Musings of a Catholic Convert

I don't know whether or not you have been able to log in to the Codex Sinaiticus online or not, but this morning I was able to get in and look through the texts.  Folks, you need to prepare your minds to be blown.  As my friends and coworkers know, I am a language nerd.  I was one of those geeks who wandered around campus flipping vocabulary index cards all the time.  Seriously, why waste precious time listening to music or talking on a cell phone when you could be further absorbing vocabulary?  You have to walk to class, you might as well make good use of the walk time.  Note to new students: this does not work quite so well with a textbook and highlighter pen.  You will just have to take my word on that one.  

Back to the Codex Sinaiticus.  The tool is set up beautifully.  There are two types of lighting you can use to view the text.  One is a bright light that eliminates all the waves and shadows on the page so you can read the text more clearly.  The other view allows you to see the waves and shadows.  The text is more difficult to make out, but being able to zoom in and look at the page offers amazing insight into the work of a copyist.  You can see wax marks on some pages.  You can see the patterns of the fading ink.  You can see the ruling marks made by the copyists so that columns and rows were neat and orderly.  Looking over the pen marks, you can see the painstaking detail that went into copying.  This isn't shorthand we're looking at, this is good copy work that took a long time to complete.

Next to the manuscript window is another window that shows the text as it has been transposed to mixed case Greek, with the words separated and verses noted to correspond to the biblical passage.  Textual variants are highlighted and hyperlinked.  A click highlights the clicked word in the transposition and the manuscript.  Rolling over the variant also shows you what the variant is and to what it is being compared (for example, the addition of "kai", usually meaning "and" or "but", to the beginning of Mark 1:5.).  

Below the transposition box is a translation box.  This portion is not yet working, but it would appear that we will have the ability to see translation into multiple languages.  This will be interesting to see once it is up and running.  The site masters of the Codex Sinaiticus online are quick to point out that all texts will not be translated.  This makes sense to me.  They are not trying to create another translation here.

This morning has been wonderful for me.  I've been able to play around with the Codex Sinaiticus online for free.  I was able to look at the texts (I spent most of my time in the Gospel of Mark).  And I got a feel for how this site will work.  Now I have to get my books and vocabulary cards out and start refreshing my memory. 

You're going to have issues getting onto the manuscript page until they solve their bandwidth issues.  Right now they can only have 100,000 concurrent visitors.  The good news is that the rest of the site loads fast and provides excellent insights into the Codex, albeit from a non-Catholic source.  It is interesting to note, however, that this text, along with Codex Vaticanus, help show the canonical tradition of our Old Testament as we have it and not as the Protestants changed it after the 16th century (or the Jews of the 3rd century).  The LXX (Septuagint) version of the Old Testament is still being used, which, and you can argue textual variations all you want, contained the Deuterocanonical books.  This codex also shows us some other texts that were in use in the early Church, but which were not part of the canon.

I really want to get in there and use that tool.  We have to remember though that this is one of the biggest things to hit the internet since my blog began back in 2003.  Give it a few weeks and traffic should slow enough to give a glimpse.  As for me, this browser window will remain open all day as I work, so that I might get a peek into the text and the embedded tools.

In just two days, men and women will have the opportunity to view one of the oldest surviving manuscripts of the New Testament canon.  Codex Sinaiticus is going to be made available online (http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/) through a joint effort by the various international bodies who currently house and protect the manuscripts.  These manuscripts, discovered by Constantine Tischendorff in the 1800s, were separated after the discovery and have been preserved in multiple locations (for varying reasons, some of which are unclear).  Only now, will these be able to be viewed in their entirety.  

Codex Sinaiticus (marked in NT apparati by the Hebrew א (Aleph), as well as "S" in some books) is one of the oldest surviving Bible manuscripts we have, particularly of the New Testament, although many portions of the Old Testament (LXX aka Septuagint) and some extra biblical literature (ex. Shepherd of Hermas, Epistle of Barnabas) is also included in the find.  The manuscript is written in Greek Uncials (think ALLCAPS).  This copy dates to the mid fourth century (330-350 AD) and is only slightly younger than Codex Vaticanus.  

I for one am extremely excited about the opportunity to view such a rare text as Sinaiticus without having to travel to Leipzig, the British Library, The Russian National Library, or Sinai.  The tools I have seen which will be used for navigation look to be top notch.  My brain feels like it is salivating at the thought of approaching this wonderful piece of history and sacred Tradition.

Look at the web prototype!  Ain't it cool?

ARTICLE 11
"I BELIEVE IN THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY"

988 The Christian Creed - the profession of our faith in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and in God's creative, saving, and sanctifying action - culminates in the proclamation of the resurrection of the dead on the last day and in life everlasting.

989 We firmly believe, and hence we hope that, just as Christ is truly risen from the dead and lives for ever, so after death the righteous will live for ever with the risen Christ and he will raise them up on the last day.⁵³⁴ Our resurrection, like his own, will be the work of the Most Holy Trinity:If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who dwells in you.⁵³⁵

990 The term "flesh" refers to man in his state of weakness and mortality.⁵³⁶ The "resurrection of the flesh" (the literal formulation of the Apostles' Creed) means not only that the immortal soul will live on after death, but that even our "mortal body" will come to life again.⁵³⁷

991 Belief in the resurrection of the dead has been an essential element of the Christian faith from its beginnings. "The confidence of Christians is the resurrection of the dead; believing this we live."⁵³⁸How can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. . . . But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.⁵³⁹

I. CHRIST'S RESURRECTION AND OURS

The progressive revelation of the Resurrection

992 God revealed the resurrection of the dead to his people progressively. Hope in the bodily resurrection of the dead established itself as a consequence intrinsic to faith in God as creator of the whole man, soul and body. The creator of heaven and earth is also the one who faithfully maintains his covenant with Abraham and his posterity. It was in this double perspective that faith in the resurrection came to be expressed. In their trials, the Maccabean martyrs confessed:The King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws.⁵⁴⁰ One cannot but choose to die at the hands of men and to cherish the hope that God gives of being raised again by him.⁵⁴¹

993 The Pharisees and many of the Lord's contemporaries hoped for the resurrection. Jesus teaches it firmly. To the Sadducees who deny it he answers, "Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God?"⁵⁴² Faith in the resurrection rests on faith in God who "is not God of the dead, but of the living."⁵⁴³

994 But there is more. Jesus links faith in the resurrection to his own person: "I am the Resurrection and the life."⁵⁴⁴ It is Jesus himself who on the last day will raise up those who have believed in him, who have eaten his body and drunk his blood.⁵⁴⁵ Already now in this present life he gives a sign and pledge of this by restoring some of the dead to life,⁵⁴⁶ announcing thereby his own Resurrection, though it was to be of another order. He speaks of this unique event as the "sign of Jonah,"⁵⁴⁷ the sign of the temple: he announces that he will be put to death but rise thereafter on the third day.⁵⁴⁸

995 To be a witness to Christ is to be a "witness to his Resurrection," to "[have eaten and drunk] with him after he rose from the dead."⁵⁴⁹ Encounters with the risen Christ characterize the Christian hope of resurrection. We shall rise like Christ, with him, and through him.

996 From the beginning, Christian faith in the resurrection has met with incomprehension and opposition.⁵⁵⁰ "On no point does the Christian faith encounter more opposition than on the resurrection of the body."⁵⁵¹ It is very commonly accepted that the life of the human person continues in a spiritual fashion after death. But how can we believe that this body, so clearly mortal, could rise to everlasting life?

How do the dead rise?

997 What is "rising"? In death, the separation of the soul from the body, the human body decays and the soul goes to meet God, while awaiting its reunion with its glorified body. God, in his almighty power, will definitively grant incorruptible life to our bodies by reuniting them with our souls, through the power of Jesus' Resurrection.

998 Who will rise? All the dead will rise, "those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment."⁵⁵²

999 How? Christ is raised with his own body: "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself";⁵⁵³ but he did not return to an earthly life. So, in him, "all of them will rise again with their own bodies which they now bear," but Christ "will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body," into a "spiritual body":⁵⁵⁴But someone will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" You foolish man! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel. . . . What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. . . . The dead will be raised imperishable. . . . For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.⁵⁵⁵

1000 This "how" exceeds our imagination and understanding; it is accessible only to faith. Yet our participation in the Eucharist already gives us a foretaste of Christ's transfiguration of our bodies:Just as bread that comes from the earth, after God's blessing has been invoked upon it, is no longer ordinary bread, but Eucharist, formed of two things, the one earthly and the other heavenly: so too our bodies, which partake of the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, but possess the hope of resurrection.⁵⁵⁶

1001 When? Definitively "at the last day," "at the end of the world."⁵⁵⁷ Indeed, the resurrection of the dead is closely associated with Christ's Parousia:For the Lord himself will descend from heaven, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.⁵⁵⁸

Risen with Christ

1002 Christ will raise us up "on the last day"; but it is also true that, in a certain way, we have already risen with Christ. For, by virtue of the Holy Spirit, Christian life is already now on earth a participation in the death and Resurrection of Christ:And you were buried with him in Baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead . . . . If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.⁵⁵⁹

1003 United with Christ by Baptism, believers already truly participate in the heavenly life of the risen Christ, but this life remains "hidden with Christ in God."⁵⁶⁰ The Father has already "raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus."⁵⁶¹ Nourished with his body in the Eucharist, we already belong to the Body of Christ. When we rise on the last day we "also will appear with him in glory."⁵⁶²

1004 In expectation of that day, the believer's body and soul already participate in the dignity of belonging to Christ. This dignity entails the demand that he should treat with respect his own body, but also the body of every other person, especially the suffering:The body [is meant] for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? . . . . You are not your own; . . . . So glorify God in your body.⁵⁶³

II. DYING IN CHRIST JESUS

1005 To rise with Christ, we must die with Christ: we must "be away from the body and at home with the Lord."⁵⁶⁴ In that "departure" which is death the soul is separated from the body.⁵⁶⁵ It will be reunited with the body on the day of resurrection of the dead.⁵⁶⁶

Death

1006 "It is in regard to death that man's condition is most shrouded in doubt."⁵⁶⁷ In a sense bodily death is natural, but for faith it is in fact "the wages of sin."⁵⁶⁸ For those who die in Christ's grace it is a participation in the death of the Lord, so that they can also share his Resurrection.⁵⁶⁹

1007 Death is the end of earthly life. Our lives are measured by time, in the course of which we change, grow old and, as with all living beings on earth, death seems like the normal end of life. That aspect of death lends urgency to our lives: remembering our mortality helps us realize that we have only a limited time in which to bring our lives to fulfillment:Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, . . . before the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.⁵⁷⁰

1008 Death is a consequence of sin. The Church's Magisterium, as authentic interpreter of the affirmations of Scripture and Tradition, teaches that death entered the world on account of man's sin.⁵⁷¹ Even though man's nature is mortal God had destined him not to die. Death was therefore contrary to the plans of God the Creator and entered the world as a consequence of sin.⁵⁷² "Bodily death, from which man would have been immune had he not sinned" is thus "the last enemy" of man left to be conquered.⁵⁷³

1009 Death is transformed by Christ. Jesus, the Son of God, also himself suffered the death that is part of the human condition. Yet, despite his anguish as he faced death, he accepted it in an act of complete and free submission to his Father's will.⁵⁷⁴ The obedience of Jesus has transformed the curse of death into a blessing.⁵⁷⁵

The meaning of Christian death

1010 Because of Christ, Christian death has a positive meaning: "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."⁵⁷⁶ "The saying is sure: if we have died with him, we will also live with him.⁵⁷⁷ What is essentially new about Christian death is this: through Baptism, the Christian has already "died with Christ" sacramentally, in order to live a new life; and if we die in Christ's grace, physical death completes this "dying with Christ" and so completes our incorporation into him in his redeeming act:It is better for me to die in (eis) Christ Jesus than to reign over the ends of the earth. Him it is I seek - who died for us. Him it is I desire - who rose for us. I am on the point of giving birth. . . . Let me receive pure light; when I shall have arrived there, then shall I be a man.⁵⁷⁸

1011 In death, God calls man to himself. Therefore the Christian can experience a desire for death like St. Paul's: "My desire is to depart and be with Christ. "⁵⁷⁹ He can transform his own death into an act of obedience and love towards the Father, after the example of Christ:⁵⁸⁰My earthly desire has been crucified; . . . there is living water in me, water that murmurs and says within me: Come to the Father.⁵⁸¹ I want to see God and, in order to see him, I must die.⁵⁸²I am not dying; I am entering life.⁵⁸³

1012 The Christian vision of death receives privileged expression in the liturgy of the Church:⁵⁸⁴Lord, for your faithful people life is changed, not ended. When the body of our earthly dwelling lies in death we gain an everlasting dwelling place in heaven.⁵⁸⁵

1013 Death is the end of man's earthly pilgrimage, of the time of grace and mercy which God offers him so as to work out his earthly life in keeping with the divine plan, and to decide his ultimate destiny. When "the single course of our earthly life" is completed,⁵⁸⁶ we shall not return to other earthly lives: "It is appointed for men to die once."⁵⁸⁷ There is no "reincarnation" after death.

1014 The Church encourages us to prepare ourselves for the hour of our death. In the ancient litany of the saints, for instance, she has us pray: "From a sudden and unforeseen death, deliver us, O Lord";⁵⁸⁸ to ask the Mother of God to intercede for us "at the hour of our death" in the Hail Mary; and to entrust ourselves to St. Joseph, the patron of a happy death.Every action of yours, every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out. Death would have no great terrors for you if you had a quiet conscience. . . . Then why not keep clear of sin instead of running away from death? If you aren't fit to face death today, it's very unlikely you will be tomorrow. . . .⁵⁸⁹ Praised are you, my Lord, for our sister bodily Death, from whom no living man can escape.  Woe on those who will die in mortal sin!  Blessed are they who will be found in your most holy will, for the second death will not harm them.⁵⁹⁰

IN BRIEF

1015 "The flesh is the hinge of salvation" (Tertullian, De res. 8, 2:PL 2, 852). We believe in God who is creator of the flesh; we believe in the Word made flesh in order to redeem the flesh; we believe in the resurrection of the flesh, the fulfillment of both the creation and the redemption of the flesh.

1016 By death the soul is separated from the body, but in the resurrection God will give incorruptible life to our body, transformed by reunion with our soul. Just as Christ is risen and lives for ever, so all of us will rise at the last day.

1017 "We believe in the true resurrection of this flesh that we now possess" (Council of Lyons II: DS 854). We sow a corruptible body in the tomb, but he raises up an incorruptible body, a "spiritual body" (cf. 1 Cor 15:42-44).

1018 As a consequence of original sin, man must suffer "bodily death, from which man would have been immune had he not sinned" (GS § 18).

1019 Jesus, the Son of God, freely suffered death for us in complete and free submission to the will of God, his Father. By his death he has conquered death, and so opened the possibility of salvation to all men.

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