What happens when you take a bunch of scattered pages of a 1600 year old Bible written in Greek, scan it and put it on the Internet? You get this, the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest surviving Bible on the planet. It’s now available for you to scrutinize, analyze, and generally geek out if you’re into this sort of thing.

The most fascinating thing about this particular Bible is it allows us to trace the changes and evolution that have occurred since the early days of Christianity. This version apparently doesn’t even mention the resurrection of Jesus, so you can bet once this becomes a little more mainstream, there will be a bunch of Christian apologetics who show up to save their faith.

Is it any surprise the King James Version of the Bible everyone likes so much would be radically different from early texts? I suppose when you are naïve enough to think the KJV is the word of God, then yeah, this older book would probably be pretty shocking, especially when you realize religious traditions are no better than ‘Chinese Whispers‘ at keeping the integrity and accuracy of a message.

I’m looking forward to seeing the reaction of hard line Christians, and seeing how they explain these huge inconsistencies away. Things are about to get a little more interesting for us atheists…