Codex Sinaiticus Rescriptus, mostly originating in Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai from Sin. Georg. 34; Tsagareli 81, [1] is a collection of nineteen Christian Palestinian Aramaic palimpsest manuscripts containing Old Testament, Gospel and Epistles pericopes of diverse Lectionaries, among them two witnesses of the Old Jerusalem Lectionary, [2] various unidentified homilies and two by John Chrysostom, hagiographic texts as the Life of Pachomios, the Martyrdom of Philemon Martyrs, and the Catecheses by Cyril of Jerusalem. [3] The palimpsests manuscripts are recycled parchment material that were erased and reused by the tenth-century Georgian scribe Ioane-Zosime for overwriting them with homilies and a Iadgari (979–980 AD). Part of the parchment leaves (Sin. Georg. 34) had been brought by him from the Monastery of Saint Sabas, south of Jerusalem in the Kidron Valley, when he moved to St Catherine's Monastery and became their librarian. [4] [5] [6] In the nineteenth century most of the codex was removed from the monastery at two periods. C. Tischendorf took two thirds in 1855 and 1857 with the Codex Sinaiticus to St Peterburg and handed it over to the Imperial Library, now the National Library of Russia, [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] and the remaining third left on a clandestine route [so-called collection of Dr Friedrich Grote (1862-1922)] and found its way into various European and later also into US collections, at present in a Norwegian collection. [13] [14] [15] [5] [3] [16] From the New Finds of 1975 in the Monastery of Saint Catherine missing folios of some of the underlying manuscripts could be retrieved (Sinai, Georgian NF 19; 71), [17] [5] [3] [18] with one connected to Princeton, Garrett MS 24. [19]
