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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: seattle, wa
Posts: 9,337
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I believe I read somewhere long ago that the monks used what looked to a westerner like waste paper baskets to store texts that had lost their covers and binding.
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But compare this to what is said at the Wikipedia article:
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In 1844, during his first visit to the Monastery of Saint Catherine, Leipzig archaeologist Constantin von Tischendorf claimed that he saw some leaves of parchment in a waste-basket. He said they were "rubbish which was to be destroyed by burning it in the ovens of the monastery", although this is firmly denied by the Monastery. After examination he realized that they were part of the Septuagint, written in an early Greek uncial script. He retrieved from the basket 129 leaves in Greek which he identified as coming from a manuscript of the Septuagint. He asked if he might keep them, but at this point the attitude of the monks changed. They realized how valuable these old leaves were, and Tischendorf was permitted to take only one-third of the whole, i.e. 43 leaves. These leaves contained portions of 1 Chronicles, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, and Esther. After his return they were deposited in the Leipzig University Library, where they still remain. In 1846 Tischendorf published their contents, naming them the 'Codex Friderico-Augustanus' (in honor of Frederick Augustus).[78] Other portions of the same codex remained in the monastery, containing all of Isaiah and 1 and 4 Maccabees.
In 1845 Archimandrite Porfirij Uspenskij (1804–1885), at that time head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem and subsequently Bishop of Chigirin, visited the monastery and the codex was shown to him, together with leaves which Tischendorf had not seen. In 1846 Captain C. K. MacDonald visited Mount Sinai, saw the codex, and bought two codices (495 and 496) from the monastery.
The codex was presented to Alexander II of Russia
In 1853 Tischendorf revisited the Monastery of Saint Catherine to get the remaining 86 folios, but without success. Returning in 1859, this time under the patronage of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, he was shown the Codex Sinaiticus. He would later claim to have found it discarded in a rubbish bin. (However, this story may have been a fabrication, or the manuscripts in question may have been unrelated to Codex Sinaiticus: Rev. J. Silvester Davies in 1863 quoted "a monk of Sinai who... stated that according to the librarian of the monastery the whole of Codex Sinaiticus had been in the library for many years and was marked in the ancient catalogues... Is it likely... that a manuscript known in the library catalogue would have been jettisoned in the rubbish basket." Indeed, it has been noted that the leaves were in "suspiciously good condition" for something found in the trash.[n 6]) Tischendorf had been sent to search for manuscripts by Russia's Tsar Alexander II, who was convinced there were still manuscripts to be found at the Sinai monastery. The text of this part of the codex was published by Tischendorf in 1862:
Konstantin von Tischendorf: Bibliorum codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus. Giesecke & Devrient, Leipzig 1862.
It was reprinted in four volumes in 1869:
Konstantin von Tischendorf, G. Olms (Hrsg.): Bibliorum codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus. 1. Prolegomena. G. Olms, Hildesheim 1869 (Repr.).
Konstantin von Tischendorf, G. Olms (Hrsg.): Bibliorum codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus. 2. Veteris Testamenti pars prior. G. Olms, Hildesheim 1869 (Repr.).
Konstantin von Tischendorf, G. Olms (Hrsg.): Bibliorum codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus. 3. Veteris Testamenti pars posterior. G. Olms, Hildesheim 1869 (Repr.).
Konstantin von Tischendorf, G. Olms (Hrsg.): Bibliorum codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus. 4. Novum Testamentum cum Barnaba et Pastore. G. Olms, Hildesheim 1869 (Repr.).
The complete publication of the codex was made by Kirsopp Lake in 1911 (New Testament),[81] and in 1922 (Old Testament). It was the full-sized black and white facsimile of the manuscript, made by editing two earlier facsimiles. Lake did not have access to the manuscript.
The story of how von Tischendorf found the manuscript, which contained most of the Old Testament and all of the New Testament, has all the interest of a romance. Von Tischendorf reached the monastery on 31 January; but his inquiries appeared to be fruitless. On 4 February, he had resolved to return home without having gained his object:
On the afternoon of this day I was taking a walk with the steward of the convent in the neighbourhood, and as we returned, towards sunset, he begged me to take some refreshment with him in his cell. Scarcely had he entered the room, when, resuming our former subject of conversation, he said: "And I, too, have read a Septuagint" — i.e. a copy of the Greek translation made by the Seventy. And so saying, he took down from the corner of the room a bulky kind of volume, wrapped up in a red cloth, and laid it before me. I unrolled the cover, and discovered, to my great surprise, not only those very fragments which, fifteen years before, I had taken out of the basket, but also other parts of the Old Testament, the New Testament complete, and, in addition, the Epistle of Barnabas and a part of the Shepherd of Hermas.
After some negotiations, he obtained possession of this precious fragment. James Bentley gives an account of how this came about, prefacing it with the comment, "Tischendorf therefore now embarked on the remarkable piece of duplicity which was to occupy him for the next decade, which involved the careful suppression of facts and the systematic denigration of the monks of Mount Sinai."[83] He conveyed it to Tsar Alexander II, who appreciated its importance and had it published as nearly as possible in facsimile, so as to exhibit correctly the ancient handwriting. In 1869 the Tsar sent the monastery 7 000 rubles and the monastery of Mount Tabor 2 000 rubles by way of compensation.[84] The document in Russian formalising this was published in 2007 in Russia and has since been translated.[85]
Regarding Tischendorf's role in the transfer to Saint Petersburg, there are several views. Although when parts of Genesis and Book of Numbers were later found in the bindings of other books, they were amicably sent to Tischendorf, the codex is currently regarded by the monastery as having been stolen. This view is hotly contested by several scholars in Europe. Kirsopp Lake wrote:
Those who have had much to do with Oriental monks will understand how improbable it is that the terms of the arrangement, whatever it was, were ever known to any except of the leaders.[86]
In a more neutral spirit, New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger writes:
Certain aspects of the negotiations leading to the transfer of the codex to the Tsar's possession are open to an interpretation that reflects adversely on Tischendorf's candour and good faith with the monks at St. Catherine's. For a recent account intended to exculpate him of blame, see Erhard Lauch's article 'Nichts gegen Tischendorf' in Bekenntnis zur Kirche: Festgabe für Ernst Sommerlath zum 70. Geburtstag (Berlin, c. 1961); for an account that includes a hitherto unknown receipt given by Tischendorf to the authorities at the monastery promising to return the manuscript from Saint Petersburg 'to the Holy Confraternity of Sinai at its earliest request'.
In 13 September 1862 Constantine Simonides, a senior textual scholar, made the claim in print in The Guardian that he had written the codex himself as a young man in 1839 in the Panteleimonos monastery at Athos.[89][90] Konstantin Tischendorf, the younger antiquities dealer, was known as somewhat flamboyant, and had ambitiously sought money from several royal families for his ventures, who had indeed funded his trips. Simonides, whose name may be a synonym mocking Tischendorf, had a somewhat obscure history, as he claimed he was at Mt. Athos in the years preceding Tischendorf's contact, making the claim at least plausible. Simonides also claimed his father had passed away and the invitation to Mt. Athos came from his uncle, a monk there, but subsequent letters to his father were found among his possessions at his death. While the word 'forgery' has been bandied about among scholars regarding the claims on the Sinaiticus by Tischendorf, perhaps a more accurate rendering would be recollation and 'adjusted' restoration as Simonides, an expert on hieroglyphics which are represented throughout the Sinaiticus, was also an expert at the restoration of palimpsests, of which the Sinaiticus is one. Simonides claimed the false nature of the document in the Guardian in an exchange of letters among scholars and others, at the time. While it may be speculated that Simonides may have altered the text somewhat in an attempt to cast doubt on Tischendorf's scholarship (the motivation is not definitive as yet), he came forward. Henry Bradshaw, a British librarian known to both men, defended the Tischendorf find of the Sinaiticus, casting aside the accusations of the esteemed Simonides. Since Bradshaw was a social 'hub' among many diverse scholars of the day (including Eugenicists such as Karl Pearson and Cyril Burt, and others such as Westcott and Hort), his aiding of Tischendorf was given much weight, though by reputation and not scholarship. Simonides died shortly after, and the issue lay dormant for many years, though scholars such as Wettstein and Kenyon, initially in favor of the Codex, turned later to a modified position
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I am not an expert in these matters either. I am so busy with other things I can only focus a very small amount of attention on it. Nevertheless there is something very peculiar here. Not just with Tischendorf but the monks too. Why, if this was the same text seen by the Italian a century early did the monks no longer recognize the value of the manuscript? It's like they all suffered collective amnesia.
The only thing I can compare it with is my conversations with the monks at Mar Saba. They are all nice enough. Polite, saying 'God bless you' after each conversation, engaging. Yet I know from my Greek friends that many of them are just clueless. One of my friends was involved in the reconstruction of a library for the Alexandrian Patriarchate. The monk who managed the library up until the 90s was literally insane. Had to be carried away in a straight jacket. Cats were raising their kittens in manuscripts. Rats running around. Cockroaches. No one knowing the valuable books from a TV guide. Books falling to pieces.
Yet I wonder whether even a monastery filled with whacked out lunatics could have 'forgotten' that they had a fourth century codex which was prominently displayed a few generations earlier. It's just baffling.
Here is Tischendorf's firsthand account of the discovery:
http://books.google.com/books?id=x3N...page&q&f=false
I guess the disconnect for me is comparing the claim that the Septuagint was ready to be burned:
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In visiting the library of the monastery, in the month of May, 1844, I perceived in the middle of the great hall a large and wide basket full of old parchments; and the librarian, who was a man of information, told me that two heaps of papers like this, mouldered by time, had been already committed to the flames. What was my surprise to find amid this heap of papers a considerable number of sheets of a copy of the Old Testament in Greek, which seemed to me to be one of the most ancient that I had ever seen. The authorities of the convent allowed me to possess myself of a third of these parchments, or about forty-five sheets, all the more readily as they were destined for the fire. (p.28)
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With the emergence of the 'red cloth' story which came 15 years later, when (seemingly) the value of the manuscript had become apparent:
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he took down from the corner of the room a bulky kind of volume wrapped up in a red cloth and laid it before me. I unrolled the cover, and discovered, to my great surprise, not only these very fragments which fifteen years before I had taken out of the basket, but also other parts of the Old Testament, the New Testament complete, and in addition the Epistle of Barnabas and a part of the Pastor of Hennas. (p. 34)
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There is something very fishy here. That's all I am saying. It just doesn't add up. How did the monks 'forget' the homage they used to pay to this text?
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11-22-2011, 07:13 AM
