Learning from History - Part IV

This spring Elsa and I enjoyed a second listen through "The Sisters of Sinai - How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels" by Janet Soskice. 

Have you ever noticed biblical text footnotes referencing the Syriac translations of the New Testament? Those little notes come to life when you know who discovered the ancient manuscripts and can picture how arduous and bold were their journeys and adventures. Even more interesting are the discoverers themselves... middle-aged, Scotch, widowed, twin sisters who from childhood had always learned a new language before they traveled to a new country.

Agnes and Margaret traveled 6 times to the remote monastery of St. Catharine's in Sinai, beginning in the late 1800s when women were "not supposed to" travel alone. This was no easy feat with 8 days on camels crossing the desert each way - with sometimes unscrupulous local guides. Then they had to deal with jealous Cambridge scholars trying to steal the credit of Agnes's important find of an ancient Syriac manuscript of the Gospels.

Even though Agnes and Margaret eventually became famous in the antiquarian/literary/biblical-scholarship/academic world of their day, being awarded multiple honorary doctorates, and even traveling the USA on a lecture tour - what we love was their relentless focus on doing all this to help demonstrate the reliability and historicity of the Scriptures. Their personal lives are also examples of trust in God's providence and seeing all of life through the lens of His word.

Continuing on the topic of history: another way I love to learn from history is through first-hand accounts such as journals. The above book inspired me to begin reading the sisters' own writings - including Margaret's book "How the Codex Was Found," filled with Agnes's journal entries. In fact, I am currently recording this as a free, LibriVox audiobook which will hopefully be released by the end of summer.

But I also highly recommend the in-depth biography by Janet Soskice, which pulls together information from all of the sisters' writings plus a wide variety of historical threads and contemporary characters to make it so interesting.

[photos are public domain or licensed for creative commons non-commercial use]