Narrative of the Discovery of the Sinaitic Manuscript
Tischendorf’s own account, written for general readers, of his three journeys to St Catherine’s Monastery and of how he found the Codex Sinaiticus and carried it to Russia. For 1844 it is the only record so far identified.
Constantin von Tischendorf prefixed this narrative to a popular essay on the date of the Gospels. It tells of the basket of parchments he says he saw in the monastery’s library in May 1844, of his second visit in 1853, and of the evening in February 1859 when the steward showed him the rest of the manuscript.
It is the account of the man whose conduct is in question, written seven years after the manuscript left Sinai and before the monastery signed any act of donation. The monastery rejects his statement that the leaves were about to be burned, and the history agreed by the four holding institutions notes that no other record of 1844 has been found.
Cited in
- 1844 to 1859, firm date