Sources

Manuscripts

Codex Sinaiticus (4th c., ~350 AD)

The oldest substantially complete copy of the Christian Bible. Originally one codex containing both the Septuagint Old Testament (in Greek) and the New Testament. Discovered by Constantin von Tischendorf at Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, in the 19th century. Now distributed across the British Library, the Russian National Library, the Leipzig University Library, and Saint Catherine's. Digitized at codexsinaiticus.org with both folio images and verbatim transcription, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.

This library contains the folio scans for all 255 surviving NT chapters and the 239 surviving LXX/OT chapters of Codex Sinaiticus.

Codex Vaticanus (4th c., ~325-350 AD)

Vaticanus Graecus 1209 at the Vatican Apostolic Library. With Sinaiticus, one of the two earliest near-complete Greek Bibles. Digitized at digi.vatlib.it. Verse-level folio mapping is provided by the New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room (INTF Münster, CC BY 4.0), docID 03.

This library contains 220 New Testament chapters from Codex Vaticanus.

Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis (5th c., ~400 AD)

Cambridge University Library MS Nn.2.41. A bilingual Greek/Latin codex containing the Gospels and Acts, the most important witness to the Western text tradition. Digitized via the Cambridge Digital Library IIIF. Verse-level page mapping via NTVMR docID 05.

This library contains 45 Gospel and Acts chapters from Codex Bezae (Greek side).

Venetus A (10th c.)

Biblioteca Marciana Marc. gr. Z. 454 (olim 822), the most important complete medieval manuscript of Homer's Iliad, famous for its extensive marginal scholia. Digitized with line-level folio mapping by the Homer Multitext Project (CC BY).

This library contains all 24 books of the Iliad mapped folio-by-folio to Venetus A.

Codex Regius (GKS 2365 4to, c. 1270 AD)

The unique Icelandic vellum manuscript that preserves the Poetic Edda. Housed at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies in Reykjavík. Digitized at handrit.is with full-resolution folio photography in the public domain.

This library contains 11 mythological poems of the Poetic Edda from Codex Regius.

Great Isaiah Scroll, 1QIsa-a (c. 125 BCE)

The crown jewel of the Dead Sea Scrolls: a complete copy of all 66 chapters of Isaiah, written around 125 BCE on 17 sheets of parchment sewn into a single 7.34-metre scroll. Discovered in Qumran Cave 1 in 1947 and now housed in the Israel Museum's Shrine of the Book. Used here via the Wikimedia Commons public-domain scroll photograph.

This library contains selected chapters of Isaiah from 1QIsa-a.

Verbatim Original-Language Texts

• Tischendorf 8th edition (1869). Constantin von Tischendorf's critical text of the Greek New Testament, based heavily on his discovery of Codex Sinaiticus. Public domain. Retrieved verbatim via the bolls.life API for 520 NT chapters across Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Bezae.
• Codex Sinaiticus Project transcription. The verbatim diplomatic transcription of the Sinaiticus manuscript itself, preserving uncial forms, lunate sigma (ϲ), nomina sacra abbreviations (θϲ for θεός, κϲ for κύριος, etc.), and lectional marks. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. Used for the 239 LXX/OT chapters.
• Perseus Digital Library Greek Iliad (Munro & Allen, PD). Used for the 24 books of the Iliad.
• Westminster Leningrad Codex (Groves Center, PD). Hebrew consonantal text used for the Isaiah entries, retrieved via bolls.life.
• Heimskringla.no Old Norse texts. Public-domain editions of the Eddaic poems. Used for the 11 Edda entries.

Verbatim English Translations

• King James Version (1611). Public domain. Retrieved verbatim via bible-api.com. Used for all 760 biblical chapters across Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Bezae, and the Isaiah Scroll.
• Samuel Butler, The Iliad of Homer (1898). Public domain, Project Gutenberg #2199. Used for the 24 Iliad books.
• Benjamin Thorpe, The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson (1866). Public domain. Retrieved verbatim from Project Gutenberg eBook #14726. Used for the 11 Edda entries.

What's Not Here (Yet)

Anything we cannot triple-verify is excluded. We will not print an "original-language" field that is really the English translation again, and we will not reuse one representative scan across an entire multi-chapter entry. A text only ships when every section has its own specific manuscript page, its own verbatim original, and its own public-domain English translation.

Traditions we are actively pursuing pipelines for: the Masoretic Hebrew Bible (Leningrad Codex B19a), the Latin Vulgate (Codex Amiatinus), additional Greek NT uncials (Washingtonianus, Alexandrinus, Boreelianus), and additional Dead Sea Scrolls. Pipelines not yet feasible: Sanskrit (Rigveda, Upanishads, Gita), Egyptian hieroglyphic (Book of the Dead), Akkadian cuneiform (Gilgamesh, Enuma Elish), Quranic Arabic, Avestan, and Coptic — each awaits a source with page-level primary text available in the public domain.