Who Owns the Codex Sinaiticus?
How the monks at Mt. Sinai got conned
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Endnotes
The following account is taken from Tischendorf’s Memoire sur la decouverte et l’antiquite du Codex Sinaiticus, read at a Meeting of the Royal Society of Literature, February 15, 1865.
Ihor Sevcenko, “New Documents on Constantine Tischendorf and the Codex Sinaiticus,” Scriptorium 18 (1964), p. 67.
From the description of The Codex Sinaiticus in the Manuscripts Catalogue of the British Library.
Sevcenko, “New Documents on Constantine Tischendorf and the Codex Sinaiticus,” p. 78, esp. n. 75. The monastery’s money and property in Russia had been sequestered pending clarification of Cyril’s status as archbishop. The sequestration had never been lifted even though Cyril’s appointment had been confirmed and, since then, Callistratus had succeeded Cyril as archbishop. A prominent Russian diplomat and military leader, N.P. Ignat’ev negotiated the deed of gift with Callistratus. Ignat’ev apparently argued that if the monastery would make a gift of Sinaiticus to the tsar, the sequestration of the monastery’s property and monies would be lifted.
Savas Agourides and James H. Charlesworth, “A New Discovery of Old Manuscripts on Mt. Sinai: A Preliminary Report,” Biblical Archaeologist (BA) 41, no. 1 (1978), p. 29.
James H. Charlesworth, “St. Catherine’s Monastery: Myths and Mysteries,” BA 42, no. 3 (1979), p. 174.
James H. Charlesworth, “The Manuscripts of St. Catherine’s Monastery,” Biblical Archaeologist, vol. 43, no. 1 (1980), p. 26.