Steven Avery
Administrator
On this thread, I want to put all the various notes about the time the Sinaiticus ms was in Cairo under the handling of Tischendorf.
How it got there to Cairo in 1859 was disputed. There is a Tischendorf story and an alternate story of his running with the ms. to the Russian Consulate and then a deal being brokered.
Then there is supposedly, Tischendorf working with two Germans, very lightly identified, one or both skilled in Greek, who helped him for months and who never show up again.
Supposedly they were making a copy of the manuscript. There are many questions in this scenario, but first .. where is that copy today?
WIP
None of these stories make a lot of sense. What happened to the two months of labours? Thrown away? What reports did the two helpers give? Another twist, in some accounts, has the ms. being fed to Tischendorf quire by quire.
And why in a Cairo hotel? There were more accomplished copyists in the monasteries. Remember, though, that the whole story is suspect. An English writer, William George Thorpe, reported that the actual taking of the manuscript to the Consulate in Cairo was covered up. (Covered elsewhere.) (One writer talks of records made in the Consulate of the negotiations. It would be interesting to see if Nikolaos Fyssas or others have ever confirmed such materials, and what they say.)
How it got there to Cairo in 1859 was disputed. There is a Tischendorf story and an alternate story of his running with the ms. to the Russian Consulate and then a deal being brokered.
Then there is supposedly, Tischendorf working with two Germans, very lightly identified, one or both skilled in Greek, who helped him for months and who never show up again.
Supposedly they were making a copy of the manuscript. There are many questions in this scenario, but first .. where is that copy today?
WIP
On 24 February, with the manuscript in his hands, Tischendorf, with the aid of two Germans he had met—a doctor and a pharmacist who happened to know Greek—began the task of transcribing 110,000 lines of Greek. This would have been a difficult task under the best of circumstances, and it is unclear how thoroughly and how well this task was accomplished at this time by Tischendorf and his assistants. ...On top of this, the heat in March to May in Cairo was invariably high. As a result of these conditions, Tischendorf says that "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." Porter, p. 42-43
The most important task for him was therefore to record the contents. This he set out to do at once in Cairo:
The time was now come boldly and without delay to set to work to a task of transcribing no less than a hundred and ten thousand lines. - of which a great number were difficult to read, either on account of later corrections, or through the ink having faded, - and that in a climate where the thermometer during March. April, and May, is never below 77 (degrees) in the shade. No one can say what this cost me in fatigue and exhaustion. - Tischendorf, first in1863
https://books.google.com/books?id=fAfcqmi73EIC&pg=RA1-PA32
According to his son-in-law, Tischendorf accomplished the task in two months, with the assistance of two Germans resident in Cairo, a doctor and a chemist (in some accounts they are an apothecary and a bookseller). Their role was to copy out the manuscript, and Tischendorf checked their work. No doubt they achieved a great deal. But why does Tischendorf's own account go on to state that when in September he took the manuscript as a loan to St Petersburg, it was 'there to have it copied as accurately as possible'? And that it was to take a further three years to complete 'the laborious task of producing a facsimile copy of this codex in four folio volumes'? Is it true that in those two months in Cairo they transcribed the whole manuscript? Or at any rate, that what they produced was more than the rough beginnings of a transcription? The experience of the Digital Project (building on a hundred and fifty years of research) suggests that eight weeks might serve to produce some sort of a version of some of the manuscript, but not an accurate copy of the whole.
David Parker p. 139
None of these stories make a lot of sense. What happened to the two months of labours? Thrown away? What reports did the two helpers give? Another twist, in some accounts, has the ms. being fed to Tischendorf quire by quire.
And why in a Cairo hotel? There were more accomplished copyists in the monasteries. Remember, though, that the whole story is suspect. An English writer, William George Thorpe, reported that the actual taking of the manuscript to the Consulate in Cairo was covered up. (Covered elsewhere.) (One writer talks of records made in the Consulate of the negotiations. It would be interesting to see if Nikolaos Fyssas or others have ever confirmed such materials, and what they say.)
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