Module: Konstantin von Tischendorf
Range of research interests
In his travel account Reise in den Orient, Tischendorf reports in the rich, inclusive approach of a scholar with a broad mind towards monotheism as such . He explains details about drinking manna in the desert, describing a natural phenomenon: water condensation on the leaves of plants. He points out as merely a fact that Moses’s tribe crossed the Red Sea in the shallows. And he mentions the contemporary Christian community of Gaza. All these details reveal a thorough knowledge of the regional cultural mix: besides remarks on the Greek New Testament, he states and comments on events in the Jewish Torah regarding Sinai and Gaza, details of Bedouin lifestyle as he experienced it, and of Greek-orthodox monks.
His popular essays on the Gospels were translated into most European languages, addressed to the broad public.
He passed away in 1873, after several strokes that left him mute and lame, not able to write anymore. His heritage is enormous for the field of Greek Bible studies. He edited in minimal time the herculean luxury edition, a nearly impossible feat in his time. A byproduct of his lifelong research was an outstanding interreligious neutrality and ideological inclusiveness. He disregarded confessional limits, thereby broadening his perception, and—through the Christian, Russian Orthodox Czar funding his enterprise—opened unexpected pathways.
A quick glance at his publications reveals a scholarly, interconfessional insight into the interwovenness of monotheistic religions. His main focus was the Greek New Testament, but his general cultural awareness enabled him to see how it was transmitted through the region’s linguistic pluralism. Focusing exclusively on the holy scripture, he could compare Latin and Greek versions to determine their composition date as canonical or pre-canonical. In 1933, the Russian part of the Codex was sold by the Stalin regime to the British Library for 100,000 pounds; 8 folios were retained in Russia, however 43 folios are still stored in Leipzig; only digital tools reunite them all, connecting them to finds of the 20th and 21st centuries still located in the monastery (see below).
The quest goes on!
Today, the website of St. Catherine’s monastery makes an excellent starting point for searching the library on recent finds and actual projects. It is the second largest (!) Christian manuscript collection of early codices, after the Vatican, holding manuscripts in Arabic, Hebrew, Coptic, Aramaic, Greek, Georgian and Albanian-Caucasian.
To this very day, continuing research is finding new pages to complete the codex Sinaiticus. In 1975, after a fire in St. George’s chapel, an old manuscript library room was rediscovered. It held 18 more folios of the Sinaiticus which were photographed – removing manuscripts is not necessary nowadays – and studied by the Kurt Aland team (see and above video).
Furthermore, in 2009, a fragment of the Sinaiticus was uncovered by a PhD student of the library research team; it was reused in an 18th century binding, which had damaged the text. The quest goes on!
- Check out the digital reunification of Codex Sinaiticus .
- Read the perspectives of Kurt Aland, one of the premier modern biblical text-critical scholars, on Tischendorf’s work .
- Debate 1: Did Tischendorf’s actions create more harm or good for the study of the Bible? On the one hand, he found and published one of the most important biblical manuscripts, pushing text-criticism forward. On the other hand, he removed the codex from its custodians and ensured that it would be permanently separated in four different collections.
- Debate 2: Was Tischendorf a man beholden to his times, caught in the contemporary currents of imperialism and Protestant biblical criticism? Or was he someone who transcended his times, using his great initiative to push beyond the boundaries of traditional religious and national sensibilities?
Respond to one or more of the above questions by annotating the relevant passages using Hypothes.is or by selecting the question and posting a Hypothes.is comment.
