Old Joe Stalin saved the Bible in 1933
Now, I’m not saying this is ‘Stop the presses’ huge hovering headline news but it is the strangest bit of trivia I’ve come upon in quite a while:
Codex Sinaiticus, meaning the Sinai Book, is one of the two earliest Bibles written. Written mostly in Greek on parchment, it is treasured by scholars as an unparalleled resource for textual criticism of the New Testament. The pages are not all in one place; the British Library has the biggest chunk, bought from Stalin in 1933 for £100,000.
Don’t you think that would make a marvellous movie?
You have an old and sacred manuscript, come to light in an age of turmoil and revolution. You have elderly scholars bowed over holy books, mumbling away in ancient, mostly forgotten languages.
Okay, you don’t have an Indiana Jones type hero battling his way into some booby-trapped temple, conquering all kinds of villains and overcoming his fear of snakes.
Instead, you have someone who’s armed with loads of cash.
That is a bit of a downer but then you do have the whole ‘evil empire’ of communism as a backdrop, chockfull with all types of hugely cinematic villains – and let’s be honest, when you have old Joe Stalin featuring as the arch fiend, who’s gonna miss some albino monk?
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