were the 1859 leaves taken by theft? -

Steven Avery

Administrator
were the 1859 leaves taken by theft? -

In a certain sense the taking of the manuscript was clearly a type of theft, since it was written up as a loan in 1859 that was turned into a donation or exchange under duress. Possession is 90% of the law, and in the 1860s, when the negotiations took place, the manuscript was now in Russia. They had the physical leverage and a lot of spiritual-political leverage (influencing the monastery politics.) Thus, someone pointing to a 1869 document as vindication of the "loan" is clearly a charade. The Sinai monastery was not going to retrieve the manuscript no matter what at that point, and they thus sought for the best deal possible under the circumstances.

However this thread will not look at the 1859-1869 loan-gift-exchange questions, those are well documented everywhere. Although we may include a little bibliography below, with a special emphasis on the 2005 article of Michael D. Peterson. The purpose here is to give the alternate history account, that the 1859 leaves were a heist, hushed up, as described by barrister William George Thorpe (1832-1899) and discussed in other sources. Then we plan to conclude with our discussion of alternate histories.

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Travis McDade
https://medium.com/@travis.mcdade

I am a rare books curator who writes and teaches on the subject of rare book theft. My latest book is called Torn From Their Bindings. Books books books.

The Bin of Plenty

Travis McDade - Nov. 25, 2013
http://blog.oup.com/2013/11/fake-finding-rare-items-in-trash-library-theft/


Breithaupt, as it happens, paid a fairly stiff price for his crimes. Nineteenth century Biblical scholar Constantin Von Tischendorf, on the other hand, parlayed his trash finding story into celebrity...

In 1844, he travelled across North Africa and arrived, eventually, at St. Catherine’s Monastery on the Sinai Peninsula. It was, he later claimed, in the monastery’s library that he noticed a basket full of papers “mouldered by time,” being consigned to flames for the sake of heat. He “rescued” from this trash basket some 86 pages of what turned out to be a fourth century Bible, and brought them back to Leipzig. In an age when fire was a major threat to books, saving one from the flames must have struck Tischendorf as an entirely believable tale — never mind that parchment (which is animal skin, after all) does not burn well enough to be a good source of heat. But aside from that, to accept his rescued-from-refuse claim, a person would have to believe that, after some fifteen hundred years of existence, monks were burning the oldest extant copy of the Bible, in the library, on the very day that a man professed to be searching for things exactly like that just happened to be there. In any event, Tischendorf’s story is somewhat undercut by the fact that he returned years later and stole/borrowed/bought (depending upon who is asked) the rest of the manuscript containing the New Testament.


It is tempting to think that 19th century folks were more credulous, and believed the story as Tischendorf wrote it. Some did, of course — like some continue to believe Breithaupt. But here is the 1892 judgment of noted Englishman and book collector W. G. Thorpe ....

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William George Thorpe (1828-1903) was in Egypt and Cairo about 1860 (see p. 50 in Still Life)

The still life of the Middle Temple (1892)
William George Thorpe
https://books.google.com/books?id=7ekyAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA230
p. 230-232


But as to stealing books. The thing is not only sometimes lawful, but even meritorious, and one man will go to heaven for it—in fact, has gone there already. The mode in which Tischendorf ran off with the 'Codex Sinaiticus' in 1839 may be described as anything you please, from theft under trust to hocussing and felony; but it succeeded, and all Christendom was glad thereof. It is the custom of the Greek monk to worship like Jacob, standing, leaning on the top of his staff, and he protects his feet from the cold ground by putting under them a good thick volume from the library. Such was the position occupied by this priceless treasure, perhaps the oldest MS. of all we have got to trust in, when Tischendorf first saw it; and he resolved to rescue it somehow, for they would not sell it. The great German was equal to the task ; he provided himself with good store of Clicquot and Hoffmann's cherry-brandy, which, mixed on Mr. Weller's 'ekal' principle, form a compound called 'Prince Regent.' He then set himself to drink the Abbot of St. Catharine's on Mount Sinai blind-drunk, and it took him three days to get that Churchman under the table ; then the library key could be got from under his petticoats, and the priceless volume carried off, all the rest of the caloyers and lay brethren being kept on the booze by minoragents. The escort kept in readiness was at once summoned, and Tischendorf himself carried the precious volume. Onward to Suez, across the desert, when a pursuit was descried. Someone had woke up, detected the theft, and the Bedawin, who depend on the monastery, were started in hot chase. Indeed, it was only by two hundred yards that the Russian Consulate was gained in safety, after which ample money satisfaction was forthcoming, and the story was hushed up.

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Middle Temple Table Talk (1894 or 95)

William George Thorpe
http://books.google.com/books?id=YXg1AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA320
p. 320-322


In a former volume I related a story as to how Tischendorf obtained the Codex Sinaiticus, which has been questioned by two correspondents, but which I have been unable to alter in any way. The story was current at the time in the Suez Bazaar, whither resorted the Cossacks from the Russian Consulate. After a time it was hushed by authority, owing, it is said, to a compensation of 200,000 francs, or , £8,000, having been paid by Russia, which had likewise gently hinted that the monastery revenues in the Dobrudscha were not quite out of the reach of a Russian administrator. Tischendorf relates his own joy over his prize when he got into Cairo; he writes that it was impossible to get to sleep,—possibly due to the racking headache which Prince Regent (otherwise champagne and cherry-brandy in equal proportions) leaves behind it. Even now, in 1894, the monks bear an unaccountable grudge against Tischendorf, call him a thief, and say he borrowed some of their books to show to the Czar, which he never returned. Moreover, this beneficent larcenist absolutely tried on a trick of the same kind some years after. [Vatican account, 1866]

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Bernard Janin Sage (1821-1902) writing as P. C. (plain common) Sense, looked at the Thorpe account:


A Critical and Historical Enquiry Into the Origin of the Third Gospel - (1901)

P. C. Sense
http://books.google.com/books?id=QnlCAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA298
p. 298-300

Codex Sinaiticus. This contains the Old and New Testaments complete, and the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. It is at present in the Imperial Library at St Petersburg, but was found by Tischendorf in 1859 1 in the library of the Monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai. The circumstances attending its acquisition are gravely amusing, and are thus described in a work published in 1892, called The Still Lift of the Middle Temple, with some of its Table Talk, preceded by Fifty Years' Reminiscences, by W. G. Thorpe, K.S.A., a barrister of the Society (Richard Bentley & Son).

[William George Thorpe account p. 298-299]

1 The date is variously given by different writers. Mr Thorpe says 1839, Mrs Lewis 1844. and Dean Alford and most authorities 1859.


... Scrivener also obscurely speaks of Tischendorf having "taught the monks a sharp lesson," without entering into details. But he more definitely says that "the treasure, which had been twice withdrawn from him as a private traveller, was now [1859], on the occasion of some chance conversation, spontaneously put into the hands of one sent from the champion and benefactor of the oppressed Church" (Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, ch. ii. sect. 2, Aleph). The reader is requested to compare Dr Scrivener's representation with that of Mr Thorpe. In the article ' Tischendorf in the Encyclopedia Britannica, the statement is made that in the journey to the East made in 1859, Tischendorf "had the active aid of the Russian Government, he at length got access to the remainder of the precious Sinaitic Codex, and persuaded the monks to present it to the Czar, at whose cost it was published in 1862." The reader is again requested to compare with Mr Thorpe's account. The amount of compensation paid to the monastery, and the honorarium presented to Tischendorf by the Russian Government,
for this Codex, ought to be published, for they form an important part of the history of the Gospel, which is very much, if not altogether, a commercial enterprise, as well as of the modern history of the Codex Sinaiticus. Dr Hort informs us that select readings from the Codex were published in 1860, and a continuous text in 1862.

P. C. Sense is also interesting on Simonides, making a few points.

One example: he notes that Scivener accepted that Simonides had worked on some similar ms.

1683542939197.png


... Scrivener in his Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, ch. ii. sect, a, refers to the Introduction to his Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus "for a statement of the reasons which have been universally accepted as conclusive why the manuscript which Simonides may very well have written under the circumstances he has described neither was nor possibly could be that venerable document." It would appear from these words that the statement of Simonides is not questioned, but the identity of the Codex Simoneidos with the Codex Sinaiticus is. (continues)

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In 1894 James Rendel Harris tried to downplay the reports of the theft, even while criticizing the Gregory acceptance of the Tischendorf stories:

The Expositor (1908)

Dr. Gregory on the Canon and Text of the New Testament
http://books.google.com/books?id=xuYqAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA138


... the famous Codex Sinaiticus for St. Petersburg. It is a mere misrepresentation of those who have put in an ethical objection to the way in which the document was alienated from the convent of St. Katharine, to ask them whether they really supposed Tischendorf carried off the book under his waistband—no one ever suggested anything of the kind.

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Suspicions were being voiced by his enemies that he had even 'stolen' the manuscript. Indeed, the Russian ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Prince N.P. Ignatieff, who had now taken over negotiating with the monks of St Catherine's, quite openly used such words in speaking and writing about the Sinai Bible. - Secrets of Mount Sinai, Bentley p. 105

This is quite consistent with the Thorpe report of a hushed-up theft.

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1859-1869 - (check "resources" for Peterson et al.)

Helpful on 1859-1869 are Peterson and Bentley, Peterson for detail, Bentley for overview.


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." Bentley p. 95
Religious life on Mount Sinai, said Tischendorf, "has deteriorated into a daily burden of prescribed and ungraciously observed devotions, and to a meager bill of fare according to detailed rules for fast days." Soon he was attributing to the monks positive hypocrisy over their religious way of life.... The awkward truth is that this great German Christian scholar soon grew to hate the monks of Mount Sinai to an astonishing degree. Only eight days after he had arrived at the monastery of St. Catherine, he wrote to Angelika, "Oh, these monks! If I had the military strength and power, 1 should be doing a good deed if I threw this rabble over the walls. It is sad to see how man can carry his baseness and wretchedness into the lofty grandeur of this mountain world." He continually described them as "ignorant." The Greek servant they provided for him was a 'half-witted fellow.' Their library was 'a poor place, to which no-one in the monastery paid much attention.' The new room in which they kept some of their books and manuscripts was 'pathetic.' It was perhaps this hatred of these despised monks that enabled Tischcndorf to steal from them their greatest treasure. Bentley p. 84-85
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
the consulate was involved in the 1859 'loan' - the months in Cairo

Multidisciplinary Conference on the Sinai Desert
Abstracts
Nikolaos Fyssas
A Sinai Tale of Diplomats and Scholars: The Case of Codex Sinaiticus

In 1859 K. Tischendorf, under the auspice of the Russian Embassy in Constantinople (Egypt was a part of the Ottoman Empire then) received from the Holy Sinai Monastery as a loan the Codex Sinaiticus, the famous 4th century manuscript of the Greek Bible, in order to carry it to Russia for publication. It was the Ambassador himself who guaranteed in writing the terms of the loan: the manuscript should be returned To Sinai, while it remained inalienable property of the Monastery during all this procedure. Nevertheless. Codex Sinaiticus remained In Russia, and the whole case was further manipulated by the Russian Ambassador N. Ignatiev. The income of the monastery from its properties in Bessarabia was confiscated, while -exercising his influence on Ottoman authorities- Ignatiev achieved that the new abbot of the monastery would be denied official recognition by the State. The Sinai brotherhood strived hard not to succumb to extortion. Unpublished documents from the Monastery's archives throw light on these events and on backstage diplomacy, not only for the period 1859-1869, but even for 1933, when Codex Sinaiticus was sold by the Soviet Government to the British Museum.

Nikolaos Fyssas (PhD 2012. Athens) is curator of the Sinaitic Archive of Monuments (Mount Sinai Foundation - Athens) and vice-director of the Hellenic Archaeological Mission of the University of Athens at South Sinai since 1998. Since 1997 he is a scientific collaborator of the Georgian Institute at Athens.


Why was the ambassador involved in the guarantee. See the account given by William George Thorpe. They were covering up the theft, when the manuscript was taken to the consulate.

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The time in Cairo also has its own puzzles.

This was a great time for private handling of the ms. by Tischendorf. Supposedly a full copy was made, one that simply vanished and was never mentioend. The mystery Germans were involved. Some accounts referred to 8 leaves at a time.

This can use its own study.
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
the Golden ms in the mix of the 1859 cover stories - transmission to copy in Cairo

Edinburgh Review (July, 1859)
Dr. Cureton's Syriac Gospels
Samuel Tregelles
https://books.google.com/books?id=netTAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA190


A few months ago, however, Professor Tischendorf again went in the employ of the Emperor of Russia to the Convent of St. Catharine at Mount Sinai, to examine a copy of the Scriptures which was reported to be there, designated as the golden MS. (the age of which was said to be very great), and also to investigate the other treasures of antiquity in the same library. He found the golden MS. to be less ancient than he expected; he was able to negotiate for its transmission to him to collate or copy at Cairo, and then for its transfer for sufficient consideration to the Imperial Library.

It looks here that it took a while for Tischendorf to straighten out his cover story. His goal was given as the Golden ms. the Evangelium Theodosium.

We are used to hearing about the Sinaiticus ms. being the one sent to Cairo for copying. And the Golden ms is not in the equation. Yet here we have the basic story about Cairo and copying applied to the Golden ms., later when that Tischendorf story was given as part of his red cloth fabric-ations, he related the account to Sinaiticus -- with no mention of the Golden ms!

Creative lying. Likely to cover up the actual theft, as given by Thorpe from people in Cairo at the time. Tischendorf had floated one story to Tregelles, and then changed it around.


But if the golden MS. were less important than Professor Tischendorf had expected, he has been able to describe another Greek MS., the value of which can hardly be estimated too highly, if the reality at all resembles the accounts in circulation. Professor Tischendorf, in writing to the Saxon Minister Von Falkenstein, says that this MS. is of the fourth century (contemporaneous therefore with the Vatican MS.), that it contains a large portion of the whole of the New Testament, followed by the Greek text of the Epistle of Barnabas, and a portion of the Shepherd of Hermas. The number of leaves is stated to be 346 ... Until we have further information, we must suppose that Professor Tischendorf has obtained another and most important portion of the 'Codex Friderico-Augustanus' itself. Its value is probably as great in the New Testament as it is in that portion of the LXX which has been available for some years in the lithographed facsimile.

Note that Tischendorf was not stating that this is the same ms., that had to be pieced together by reviewers of his writing. My conjecture is simple. The mss looked physically too different, one was white and consistent, the other was yellow and stained and inconsistent, so he preferred not to link them together.

The acceptance of dumb Cureton ideas, like connecting the Syriac ms with a Hebrew Matthew, is typical Tregelles naivete. Others at the time, like P. N. Land from Holland, ripped the Cureton scholarship to shreds.
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
Confirmation of the midnight ride theft - see note from James Finn
Note, also they did not know of the Uspensky books.

The Mount Sinai manuscript of the Bible (1935-4th edition)
https://archive.org/details/mountsinaimanusc0000brit_e2m8/page/n11/mode/2up
https://apostolicbible.com/mountsinai.pdf

By Feb the leaves were in the Russian Consulate!

It was during this time (in May) that he was seen by Mr. James Finn, Consul for Jerusalem and Palestine, at Jerusalem.3 Mr. Finn's diary contains a somewhat confused account of the case.

3 Diary of Mr. Finn, quoted by Miss Constance Finn in The Times, 1 February 1934. Her letter is inaccurate in giving the impression that Tischendorf had the Codex with him; what the diary actually says is that he had had the Codex ‘conveyed to St Petersburgh in original’. Even this is incorrect; as we shall see, Tischendorf did not take the Codex until September of that year. A year later, 1 May 1860, the Archimandrite Porphyrius Uspenski (afterwards Bishop of Chirgin) told the diarist that he had discovered the Codex some time before and published something about it. This is the usual claim put forward in such circumstances by some one who ‘knew about it all the time’. Doubtless after Tischendorf found the 129 leaves in the waste-paper basket in 1844., Porphyrius or others looked for the rest and found it. What Porphyrius did do was, after Tischendorf’s first visit, to find in the binding of another book fragments of two leaves. This was in 1845. In 1863 he published a Russian brochure attacking the orthodoxy of the Codex. Porphyrius also told Mr. Finn that Tischendorf arrived at Sinai just when the Archbishopric was vacant, and promised Cyril, the ambitious president of the convent, to have him made Archbishop if he would make a present of the manuscript to the Russian Emperor. ‘This bargain has been fulfilled on both sides.’ We have to thank Miss Finn for permission to consult the actual text of the diary
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
The Double Steal

CARM - 2022
https://forums.carm.org/threads/is-the-worlds-oldest-bible-a-fake.11375/post-938048


"Among the documents discovered during the past few years is the already mentioned June 1862 dossier of the Russian Minister of Education, Alexandeer Vasilevic Golovnin...Much more seriously, he [Golovnin] reflected on the ownership of the Codex. Here the siutation was complicated indeed. The Russian ambassador in Constantinople, Prince Lobanov, had provided a pesonal guaratee for the Codex during the time of its loan in September 1859 (the receipt for the manuscript was signed by Tischendorf). " (Bottrich, in "Codex Sinaiticus: New Perspectives on an Ancient Manuscript," 2015: 178)

I don't know too many people who sign receipts when they steal stuff.

This was long after Tischendorf stole the manuscript. Remember, James and Constance Finn confirm he had the ms. in January, 1859 at the Russian Consulate, which fits the theft report given by William George Thorpe, also reported by Bernard Janin Sage.

Then Tischendorf was holed up in the Russian Consulate with the ms. and there were negotiations. With possession being 99%, they had the upper hand.

This led to the later signature in 1859, about which this article is very helpful.

New documents on Constantine Tischendorf and the Codex Sinaiticus (1964)
Ihor Sevcenko
https://www.persee.fr/doc/scrip_0036-9772_1964_num_18_1_3197

You can read about the 1859 letter there and I want to highlight the fact that the Russians:

Russian Ambassador to Constantinople starting 1864.
Count Nikolai Pavlovich Ignatiev
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolay_Pavlovich_Ignatyev

even acknowledged that a theft was involved.


As for the "alleged admission by Count Ignatiew, in private letters” (and thus presumably of inferior value as testimony) to the effect "that he had 'stolen’ the Codex,” the pamphlet writes it off as a joke on the part of that astute diplomat (ibidem, p. 11). But that ”alleged” admission is printed for all to read in Dmitrievskij’s work (as in note 6 supra), which the authors of the British Museum pamphlet did not directly quote, but of whose existence they were aware. If they took the trouble to read Ignat’ev’s correspondence published there, they would have realized that Ignat’ev wrote in dead earnest and that, incidentally, he did not say that he had stolen the Codex, but that the Codex had been “stolen by us,” I.e., by Russia.

Sevcenko also points out errors of the British Museum related to Uspensky.

And does the "he" of Ignatiev mean Russia, or more directly, Tischendorf?

There was actually a double steal.
Getting the manuscript to the Russian Consulate, and then a veneer of legitimacy through the negotiations.

And Kallinikos gives additional details about the steal, including the use of Prince Regent (liquor) by Tischendorf.
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
David Daniels pointed out that the days did not really work and comments in Faked.

Who Faked the “World’s Oldest Bible”
P.317-318


"From the 13th to the 23rd is just 10 days! And this is going down to St. Catherine's and coming bacK! I almost wonder if the Codex wasn't already in the process of being brought to Cairo, say, by Kyrillos"

This is strong confirmation of the Dromedary Express of the Midnight Ride of Tischendorf Revere.




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1683255405047.png



Camels can do about 30 miles a day, and the trip is over 280 miles.
Eight days one way is possible, but not five.


Die Sinaibibel: ihre Entstehung, Herausgabe und Erwerbung (1871)
https://books.google.com/books?id=uhhKAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA15

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Steven Avery

Administrator
Documenting the last post:


A Full Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus with the Received Text of the New Testament
By F. H. A. Scrivener
1864

Introduction
Page 8


'Barnabas he transcribed that same night, and soon obtained a letter from Cyril the librarian to the superiors of the monastery at St. Catherine’s in Cairo, which procured for him-permission to copy the manuscript in the latter place, to which it was brought for that purpose on February 24. ."
 

Steven Avery

Administrator
The Featherstone family letters of Tischendorf give their own confused account of the times in Sinai and Cairo. (Note that these were subject to selection and transcription and a bit of rewrite and there is an apparent reluctance to make them fully available.)

They do not give any support to the Tischendorf claim of 8 leaves (or folia, need to check) a day to the Consulate, but they do have one sentence on March 30, 1859 that says.
“Yesterday he collected the last 125 folia from the monastery”

Tischendorf account in 1859 in correspondence
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php?threads/tischendorf-account-in-1859-in-corresondence.3062/

the two Germans in Cairo helping Tischendorf - where is that copy today?
https://www.purebibleforum.com/inde...ing-tischendorf-where-is-that-copy-today.185/

searching for the letters of Tischendorf book quoted by Featherstone
https://www.purebibleforum.com/inde...tischendorf-book-quoted-by-featherstone.3067/
 
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