papyri) of the Greek Bible.

This page, (quire 36, folio 6r,) is from the book of Esther, Esth.1:15-2:14.

The book of Esther is a short historical novel, set in Susa, in the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia. In a banquet after his marriage, Artaxerxes' new queen, Astin, disobey's the kings request to appear before the guests. In chapter 2, the king is captivated by the beauty of Esther, who becomes his new queen.

The passages on this folio can be viewed in context HERE and HERE.

More about Codex Sinaiticus HERE, especially (from the Sinaiticus web-site!) HERE.

The Codex Sinaiticus website is an excellent source for the study of the codex, with zoomable images of each page, selectable by book, chapter & verse, together with transcripts & translations into 4 languages. The image download option, however, allows for only a modest sized (poor) image of a full page.

The image on this web-page has been made up of a a number of pdf screen-prints of close-up sections of quire 45, folio f6. Each screen-print has then been converted into png/jpg images, trimmed, & then joined together, to create a workable image of the complete folio. (Yet even at this size, some of the finer detail on the folio cannot easily be read without recourse to the zoomed image on the Codex Sinaiticus website.)

This web-page © Paul Ingram 2015.
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