D.A., my sources on Tischendorf are essentially four: (1) the New Finds catalog from St. Catherine’s Monastery; (2) discussions with the librarian there about Tischendorf, spanning now several years; (3) my own visit to the monastery in 2002 so I could see for myself what the aura of the place was like; and (4) the handwritten note that Tischendorf wrote to the monastery before he left Cairo in 1859 when he took Sinaiticus with him. That note is not well known to outsiders. But it was genuine and definitely written by Tischendorf.

[...] Lobegott Tischendorf [...]

Dan,

Interesting comments on Tischendorf – would love to know your source
materials for the updated opinions. I also have some thoughts/responses
on your other comments as well – as I am new to blogs (and rather a
labored typist) – I will need some time to set down my thoughts in an
ordered fashion. These next two weeks are extremely busy – day and
evening meetings – look for them the first week of Sept. as I look forward
to dialogue.

Great blog entry and great commentary on it Dan. Thanks!!! It is a
fascinating story.

Thank you for the great summary on the greatest discovery made by the greatest New Testament textual critic who has ever lived! This should help many believers to understand the importance of this discipline for their lives and faith.

I do have a couple of questions and corrections to make, however, about the blog. Your comment that the leaves of the Septuagint “matched almost flawlessly” with modern translations was confusing. Are you saying modern translations of the Septuagint? If so, then this means that the copies of the Septuagint (or LXX) that were already known to exist did not differ significantly from the text of Sinaiticus. That seems to be a bit of an overstatement to me. There are many differences between the manuscripts in these books of the Old Testament. What is the source of your information that says that Tischendorf “found that the texts matched almost flawlessly”?

Second, although it is true that Tischendorf recorded in his journal that the monks were burning copies of the scriptures in their fires, this has come to be seriously doubted in light of the New Finds Manuscripts. Discovered in 1975 at St. Catherine’s, they reveal that the attitude of the monks and priests in the 1800s toward their manuscripts was preservation at all costs. The library moved from one side of the compound to the other in that era, and when the books were transported several loose leaves were left behind most likely because the monks didn’t know which manuscripts they belonged to. But in 1975, a fire broke out in one of the kitchens close to the old library. When the fire was put out, the monks peered through the charred floorboards of the kitchen floor and saw beneath them a storehouse or geniza, filled with manuscripts. The geniza had been boarded up for more than a century. Once the priests found a way to get into it, they were amazed at what they found: hundreds of manuscripts! After a quarter of a century, a catalogue was produced of the discoveries. It reveals over 1200 manuscripts and speaks of more than 50,000 fragments of manuscripts! Included in the list are 26 leaves from Codex Sinaiticus, from the Hexateuch and apostolic fathers. In other words, the endsof Codex Sinaiticus. The latest manuscript that they discovered was from the eighteenth century. The evidence points to a monasterial modus operandi that speaks loudly against Tischendorf’s claim that the monks were burning books. One suspects that he wrote this so that his removal of manuscripts from Sinai would look like a rescue operation and thereby gain sympathy in Europe.

Third, although it is often claimed that a gift was given to the monastery for Sinaiticus, it might be better to see this more as hush money. Tischendorf left a note with the monks that said essentially that he was borrowing the manuscript and would bring it back when they requested. The Czar seemed to turn this loan into a gift and decided the manuscript was too precious to send back.

So, on the one hand, Tischendorf did indeed make a great discovery—the oldest complete New Testament in any language by 500 years! On the other hand, his telling of the story does not seem to completely fit in with the historical evidence. The monks and priests of Sinai need to be absolved of the carelessness they have been accused of.

Finally, the “almost word for word” correspondence between modern translations and the ancient manuscripts is again a bit of an overstatement. As folks who read Parchment and Pen know, I am a strong defender of the essential reliability of the New Testament manuscripts. But at the same time, even if we had the original documents intact, we would not say that any translation comes close to corresponding almost word for word. And with the hundreds of thousands of textual variants for the New Testament alone—the vast majority of which are inconsequential—I don’t think it’s entirely accurate to speak of word for word accuracy.