Who Owns the Codex Sinaiticus?

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The Codex Sinaiticus contains the oldest complete copy of the New Testament—from the mid-fourth century. Originally, it contained the Old Testament too, but most of that is now missing.

The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the big three—not Ford, GM and Chrysler, but Sinaiticus, Vaticanus and Alexandrinus—fourth- or fifth-century codices of the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) that include the New Testament as well. Vaticanus is at the 034Vatican. Alexandrinus is at the British Library. And Sinaiticus is, well, in four different places. And thereby hangs my tale.

Each venue of Sinaiticus maintains that it owns the part that resides there. The major part is at the British Library (formerly part of the British Museum) in London. A lesser part is at the University Library of Leipzig. A few fragments are in St. Petersburg at the Russian National Library. Finally, the monks of St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mt. Sinai, where it all originated, have discovered a few more leaves. The monks would like it all back.

The principal actor in this drama is a German scholar named Constantin von Tischendorf (commonly Constantine Tischendorf) of the University of Leipzig, who was the world’s leading New Testament textual critic in the mid-19th century. At that time, Biblical textual criticism was in its infancy and concentrated chiefly on resolving variants in different old Biblical manuscripts in the hope of finding the most-nearly original, the text closest to the supposed autographs.

In 1840 Tischendorf published his acclaimed critical edition of the New Testament. He soon concluded, however, that it was deficient because the most important manuscripts were probably still unknown—at least to him. He decided to devote himself to locating other ancient manuscripts on which to base his studies.¹ This would take travel and money. The Theological Faculty of the University of Leipzig gave him a letter of recommendation to the government of Saxony (Germany would not be a national entity until 1870), which awarded him a grant of 100 thalers to get him started. With this, he proceeded to Paris to explore its libraries for ancient Biblical manuscripts. It was the beginning of a journey that would take five years and cost 5,000 thalers.

He soon received additional financial support from King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony, as well as from people he called “patrons of learning” throughout Europe. From Paris he proceeded to Holland, Switzerland, England and finally Italy, where in 1843 he was received by Pope Gregory XVI. In Italy he also searched the libraries of Florence, Venice, Modena, Milan, Verona and Turin.

But even this was not enough for Tischendorf. In 1844 he decided to push on to Egypt, where he developed a special interest in the Coptic monasteries of the Libyan Desert. Ultimately he traveled to Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth. Then, before returning home in 1845, he worked his way through Anatolia.

Before leaving Egypt, he also visited St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai. There he discovered what he called 035“the pearl of my research.”

Tischendorf himself has described the occasion:

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 parchment. The librarian, who was well-informed, told me that two heaps of papers like this, mouldered by time, had already been committed to the flames. To my surprise I found amid this heap of papers a considerable number of sheets of a copy of the Old Testament in Greek [parts of Isaiah, Jeremiah, the so-called minor prophets, Chronicles, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, etc.], which seemed to me to be one of the most ancient that I had ever seen.

The authorities of the monastery allowed me to possess myself of a third of these parchments, or about forty-three sheets, all the more readily as they were destined for the fire. But I could not get them to yield up possession of the remainder.

Why could he not get the other 85 or so sheets? Tischendorf supposed that it was because he appeared to be too anxious. This eagerness “aroused [in the monks] their suspicions as to the value of this manuscript.”

On his return home, Tischendorf presented the 43 leaves to the government, designating them the Codex Friderico-Augustanus, and deposited them in the library of his university in Leipzig to join the other manuscripts that already made up the Tischendorf Collection. And so they have remained to this day.

Tischendorf, of course, wanted the other two-thirds as well. Through a friend, he approached the 036viceroy of Egypt. The friend reported back that his efforts were unavailing: “The monks of the monastery have, since your departure, learned the value of these sheets of parchment, and will not part with them at any price.”

In 1853 Tischendorf returned to the monastery but was unable to locate the sheets he had earlier seen and had been forced to leave behind. His only recovery was a fragment of 11 short lines from Genesis that came from the original codex. He brought this back, with his appetite whetted.

In 1856 Tischendorf decided to approach the Russian government, whose emperor was, after all, the head of the Orthodox Church. Tischendorf reports that his proposal to return to the monastery under the auspices of the Russian government initially met with some opposition in St. Petersburg—after all, he was a Protestant and not Russian—but finally, he reports, “the good cause triumphed.” The government even agreed to provide financial support for his travels. So in January 1859, he set sail for “the East” under the auspices of Tsar Alexander II.

With the support of such a patron, Tischendorf was warmly received at the monastery. But he was unable to find any Biblical manuscripts that had any interest for him. He instructed his camel drivers to prepare to leave for Cairo. Then he took a walk with the monastery steward (Oikonomos) outside the walls. What followed belongs to Tischendorf:

As we returned, toward 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.” … 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 037only 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. Full of joy, which this time I had the self-command to conceal from the steward and the rest of the community, I asked, as if in a careless way, for permission to take the manuscript into my sleeping chamber to look over it more at leisure.

There by myself I could give way to the transport of joy that I felt. I knew that I held in my hand the most precious Biblical treasure in existence—a document whose age and importance exceeded that of all the manuscripts that I had ever examined during twenty years’ study of the subject.

Once again, however, the question was how to pry the monks from their treasure. His first move was to ask the steward to allow him to take the manuscript to Cairo to have it copied. For this, he was told, he would need the permission of the prior (the Dikaios, who is responsible for the monastery in the archbishop’s absence) and, alas, the prior had just departed for Cairo on his way to Constantinople. When he heard this, Tischendorf immediately left for Cairo in hopes of getting there to talk to the prior before he left for Constantinople. Tischendorf arrived in time and convinced the prior of his mission. The prior sent word back to the monks at the monastery to have the manuscript brought to Cairo. Once again Tischendorf had the treasure in his hands.

While the manuscript was in Cairo, Tischendorf made a proposal to the monks that reveals his early thinking about how he would obtain the manuscript permanently—by means of a “gift” to the tsar:

The relation in which I stood to the monastery gave me the opportunity of suggesting to the monks the thought of presenting the original to the Emperor of Russia as the natural protector of the Greek Orthodox Faith. The proposal was favorably entertained, but an unexpected obstacle arose to prevent its being acted upon.

The “unexpected obstacle” involved church politics. The monks had just unanimously elected Cyril as the new archbishop of the monastery, but the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who ordinarily performed the ordinations, was fiercely opposed to Cyril’s election. The monastery sent a delegation of monks to Constantinople to plead their case, but the Sultan refused to see them. At this point, the new archbishop, still in Cairo, asked Tischendorf, in Tischendorf’s words, “to use my influence on behalf of the monastery.” Tischendorf promptly left for Constantinople. What happened next is not entirely clear. The monks appealed to other patriarchs, archbishops and bishops and ultimately were successful in having the archbishop’s election by the monks confirmed. It seems clear, however, that Tischendorf took considerble credit for this outcome:

I myself brought the news of our success back to Cairo, and with it I also brought my own special request [that the Codex Sinaiticus be presented as a gift to the tsar], backed with the support of Prince Lobanow [the Russian ambassador to the Sublime Porte].

When Tischendorf returned to the monastery, the monks and the archbishop received him 038warmly, but they would agree only to lend him the manuscript to take to St. Petersburg “to have it copied as accurately as possible.” Thus were 347 folios delivered to the Russian capital, including the complete New Testament, plus sheets of the Old Testament and several books of the apocrypha.

These were “presented” to the tsar in November 1859. It is not quite clear what it meant to be “presented,” but at the presentation Tischendorf made no mention of the manuscript’s being a gift. On the contrary, he apparently stated that “the community of Sinai had the right to ask for the manuscript’s return.”² That the Russian government understood that Tischendorf was not making a gift is clear from the fact that the manuscript was retained in the files of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “pending,” in the words of the British Library, which ultimately obtained them, “ratification of the presentation.”³ (Only in 1869, when a somewhat mysterious ratification of the gift was executed, was the manuscript removed from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and placed in the Imperial Public Library of St. Petersburg.)

Since then, much has been written about whether the monastery gave Tischendorf the manuscript to give to the tsar or had only lent it to him for copying. In 1960, Ihor Sevcenko, then a professor at Columbia University, visited Mt. Sinai and learned that a monk named Nicephorus claimed to have a receipt signed by Tischendorf at the time he received the manuscript in 1859. Two days later Nicephorus produced the receipt—in Tischendorf’s own handwriting! It read as follows (original in Greek; translation by Sevcenko):

I, the undersigned, Constantin von Tischendorf, now on mission to the Levant upon the command of Alexander, Autocrat of All the Russias, attest by these presents that the Holy Confraternity of Mount Sinai, in accordance with the letter of His Excellency Ambassador Lobanov, has delivered to me as a loan [emphasis supplied] an ancient manuscript of both Testaments, being the property of the aforesaid monastery and containing 346 folia and a small fragment. These I shall take with me to St. Petersburg in order that I may collate the copy previously made by me with the original at the time of publication of the manuscript.

The manuscript has been entrusted to me under the conditions stipulated in the aforementioned letter of Mr. Lobanov, dated September 10, 1859, Number 510. This manuscript I promise to return [emphasis supplied] undamaged and in a good state of preservation, to the Holy Confraternity of Sinai at its earliest request.

[signed] Constantin von Tischendorf Cairo, September 16/28, 1859

I myself recall seeing an English copy of this letter, in a small black frame under glass, on my first visit to the monastery in early 1973. I am told that it is still there.

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As late as January 21, 1864, Tischendorf wrote to Cyril, the monastery’s archbishop, pleading to him: “Do not delay the donation [of Sinaiticus] any longer.”⁴ The obvious implication is that no gift had yet been made. Continued efforts by Tischendorf to obtain an admission from Archbishop Cyril that a gift had been made were unsuccessful, as were efforts to have Cyril make a gift.

It was left to Cyril’s successor, Archbishop Callistratus, to provide the Russian authorities with a confirmatory deed of gift. This was done only in 1869, 10 years after Tischendorf had taken the manuscript from the monastery. Although the deed of gift has often been referred to since then and even quoted in existing documents, it has yet to be published. Sevcenko says that his investigation indicates that the deed of gift was obtained “by the use of pressures that deserve closer scrutiny.”⁵ Callistratus himself expressed “bitter complaints” that the manuscript had been “purloined” from the monastery.⁶ In the words of the Russian diplomat who negotiated the “donation,” he wanted to put “an end to the story of the Sinai Bible [that had been] stolen by us.”⁷

After the Russian Revolution, St. Petersburg became Leningrad, and the library housing the Codex Sinaiticus became part of the Soviet Union. In the 1930s the Soviet government was desperately in need of hard currency and began selling off art and rare books from its nationalized museums. In 1931 a prominent London bookseller named Ernest Maggs traveled to the Soviet Union with a colleague, Maurice Ettinghausen, who was both a bookseller and a scholar. There they hoped to acquire some rare books. When they saw the priceless Codex Sinaiticus, Ettinghausen remarked to his hosts, “If you ever want to sell it, let me know.”

Some time later, Maggs received a postcard saying that the Soviet government would be prepared to sell the Codex Sinaiticus for 200,000 pounds. The British group countered with 40,000 pounds. Finally, a price of 100,000 pounds was agreed upon. This was the largest price that had ever been paid for a book. It was an enormous sum at the time. The British government agreed to pay half the amount and guaranteed the remainder if it were not raised by public subscription.

The public appeal was orchestrated by Sir Frederic Kenyon, the father of Kathleen Kenyon who would become a famous archaeologist and the excavator of Jericho and Jerusalem. The British prime minister at the time, Ramsay MacDonald, desired, by the public subscription, to associate the whole nation with the project. As Scot McKendrick, the head of the British Library’s Western Manuscripts division, recently told me, “He wanted to involve the national government and the whole nation in saving the Codex Sinaiticus from the Soviet scourge.”

The Codex Sinaiticus arrived in London in December 1933. “It was a huge event,” McKendrick went on. “It was installed in the front hall of the British Museum. Over 5,000 people queued up to see it.” A box was placed next to the exhibit where people could drop their coins. Thousands of British children contributed their pennies.

Ultimately, the public subscription raised more than half the cost of the manuscript. The government was required to pay only 41,440 pounds. Still, there were dissenting voices in Parliament:

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“Monstrous,” cried Laborite John Joseph Tiner. “I have seen this thing in the British Museum and I call it useless. If scholars like such things, let them buy them and leave this 40,000 pounds to be spent for the relief of poverty and distress.”

James Maxton, another member of Parliament and a supporter of Ramsey MacDonald, replied: “Would the Labor Party allow St. Paul’s to collapse or sell the pictures in the National Gallery merely because, until now, the majority may not see anything in them? … The Government must have a sense of proportion … There are many things in this country of which the vast majority of voters are unappreciative … Is the Government not to have the right to have the courage to say, ‘This is a thing that England ought to possess’?”

The 347 leaves are still the highlight of the exthe hibit at the British Library, where they now reside.

The 11-line fragment of Genesis that Tischendorf obtained on his second visit to the monastery and a mutilated fragment of the last leaf of the codex remain in St. Petersburg. And the full name of the codex remains Codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus.

On May 26, 1975, during repairs to the monastery, workmen demolished a wall and unexpectedly came upon a small room containing chests with manuscripts of great importance. Among the manuscripts were pages thought to be missing leaves from the Codex Sinaiticus! In August 1977 Savas Agourides, professor at the Theological School of the Panepistemion Athenon, visited the monastery and was given access to these newly discovered 041leaves. He later reported to James H. Charlesworth, now of Princeton Theological Seminary, about his experience. He was almost overcome with excitement. He told Charlesworth: “I was trembling, and time was too short for reading it. To my surprise I think that I was holding four pages of Genesis from Codex Sinaiticus. Father Sophronios was very generous; for more than five minutes he allowed me to hold and read lines from it.”⁸

Charlesworth wrote a report in an American scholarly journal.⁹ Apparently incensed at Charlesworth’s unauthorized public disclosure, the monastery turned inward and no further word would come from Mt. Sinai. Charlesworth visited the monastery in 1979 in an attempt to heal the breach. The archbishop would not even see him. In a report on this trip, Charlesworth asked, “Have the monks hid them again?”¹⁰

In a 1980 article Charlesworth laments that “apparently the Archbishop of the monastery conceals them.”¹¹

However, with a new project initiated in 2005, all that is about to change.

Originally, the Codex Sinaiticus contained approximately 730 folios, of which a little more than 400 have been recovered. Of these, 347 leaves (or, to be precise, 346.5 leaves; half of the last one is missing) are in the British Library, 43 are in the University Library of Leipzig, fragments of 5 leaves are in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg, and 11 leaves and 14 fragments are in St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mt. Sinai.

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There is no question that the entire Codex Sinaiticus came from St. Catherine’s, although scholars are also clear that conditions were not such in the mid-fourth century that it could have been produced there. In the words of Philip Mayerson, a leading scholar on this issue: “Life itself for the Sinai solitaries was a struggle to provide the means for keeping body and soul together and to survive the periodic attacks of marauding bedouins.”¹²

The Codex Sinaiticus, like so many of St. Catherine’s fabulous icons, was produced elsewhere sometime in the Byzantine period and was later brought to the monastery. When and from where, we cannot know for sure. Mayerson suggests that the most likely origin was Caesarea Maritima, which reached its apogee in the Byzantine period. Some have speculated that the Codex Sinaiticus may even be one of the 50 Bibles the emperor Constantine commissioned Eusebius, the church historian and bishop of Caesarea, to prepare after making Christianity a legal religion in the Roman Empire.

I recently asked the monastery’s librarian, Father Justin Sinaites, if the monastery still wanted the Codex Sinaiticus back. “Idealistically speaking, of course, because it’s one of the great treasures. However, we’ve agreed to set aside our differences in order to pursue this collaboration.”

He was referring to an unusual project initiated in June 2005 by the four venues with leaves from the Codex Sinaiticus to digitize and conserve the manuscript, as well as to make it more accessible to scholars and the public.

At first, the archbishop of the monastery, Archbishop Damianos, did not want anything to do with the project, in the words of Father Justin. “But then people who knew about the project and knew the archbishop presented the case that this is an extremely important project and in spite of 043our differences, it was worth considering.”

The archbishop then agreed to meet in Athens with representatives of the British Library. There the archbishop insisted that the project must include a study of the recent history of the codex (since Tischendorf), how it was taken from the monastery and what happened to it since. And this was agreed.

Scot McKendrick, who is the point man at the British Library for the project, attended the Athens meeting and described it to me as “a very honest and constructive meeting” that resulted in an agreement in principle: “We would face up to the facts of the modern history. The significance of the codex, however, is sufficient to make parties who have had disagreements in the past work together. We’ve all gone into this to face up to what the facts of the case are.”

Father Justin explained how this investigation of the recent history will proceed:

Each institution is responsible for collecting the archives on the recent history. Then the agreement is that scholars approved by the four institutions will investigate all of this and then draft a recent history that would itself be approved by all four participating institutions. I think that it’s going to be enormously difficult. We might even find that it is impossible. But that’s the goal that we’ve set ourselves. It should go far toward solving the antagonism that has existed in the past.

Will the Codex Sinaiticus find rest at last?

The Codex Sinaiticus contains the oldest complete copy of the New Testament—from the mid-fourth century. Originally, it contained the Old Testament too, but most of that is now missing. The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the big three—not Ford, GM and Chrysler, but Sinaiticus, Vaticanus and Alexandrinus—fourth- or fifth-century codices of the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) that include the New Testament as well. Vaticanus is at the 034Vatican. Alexandrinus is at the British Library. And Sinaiticus is, well, in four different places. And thereby hangs my tale. Each venue of Sinaiticus maintains that it […]