Show HIGH VALUE SET ON manuscript record price paid by british museum curious londoners Lon doners peering deerin through a glass case in the british museum can now see a collection of rough parchment sheets on which greek characters were laboriously inscribed years ago though perfectly legible the writing is without spacing and totally devoid of punctuation lilt this manuscript is valued at well over a thousand times its weight in gold one reads with a sort ol 01 ot fascination of the purchase from non re gigions russia of the codex codes sinal sinai one of the two fourth century nible bible texts for which is about il at current exchange and the highest price ever paid for a single manuscript but as if this sum suin were IV ere not enough to excite interest honk book collectors assure us that the british government made a bargain ga 1 n for this unique manuscript has been valued as high as 1230 1250 ninety years agon ago a biblical scholar of the university of Lep leipzig zIg constantine st antin antine e tischendorf by n name ame came upon a few stray leaves of parchment in a monastery on mount sinai lie never found the body of the text but in 1859 8 9 lie he returned to decipher the manuscript that came to be known as the codex Sin Sinai alticus the monks oblivious to the real worth of their document yielded it to czar nicholas who had jurisdiction of greek church property in 1917 this unique relic passed to the and now by purchase to the british museum althou although gh someway some som emay may believe that there is something 0 fictitious in the value given by ti time m e it is from these early texts and scattered portions of other manuscripts that the present bible is established the only other fourth century manuscript is held by the pope as its name codex vati banus implies still an another early greek text dating from the fifth century is the codex Alexand rinus also held by the british museum maseu M the acquisition of the codex sina aticus recalls the purchase several years ago of the collection 0 of incunabula cuna bula by which congress added the gutenberg dible and several ral hundred other antiquities s to its library at a cost of a bout about this his transaction was negotiated largely by representative ross koss collins a legislative bibliophile who somewhat paradoxically heads the military subcommittee of the house appropriations committee if we estimate mr air collins correctly he may sometimes reflect that of all the appropriations which have passed under his attentive scrutiny that for the Voll hebr collection wa was perhaps the best I 1 investment nv estment AV washington ashington post |