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Constantin von Tischendorf

Constantin von Tischendorf
Tischendorf um 1870.jpg
Constantin von Tischendorf, around 1870
Born (1815-01-18)18 January 1815
Lengenfeld, Kingdom of Saxony
Died 7 December 1874(1874-12-07) (aged 59)
Leipzig, Saxony, German Empire
Nationality German
Fields theology

Lobegott Friedrich Constantin (von) Tischendorf (18 January 1815 – 7 December 1874) was a world leading biblical scholar in his time. In 1844 he discovered the world's oldest and most complete Bible dating from 325, with the complete New Testament not discovered before. This Bible is called Codex Sinaiticus, after the St. Catherine's Monastery at Mt. Sinai, where Tischendorf discovered it. The codex can be seen either in the British Library in London, or as a digitalised version on the Internet. Textual disputes are resolved when the two oldest books, Codex Sinaiticus (source aleph, 4th AD) and Codex Vaticanus (source beta, 4th AD), agree with each other. Tischendorf was made an Honorary Doctor by Oxford University on 16 March 1865, and an Honorary Doctor by Cambridge University on 9 March 1865 following this find of the century. While a student gaining his academic degree in the 1840s, he earned international recognition when he deciphered the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, a 5th-century Greek manuscript of the New Testament.

The Codex Sinaiticus contains a 4th-century New Testament manuscript and co-exists with two other Bibles of similar age, though they are less complete. Codex Vaticanus is now with the Vatican and Codex Alexandrinus currently owned by the British Library. The Codex Sinaiticus is deemed today's most authoritative New Testament manuscript, as no older document is available. The content of the "oldest Bible of the world" (as it is more complete than Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Vaticanus) has been digitalised and can be found at www.codexsinaiticus.net/en/.

During his life Tischendorf was seeking old biblical manuscripts, as he saw it as his task to give theology a Greek New Testament, which was based on the oldest possible scriptures. He intended to be as close as possible to the original References. Tischendorf's greatest discovery was in the monastery Saint Catherine on the Sinai-Peninsula, which he visited in May 1844, and again in 1853 and 1859 (as Russian envoy).

In 1862 Tischendorf published the text of the Codex Sinaiticus for the 1000th Anniversary of the Russian Monarchy in an illustrious four volume Facsimile edition and in a less costly text edition to enable all scholars access to the Codex.


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