God More Popular Than MSN?

July 6, 2009 marked an important date for Christians when the world's oldest bible went online. The Codex Sinaiticus dates from the 4th century and it is arguably one of the most important texts in all of Christianity. The book contains nearly 800 of the original 1,460 pages, including roughly half of the Old Testament and the entire New Testament.

Pages had been separated from the whole and traveled to institutions across Europe. Starting in 2005, the project coordinators collected the existing pages and scanned each to a digital format. The composition became available online last week.

Instant Popularity

Now, the kicker -

The Codex Sinaiticus received 96.4 million hits in the first 48 hours online.

With some simple math we can extrapolate a number for the entire month. Please know that we recognize that we are taking phenomenal liberties in our analysis so these numbers are dubious at best. But let's not forget that we are talking about God on a Technology blog...

With a little math, presto - 96.4 million in 48 hours converts to 1.45 billion in 30 days

For comparison purposes:

• The April 8, 1966 edition of Time Magazine stated that "God is Dead". You can purchase a copy of that magazine for $9.99 today on eBay.
• The world's most expensive Bible available for purchase sells for $130,000
• World population estimates for the 4th century are between 190-206 million
• According to Comscore, Microsoft sites received 1.21 billion searches in April, 2009