Images: Sinai Palimpsests Project (login required); Library of Congress
Physical description: vellum, 22 × 16 cm, 182 fols., 1 col. (upper text), 2 cols. (lower text)
Language: Syriac (upper text), Syriac (lower text), Greek (lower text).
Date: 698 (upper text; see Pirtea), 5th/6th cent. (lower texts)
Provenance: scribe of upper text is John of Mar Conon, Ma‘arret Misrin (Syrian Antioch) (fol. 2v, 181r).
Contents:
Acts of Paul and Thecla (upper text, fols. 1r–21r)
Acts and Martyrdom of Eugenia (upper text, fols. 21r–52v)
Acts of Thomas (lower text, fols. 141–146, 150, 152–154, 157–158, 159v, 161–170)
Six-Books Dormition of the Virgin (lower text, fols. 151, 155, 156, 159r, 160)
Additional Contents: upper text has Lives of Holy Women. Additional lower text items include the Old Syriac Gospels, a Greek fragment of the Gospel of John, Pseudo-Ephrem’s Sermo asceticus and Pseudo-Macarius’s Great Letter (both in Greek).
Catalogs and Studies:
Kamil, Murad. Catalogue of All Manuscripts in the Monastery of St. Catharine on Mount Sinai. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1970 (p. 154).
Lewis, Agnes Smith. “Introduction.” Pages v–xxxiv in The Four Gospels in Syriac Transcribed from the Sinaitic Palimpsest. Robert L. Bensly, J. Rendel Harris, and F. Crawford Burkitt. Studia Sinaitica 11. London: C. J. Clay, 1894.
Lewis, Agnes Smith. Catalogue of the Syriac MSS in the Convent of S. Catherine on Mount Sinai. Studia Sinaitica 1. London: C. J. Clay & Sons, 1894 (pp. 43–47).
Pirtea, Adrian C. “Revisiting the Date of the Codex Sinaiticus Syrus (Sinai Syriac 30) – 779 AD, 708 AD, or 698 AD?” e-Sketikon: Ascetic Manuscripts & Monastic Culture in the Eastern Mediterranean. Posted 1 December 2021. Online: https://esketikon.hypotheses.org/134.
Other online databases: syri.ac; Wikipedia
Entry created by Tony Burke, York University ([email protected]), 24 January 2023.