The German Theologian Who Found a 4th-Century Greek Bible Manuscript in a Wastebasket at Saint Catherine's Monastery in May 1844

Constantin von Tischendorf (1815–1874) was a 29-year-old theologian at Leipzig University when he sailed in 1844 for the Eastern Mediterranean on the first of three Sinai expeditions. He was looking for old biblical manuscripts. He had been told that the oldest functioning Christian monastic libraries in the Eastern Roman tradition — most prominently Saint Catherine’s at the foot of Mount Sinai — might contain manuscripts older than anything in European hands.

The European-held complete Greek Bibles of 1844 were the Codex Alexandrinus (5th century) at the British Museum and the Codex Vaticanus (4th century) at the Vatican, plus partial Greek New Testaments going back to about 200 CE. The 4th-century Vaticanus had been at the Vatican since at least 1475 but was kept under restrictive access; Tischendorf was unable to consult it personally during a 1843 Rome visit.

He arrived at Saint Catherine’s in May 1844.

The wastebasket

Tischendorf spent several days in the monastery library. On approximately his third day he noticed a wide basket of old vellum and paper material in a side room. The monk-librarian told him the material was about to be burned for fuel — the previous winter two similar basketfuls had already gone into the kitchen stove.

In the basket Tischendorf saw 43 vellum leaves of an unfamiliar Greek uncial script. The leaves were Old Testament. He examined them, recognised them as 4th-century, and quietly suggested to the monks that the basket’s contents were too valuable to burn. The monks acceded; Tischendorf was permitted to take 43 leaves back to Leipzig as a gift, with the understanding that the remainder would be preserved at the monastery.

The 43 leaves comprised parts of 1 Chronicles, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, and Esther. Tischendorf published them in 1846 as the Codex Friderico-Augustanus — named after his patron, King Friedrich August II of Saxony, who had funded the expedition.

He did not tell anyone where the leaves had come from.

1859

Tischendorf returned to Saint Catherine’s twice — in 1853 (unsuccessfully; the additional leaves had been hidden by the monks, who had concluded after his 1846 publication that he had not been candid about the value) and in February 1859.

The 1859 visit was under Russian government patronage. Tsar Alexander II had agreed to fund the expedition specifically to secure the manuscript. On 4 February 1859 — the day before he was to leave — a junior monk named Cyril showed Tischendorf a complete bound set of additional leaves wrapped in a red cloth.

The leaves contained essentially the complete Greek Old Testament, the entire Greek New Testament, the Epistle of Barnabas, and most of the Shepherd of Hermas. Tischendorf recognised that he was holding the most complete and oldest Greek Bible in Europe.

He returned to the monks’ negotiating position over the following nine months and eventually persuaded them to present the manuscript to Tsar Alexander II as a gift, in exchange for counter-gifts (about 9,000 rubles, four ecclesiastical decorations, and the gift of a silver shrine for the monastery). The manuscript reached Saint Petersburg in November 1859.

What it is

The Codex Sinaiticus is a mid-4th-century Greek Bible — probably produced at Caesarea Maritima or Alexandria around 330-360 CE. It contains approximately 400 leaves of approximately 700 originally produced. It is the oldest complete Greek New Testament and one of the two oldest complete Greek Bibles in existence (Codex Vaticanus is the other).

The text is in Greek uncial script in four narrow columns per page, written by three primary scribes whose work has been distinguished by paleographic analysis. The manuscript shows extensive correction by multiple later hands working in the 4th, 6th, and 12th centuries.

The Codex’s scholarly value is text-critical. It is approximately 700 years older than the standard medieval Greek New Testament manuscripts on which the Textus Receptus (the basis of the 1611 King James Bible) was based. The Codex preserves dozens of significant readings that differ from the Textus Receptus — most importantly the absence of the longer ending of Mark (Mark 16:9-20) and the absence of the pericope of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11). The modern critical edition of the Greek New Testament — the Nestle-Aland — incorporates Sinaiticus readings as primary text witnesses.

What happened to it

The complete Codex remained at the Russian Imperial Library in Saint Petersburg until 1933. The 1917 Russian Revolution had nationalised the manuscript, the Imperial Library had become the Public Library, and the Soviet government had been short of foreign currency through the early 1930s. The 1933 sale to the British Museum produced £100,000 in foreign currency for the Soviet government — at the time the largest sum paid for any single manuscript.

The Codex Sinaiticus is now distributed across four locations: the British Library has approximately 347 leaves (the 1933 purchase), Saint Catherine’s still has 12 small leaves and 14 fragments (identified during 1975 monastery renovation work in a sealed chamber), Leipzig University Library has the original 43 Friderico-Augustanus leaves, and the Russian National Library has 6 fragments.

The Codex Sinaiticus Digital Project — completed 2009 — produced a complete digital reconstruction by photographing all surviving leaves at the four repositories and digitally reassembling them. The complete reconstructed manuscript is freely available online.

The monks of Saint Catherine’s still dispute the legality of Tischendorf’s 1859 removal of the manuscript. The monastery’s position is that the 1859 transfer was a loan rather than a gift, and that the manuscript should therefore be returned to the monastery. The British Library disputes the monastery’s reading of the 1859 documentation. The substantive dispute remains unresolved.