x)īell, on the other hand, in a passing remark made in a 1909 publication, simply described the codex without comment as “early fifth century”:

Hunt, indeed, expressed the view that if it had not been for the evidence of the Eusebian apparatus he should have not regarded the third century as an impossible date.” (p. In the preface to his facsimile volume of the New Testament in Codex Sinaiticus published in 1911, Kirsopp Lake reported Hunt’s opinion of the writing: It is worth noting that these opinions were probably expressed when neither man had seen the actual manuscript itself, but only facsimile images. Hunt, Harold Idris Bell, and Edward Maunde Thompson source of images: National Portrait Gallery, London, U.K. This usual difference between Hunt and Bell makes their evaluations of the writing of Codex Sinaiticus all the more interesting. The equally esteemed Harold Idris Bell (1879-1967) and Frederic Kenyon (1863-1952) tended to approve of narrower ranges and earlier dates (a related point is discussed with regard to a particular cluster of early Christian manuscripts in Roger Bagnall’s Early Christian Books in Egypt, pp. Hunt (1871-1934) tended to favor relatively wide date ranges and often allowed for somewhat later dates for particular manuscripts than did his contemporaries. One of the most respected of the early palaeographers, Arthur S. When it comes to the question of assigning palaeographic dates to Greek literary manuscripts of the Roman period, British papyrologists in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries seem to show some different tendencies.

Codex sinaiticus facsimile