Page:The New Testament in the original Greek - 1881.djvu/27

 INTK'I>r(TloN TO THE AMERICAN KDITIoN iix

on the 4th of February, 1859.* It was published at St. Petersburg (printed at Leipsic) at the expense of the Czar Alexander II. in celebration of the tir>t millennium of tbo Banian empire, in accurate imitation by types specially

of the happiest men I ever knew, reads like an heroic romance. HU three journeys from Ldp-ir to Mount Sinai, in pursuit of manuscript treasures, in 1844, 1853, and 1859; his first rescue of forty-three leaves of the Septuagint from a waste-basket in tin- Convent of St. Catharine in 1844 ; his final discovery o." the whole Cod. Sinaiticus in 1859, with the powerful aid of the rec- ommendation of that noble Czar who met such a terrible death at the hands of the Nihilists in 1881; his patient labor in tran- scribing it at Cairo, and in its publication at Leipsic, in connec- tion with a great national event of the Russian empire; his con- troversy with the Greek Simonides, who impudently claimed to have written the codex on Mount Athos in 1839 and 1840 are all toM by himself, not without some excusable vanity, in his Reur in den Orient (1845-18), and A u dfm hfil. Lande (1862) ; hi - tia Codifu Sinaitid (1880); the Prolegomena to his editions (1882 and 1885); and his two controversial pamphlets. Die Anftchtuit- gen der SinaMbd (1883), and Wafftn der Fintterni** wider die Sina&ibei (1888). When, on a visit to Mount Sinai in March. 1877, I saw a copy of the magnificent four-volume edition in the convent library, and mentioned the name of Tisehendorf. the uli prior kindled up in indignation and called him a thief, who had stolen their greatest treasure on the pretext of a temporary loan; and when I reminded him of the large reward of the Em- peror of Russia, who had furnished a new silver shrine for the coffin of Si. Catharine, he admitted it reluctantly; but remarked that they did not want the silver, but the manuscript the manu- script which these monks could not read, and were at one time ready to throw into the fire! After long delays, the MS. was formally presented to the Czar in 1869 by the new prior, arch- bishop Kallistratos. and the monks of the Convents of St. Cath- arine and Cairo. See Tischendorf, Die ttmaibibd (1871), p. 91.
 * The story of the discovery, which made Tbchendorf om-

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