Concerning the ending of Mark's Gospel

[Christina]

I found this concerning the St. Catherine Monks Sinaiticus "bonfire":

The Incredible Discovery
In 1844, the German scholar Constantine Tischendorf was touring the East in search of old manuscripts, that is, documents written by hand. In the library of the monastery of St. Catherine at Mt. Sinai he noticed a basket filled with pages of an old manuscript. Tischendorf was shocked! This was the oldest Greek writing this seasoned scholar had ever seen, and the pages were from the Greek Old Testament. Taking 43 pages out of the basket, Tischendorf asked the librarian about them. To his horror he learned the pages had been placed in the trash basket for fuel, and two basket loads of such papers had already been burned! Though the monks admitted there were more pages of the manuscript, Tischendorf's enthusiasm made them wary, and they would not show him any more. They did allow Tischendorf to take the 43 pages he had rescued with him, however, and Tischendorf urged the monks to use something else in their fires!

Link from: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.christianhistorytimeline.com/GLIMPSEF/Glimpses/glmps055.shtml">http://www.christianhistorytimeline.com ... s055.shtml</a><!-- m -->

Could this be the reason Sinaiticus is missing those verses in Mark's Gospel? <!-- s:biggrin: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/biggrin.gif" alt=":biggrin:" title="Big Grin" /><!-- s:biggrin: --> . Dunno how to explain Vaticanus as it seems no one knows for sure which "Monastery garbage can" it was pulled from <!-- s:lol: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/laugh.gif" alt=":lol:" title="Laugh" /><!-- s:lol: --> . As for scratched off text, I found this:

Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (Paris, National Library Greek 9; Gregory-Aland no. C or 04, von Soden ?? 3) is an early 5th century Greek manuscript of the Bible,[1] the last in the group of the four great uncial manuscripts of the Greek Bible (see Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Vaticanus). It receives its name, as a codex in which the treatises of Ephraem the Syrian, in Greek translations, were written over ("rescriptus") a former text that had been washed off its vellum pages, thus forming a palimpsest.[1] The later text was produced in the 12th century. The effacement of the original text was incomplete, fortunately, for beneath the text of Ephraem are the remains of what was once a complete Bible, containing both the Old Testament and the New. It forms one of the codices for textual criticism on which the Higher criticism is based.

Link from: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Ephraemi_Rescriptus">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Ephraemi_Rescriptus</a><!-- m -->

And the Zorbans say that texts like these are superior to the Peshitta? <!-- s:dontgetit: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/dontgetit.gif" alt=":dontgetit:" title="Dont Get It" /><!-- s:dontgetit: -->