LONDON , England ( CNN ) -- The oldest known surviving copy of the New Testament gets the modern touch Thursday when parts of it go online for the first time . The full manuscript of the Codex Sinaiticus will be online a year from now . The British Library plans to begin publishing the Codex Sinaiticus , a 4th century text handwritten in Greek , on its Web site . The Gospel of Mark and the Book of Psalms go online Thursday . The full manuscript is to be online in a year . Translations of the Codex Sinaiticus have long been widely available , but publishing images of the manuscript online will let anyone see pages that , until now , have been viewed in detail mainly by academia . As the Web site becomes operational , it will show photographs of each page of the text , with links to translations in English and German . There will also be a search function . `` It contains the earliest complete copy of the New Testament , '' said Scot McKendrick , the head of Western Manuscripts at the British Library . While the Codex contains all of the New Testament , it also includes part of the Old Testament and originally contained the entire text of the Christian Bible . The manuscript also includes the Apocrypha , 14 disputed books of the Old Testament that are usually omitted from the Protestant Bible . It also includes two early Christian texts : the `` Epistle of Barnabas '' and the `` Shepherd of Hermas . '' The library announced plans three years ago to digitize the 1,600-year-old book , a tough job since pieces of the manuscript reside in four countries . `` It was a challenge , but it was ... also very exciting , '' said Juan Garces , the curator of the project . Photographers took digital pictures of the text in United Kingdom , Russia , Germany and Egypt to put the entire manuscript online . `` It unites something that belongs together , '' he said . The complete text once was housed at the Monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai , Egypt , before it came to the attention of a German scholar , Constantine Tischendorf , in the 19th century . He took parts of it to Germany and Russia . The British Library later bought several hundred pages from the Russians . Digitizing the text is a windfall for scholars , but the main goal was to make the Codex available to everyone . `` It makes it accessible , and it opens up to anyone who can access it via the Internet , '' Garces added . Eventually , the manuscript will be translated into Russian and modern Greek . `` The user will come to the Web site and will be able to look at images of each page of Codex Sinaiticus , will be able to zoom in and out and look around the page and see the page lit in standard light . '' Garces said .
Russian Library plans to publish world 's oldest surviving Old Testament online . Scot McKendrick contains all of LONDON , part of Bible . Web site will have photographs of pages , search function .