TEL AVIV Israel’s national library presents around 1,600 ancient Christian manuscripts from Sinai on the Internet. Some of the scriptures dated back to the 12th century and findings related to early Christianity and Church Fathers, announced the National Library in Jerusalem on Wednesday. The manuscripts are written in Greek, Syriac, Georgian, Armenian and other languages. They come from the St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai on the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. “The digital images of these manuscripts are really priceless, especially for researchers of Orthodox Greek Christianity,” said curator Stefan Litt. “They show us what the manuscripts of the collection looked like more than 50 years ago and are now preserved safely and for longer.” Israeli researchers viewed the material with the permission of the Greek Orthodox Archbishop in the late 1960s and made microfilms of it. After die microfilms had rapidly lost quality in recent years, the collection was digitized. In addition to the manuscripts, the National Library also shows dozens of photos of the monastery and its surroundings, which were taken after the Israeli conquest of the Sinai Peninsula in 1967. Israel later withdrew from Sinai as part of a peace agreement. There is also film material by the photographer and former library worker Jacques Soussana. According to the announcement, the world’s oldest still operating library is located in St. Catherine’s Monastery. The monastery was founded in the sixth century by the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I (527-565). (sda / dpa)