Posted on 04/20/2005 12:03:16 AM PDT by nickcarraway
THE British Library is facing the possible loss of one of its most important manuscripts, the world’s oldest Bible, to a Middle Eastern monastery.
The fear is raised weeks after the institution was told by a government advisory panel that a 12th-century manuscript in its collection was looted from a cathedral near Naples during the Second World War and must be returned.
The backing last month by the Spoliation Advisory Panel of a 27-year campaign by the city of Benevento to be reunited with a jewel of Italy’s heritage will have given renewed hope to St Catherine’s, a desert monastery on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, of being reunited with a manuscript that it is believed to have owned from the 6th century, if not earlier.
The 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus, arguably the world’s most important Christian manuscript, entered the library’s collection in the 1930s.
It is so old and fragile that only four scholars have been given full access to it in the past 20 years.
Greek Orthodox monks of St Catherine’s have long believed that the manuscript was wrongfully taken from them in the 19th century by a German scholar, Constantine Tischendorf, who was apparently acting as an agent for Tsar Aleksandr II of Russia.
He took 43 leaves to Germany, which are in the University of Leipzig, and another 347, which he gave to the Tsar.
They remained in the Imperial Library until 1933, when the Soviet Government sold them to raise money. The manuscript was bought by the British Museum Library, now the British Library, for £100,000, then a record sum for a manuscript or book. A public appeal raised the money to purchase it. Such is the Bible’s importance that it would exchange hands today for tens of millions of pounds.
Tischendorf is thought to have convinced the monks that he was borrowing the leaves for copying purposes. He did publish the text.
In an 1859 letter, which was found in the monastery’s archives in 1960, he had promised to “return (the Codex), undamaged and in a good state of preservation, to the Holy Confraternity of Mount Sinai at its first request”. But the ownership question is clouded by another letter, of 1869, in which the monastery’s archbishop seems to have offered the Codex as a gift to the Tsar, after a donation of money and gifts to the monastery.
The precise circumstances of the manuscript’s removal will be researched as part of an unprecedented collaboration between St Catherine’s Monastery, the British Library, the University of Leipzig and the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg.
ANCIENT TEXT
Written in Greek on vellum around the time of Constantine the Great
Contained the entire Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha, but half of the Old Testament has been lost
Surviving manuscript concludes with two early Christian texts, an epistle ascribed to the Apostle Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas
The Monastery of St Catherine in Sinai, Egypt, is one of the longest continuously active Christian monastic communities
It's not like anyone there is using it... :P
I don't have any problem who keep it. As long as it's safe. There have been many cases where art works were taken from the museum and returned to the 'owner' (usually a tribe), disappeared a week after, only to be found in an antique market later.
If we continue this childish "he stole it from my great-great-grandpa" crap, then I'm going to claim Poland, the Sudetenland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and East Germany back. I'm sure I have quite a few Germans waaaay up the family tree who owned it all before them durn Slavs stole it...and while I'm at it, I'm taking Africa, too, because they keep telling me this chick named Lucy is my greatad infinitum grandma.
I call BS! The British people, through private donations, bought the manuscript fair and square. Ordering them to return it to the friggin Sinai in friggin' Islamic Egypt is pure theft.
While your at it, give half the British Museum back to Egypt!
So if the Brits made off with the US Constitution in the war of 1812, you wouldn't care?
The difference is that if the Brits made off with the U.S. Constitution in the war of 1812, we'd have MADE them give it back...back then.
To my knowledge, we haven't sent them a bill for having to repaint the White House or restock the Library of Congress, either. Nor have we sent Japan a bill for Pearl Harbor. Hell, we haven't even sent the French or Germans a bill for WWII, and the value of the lives we lost there is far beyond any old pieces of paper.
I didn't say I wouldn't care. I just want to know where it stops, exactly. If we're getting on the trail of historical thefts, the U.S. Indian's going to be knocking on Uncle Sam's door any day now. And I'm not about to let that bill be paid without getting my voucher filled at the Slav purser's office. Does it stop at 100 years ago? 150? 200? Or can I sue for my ancestors being tossed out of the marsh onto dry land? I want my primordial ooze back!
The great tragedy is that the corrupt manuscript wasn't burned.
So, a 12th Century Manuscript, owned by a monestary in the 6th century (or maybe earlier) that was written in the 4th century . . .
Let's not get all melodramatic now. Let's say the Constitution had gone missing in 1812 and no one knew until now that it was in the possession of the Brits, ok, how's that? You'd want it back, and expect them to give it back, wouldn't you? Come on, now, 'fess up.
It's the same thing. No one's talking primordial ooze. It's not theirs. They should give it back.
It's the same thing. No one's talking primordial ooze. It's not theirs. They should give it back.
---Nope. That sets an awful precedent. Elgin marbles going next? Saint Dimitra? Star of Africa? What about the rest of the British Museum? Half of it is spoils of Empire.
The 12th C MS was a different work. The commission apparently decided the brits had to give it back to Benvento (in Italy) where it was pilfered by an enterprising englishman way back when. The Codex - a 4th century document that represents the earliest known compilation of Christian scripture into a recognizable bible - is a different document. The british are worried that if the commission got up the cajones to force them to give back the Benvento document, it will also likely force them to give back the Codex.
IIRC, the monks at the monastery were BURNING the manuscript, leaf by leaf, to light fires for cooking and heat.
It was found by the Russian count amid a pile of other such
old manuscripts, which the monks were using for the same purpose.
When he showed interest in them, they sold the pages to him.
(Sure, return it to the monastery, and I'll bet it will either a) be lost b) be sold again c) be destroyed by an Islamic republic)
Yes, we shouldn't start an awful precedent of giving back stolen artifacts. You'd let them keep the Constitution, suuuuuuuuuuuure you would. Denial isn't a river in Africa. ;)
You're right. They were burning it for heat. Now that they know the value of it they want it back.
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The muslims don’t have a very good record of preserving religious relics etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamyan
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