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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Eves, and welcome to this day in History Class,

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Speaker 1: a show that uncovers a little bit more about history

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Speaker 1: every day. Today is February fourteen. The day was February four,

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Speaker 1: eighteen thirty six. German biblical scholar Constantine von Tischendorff was

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Speaker 1: on his third visit to St. Catherine's Monastery at Mount

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Speaker 1: Sinai in Egypt. He was on this trip to the

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Speaker 1: monastery under the patronage of Russian Czar Alexander the Second.

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Speaker 1: In his previous visits, Titiendorff have found parts of the

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Speaker 1: Codex snidikis, an ancient handwritten Greek Bible. But this time

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Speaker 1: the scholar first saw three hundred and forty seven leaves

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Speaker 1: of the codex. A leaf is basically a single sheet

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Speaker 1: bound in a book, and one leaf can make two pages.

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Speaker 1: Years later, Titiendorff wrote the following about this crucial discovery.

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Speaker 1: On the afternoon of this day, I was taking a

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Speaker 1: walk with the steward of the convent in the neighborhood,

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Speaker 1: and as we returned towards sunset, he begged me to

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Speaker 1: take some refreshment with him in his cell. Scarcely had

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Speaker 1: he entered the room when resuming our former subject of conversation,

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Speaker 1: he said, and I too have read the Septuagint. I

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Speaker 1: eat a copy of the Greek translation made by the

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Speaker 1: seventy and so saying, he took down from the corner

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Speaker 1: of the room a bulky kind of volume, wrapped up

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Speaker 1: in a red cloth, and laid it before me. I

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Speaker 1: unrolled the cover and discovered, to my great surprise, not

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Speaker 1: only those fragments which fifteen years before I had taken

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Speaker 1: out of the basket, but also other parts of the

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Speaker 1: Old Testament, the New Testament complete, and in addition, the

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Speaker 1: Epistle of Barnabas and a part of the Pastor of Hermus.

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Speaker 1: The Codex Snidkus or Sinai Book is one of the

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Speaker 1: two earliest known manuscripts of the Christian Bible. The other

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Speaker 1: is the Codex Vaticanists, which was the gold standard for

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Speaker 1: the New Testament in Greek text until the Codex Snydkus

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Speaker 1: was discovered. The fourth century Codex Snydkus is so significant

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Speaker 1: because it contains a complete copy of the New Testament,

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Speaker 1: handwritten in an Old Greek vernacular language called Kyne. It

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Speaker 1: also contains the Septuagint, which is the version of the

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Speaker 1: Old Testament I adopted by Greek speaking early Christians. The

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Speaker 1: distinctive sequence of books in the codex is also notable,

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Speaker 1: as it gives insight into the history of the Bible's construction,

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Speaker 1: and no other early version of the Christian Bible was

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Speaker 1: corrected as extensively as the Codex Snidikus has been. The

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Speaker 1: codex also demonstrated that large bound books could be produced. Basically,

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Speaker 1: the Codex is a marvel of biblical history and bookmaking itself.

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Speaker 1: Since it was discovered, it has been valuable to scholars

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Speaker 1: who study biblical texts. But when Titiendorff first visited St.

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Speaker 1: Catherine's Monastery in eighteen forty four, he didn't know he

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Speaker 1: would make a discovery of such magnitude. There's record that

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Speaker 1: an Italian visitor named Vitaliana do Nazi saw the Codex

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Speaker 1: at St. Catherine's Monastery in seventeen sixty one, but it

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Speaker 1: wasn't until nearly a century later, in eighteen forty four,

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Speaker 1: when the monks at St. Catherine's showed Titiendorff a hundred

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Speaker 1: and twenty nine leaves of the Old Testament part of

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Speaker 1: the Codex. Titiendorff got forty three of those leaves, then

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Speaker 1: went back to Leipzig, Germany, where he was from, and

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Speaker 1: published the leaves in eighteen forty six. He didn't tell

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Speaker 1: anyone where he found the text, and in eighteen forty

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Speaker 1: five Russian archimandright Porphyrious Uspensky saw three hundred and forty

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Speaker 1: seven leaves of the codex, including the eighty six Titiendorff

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Speaker 1: had left behind on his first trip. Us Pinsky took

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Speaker 1: three fragments from two pages of the codex back to Russia,

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Speaker 1: and in eighteen fifty three Titiendorff went back to the monastery,

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Speaker 1: where he found other Biblical manus scripts, but only a

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Speaker 1: fragment of a leaf of the codex. But the third

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Speaker 1: time was the charm. At first, Titiendorff thought his visit

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Speaker 1: to the monastery in eighteen fifty nine would prove fruitless,

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Speaker 1: but right before he was about to leave, he was

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Speaker 1: shown the three d and forty seven leaves. The codex

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Speaker 1: was soon sent to Cairo, where Titiendorff transcribed it. In

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Speaker 1: eighteen sixty two, after he studied the codex more in Russia,

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Speaker 1: Titiendorff published a fact simily edition or an identical copy

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Speaker 1: of the text, and presented it to Tzar Alexander the Second.

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Speaker 1: The original manuscript remained in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

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Speaker 1: in St. Petersburg until eighteen sixty nine, when it was

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Speaker 1: moved to the Imperial Library and donated to the Czar.

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Speaker 1: The codex stayed at the Russian National Library until nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirty three, when the Soviet at government sold it to

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Speaker 1: the British Museum, but there is controversy over exactly how

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Speaker 1: the manuscript got out of the monks and into the

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Speaker 1: Czar's hands in the first place. The monastery has since

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Speaker 1: accused Titiandorff of theft, while some scholars argue those allegations

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Speaker 1: are unfounded. More parts of the codex have been found

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Speaker 1: since eighteen fifty nine, and though most of the first

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Speaker 1: part of the manuscript is missing, more than four hundred

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Speaker 1: livres of the codex survive. Parts of the codex are

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Speaker 1: spread across four places, the British Library, the Library of

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Speaker 1: the University of Leipzig, the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg,

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Speaker 1: and the Holy Monastery of the got Trodden Mount Sinai

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Speaker 1: also known as St. Catharine's. The four sections of the

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Speaker 1: codex are also available in a digitized version online. I'm

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Speaker 1: each step Cote and hopefully you know a little more

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Speaker 1: about history today than you did yesterday. You can subscribe

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Speaker 1: to This Day in History class on Apple Podcasts, the

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 1: We'll be back with more history tomorrow. Mm hmmm