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monumental achievement in book production of all codices surviving from this transitional period—the significance of which some have compared to the Gutenberg Bible, which eleven hundred years later initiated the transi- tion from manuscript to print. Of course, because of the ancient age of the Codex Sinaiticus there are many differences between our knowledge of the accomplishments entailed in the Codex Sinaiticus and those of the Guten- berg Bible; the place of production of the Codex Sinaiticus, its exact date of production, and the patron or patrons, scribes and editors involved with the production of the Codex Sinaiticus are all unknown. Furthermore, unlike the invention of printing by movable type and the Gutenberg Bible, which were the inventions within a known time frame in the fifteenth century primarily by one man, Johann Gutenberg, fourth century CE producers of large codices built upon book production technologies which had evolved through continuous development by countless unknown hands for at least two hundred years.
Formerly known as the Codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus, the Codex Sinaiticus was written in Koiné Greek in the mid-fourth century by at least three scribes. What we know about this book has been reconstructed entire- ly from its physical characteristics and its content. The book is so ancient that no other documented details of its origin have survived. The transla- tion of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek was accomplished by Jews, possibly in the port of Alexandria, where Greek was spoken, or in some other city where Jews would have become fluent in both Greek and Hebrew, but the identity of the translators, their location, and the date of the translation remain unknown. The codex includes the complete text of the Septuagint, a translation of the Hebrew Bible made into Koiné Greek from circa 250 BCE to 50 CE. Among the earliest Greek texts of the Hebrew Bible, the Codex Sinaiticus text is of fundamental significance for the text of the Old Testament in general, since only fragmentary Hebrew versions of the Bible survive from this period, and the translation was undoubtedly based on even earlier Hebrew and Greek manuscripts which are no longer extant. The translation has been called one of the lasting achievements of
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