Oldest bible online

LONDON, July 6 (UPI) -- The oldest known bible in the world, housed among four worldwide locations, was reassembled online Monday, the result of a British scholarship exercise.

Anyone with an Internet connection can view about 800 pages of the Codex Sinaiticus, written in Greek in the fourth century and housed in Britain, Germany, Russia and St. Catherine's monastery in Egypt, The Guardian reported Monday. The original version contained about 1,460 pages.

The codex has been described as "a jewel beyond price" by Scot McKendrick, head of western manuscripts at the British Library, which has the largest section of the bible, which has been broken up among the countries for more than 150 years. An exhibition that started Monday at the British Library traces the history of the manuscript.

The $1.6 million project was a collaboration among the British Library, the Sinai monastery, Leipzig University library, the Russian national library in St. Petersburg and the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing at Birmingham University.

The pages can be searched, transcribed or translated, organizers said.

"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," Kendrick said. "The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the world's greatest written treasures."