Endnote 1 – Hero or Thief? Constantine Tischendorf Turns Two Hundred

While Codex Bezae is not one of the manuscripts that Tischendorf edited, there is a legend that I note in my recent book that he was involved with this important codex as well. The Codex Bezae was kept in the Library at Cambridge, and sometime near the end of the 19th century it was noted that the leaves at the end of the codex were absent. When they investigated who had last used the codex, they found it was Tischendorf. After writing to Leipzig about the missing pages, the library received them through the mail with a note explaining that Tischendorf was not able to finish with them before leaving Cambridge, so he took them with him in order to complete his research. It is an interesting legend, but there is no paperwork to support this story. See Stanley E. Porter, Constantine Tischendorf: The Life and Work of a 19th Century Bible Hunter, Including Constantine Tischendorf’s When Were Our Gospels Written? (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), pp. 62–63.