Thursday, January 18, 2024

It is the 18th of January 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Buckle up, friends- today on the almanac, we have a story with adventure, intrigue, stealth international agreements, the Bolshevik revolution, and the discovery of the most ancient text of the Bible- possibly stolen from a monastery.

The story begins on this day, the 18th of January in 1815, with the birth of Lobegott Friedrich Constantin Tischendorf. Born in Legenfeld in Saxony to Lutheran parents, he would grow up with a fascination for all things biblical. He attended the University of Leipzig, then under the sway of the Tübingen School of biblical criticism. This school, led by F.C. Bauer, was skeptical of the Biblical texts- claiming both muddled and late authorship. Tischendorf was concerned with these claims and would eventually undermine those skeptics with a story often told with a flair appropriate to an Indiana Jones movie- more on that in a minute.

Tischendorf took his doctorate in 1838 and became the headmaster at a Leipzig school. He wanted to study manuscripts, but without a patron or University funding, this would be impossible. He managed to travel throughout Europe and transcribe ancient biblical manuscripts to publish studies on the text. In 1840, this caught the attention of a French publisher who invited him to Paris to work on a collection of New Testament manuscripts.

In Paris, he made a name for himself by deciphering the palimpsest today called the Codex Ephraemi Siri Rescriptus. A palimpsest is a text that has been scraped off parchment and then covered with a new, different text. Tischendorf found that a collection of writings from Ephram the Syrian had been written on top of an ancient copy of the New Testament. His careful work deciphering this text led to his recognition by Frederick of Saxony. In 1844, Frederick arranged for Tischendorf to travel to the Sinai peninsula and St. Catherine’s Monastery, now a Greek Orthodox monastery built in the 6th century.

It was on this first trip that he came across 45 leaves of an ancient Old Testament text written in Greek- what we call “the Septuagint.” He claimed that the Alexandrian monks were using old parchment as kindling and fuel for a fire to keep themselves warm. By the time he allegedly stopped them, they had burned just up to the book of 1st Chronicles. He took the leaves he found back to Germany and published them as the Code Frederico-Augustanus (named for his patron). 

A second trip back yielded very little, and his funding dried up until the Tsar Alexander of Russia funded a trip in 1859. It was then that Tischendorf was able to uncover a complete New Testament and much more of the Old Testament- this would be the archaeological find of the century, and he wanted to take the text from the monastery from which to publish a new manuscript of the Bible. His first claim that the monks burning the text for fire portrayed him as a great “rescuer,” and privately, he was able to pressure the monastery to allegedly give the text to the Tsar as a gift.  

Regardless, this would constitute the oldest extant version of a biblical text and one that corroborated the veracity of later translations. However, there’s more to the story.

With the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and the Great Depression of 1929, the Soviets needed money and had no special desire to keep an ancient religious text. The British Government purchased it from the Soviets for 100,000 Pounds, and it was put on display in the British Library.

In 1975, during the renovation of the Monastery, a closed-off room with hundreds of manuscripts and fragments was discovered. Closer inspection found this to be the earlier Old Testament texts Tischendorf claimed had been burned by the monks. Apparently, it was never their practice to do this, and in 1999, the catalog of these texts was published. Also found was a letter from Tischendorf agreeing that the text, which was supposedly given as a gift to the Tsar, was a loan and the manuscript was to be returned. It never was, and in somewhat typical British library practice, it is still on display in London. Oh well. But it is a heck of a story and a remarkable discovery of the oldest text of the Bible, dating from the 4th century and corresponding to other codex affirming many ancient translations as trustworthy. So, happy birthday to the man who set it all off with his trip to Egypt in 1840. Constantin Von Tischendorf was born on this day, the 18th of January, in 1815.   

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary- the New Testament and Old Testament readings are spicy apocalyptic judgments, so let’s read from the Psalm- Psalm 62 verses 5-8:

Yes, my soul, find rest in God;
    my hope comes from him.

Truly he is my rock and my salvation;

    he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.

My salvation and my honor depend on God;

    he is my mighty rock, my refuge.

Trust in him at all times, you people;

    pour out your hearts to him,

    for God is our refuge.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 18th of January 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who thought a palimpsest could be relieved with a cold compress- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who treats his sons' French fires like the British Library does ancient artifacts- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.