How Lady Bible Hunters Made the Victorian Era's Most Stunning Scriptural Find

Scottish twins Agnes and Margaret Smith were highly educated, wealthy, well-traveled, and spoke a dozen languages between them. Yet they still couldn’t find acceptance into the academic circles of Cambridge because it was the 19th century, and they were women. So they funded their own scholarly pursuits. The sisters followed a tip from a biblical scholar and journeyed to a remote monastery in the Sinai Desert by camel to study ancient manuscripts.

Agnes had been learning Aramaic–a branch of Syriac, and the language Jesus would have spoken–in the six months before the trip. Just as well, because she managed to do what so many male professors and scholars had failed to do in their searches of the monastery–she found what appeared to be an ancient manuscript of the four gospels.

The twins couldn’t be sure of their find, but nevertheless they were convinced enough to use almost all of their film on photographing the palimpsest.

Back in Cambridge, when they tried to show the photographs to the university’s eminent professors, they were ignored as dilettantes...until the professors got a proper look. It looked like Agnes Smith really had discovered something of worth. Yes, the Syriac Sinaiticus dated back to the mid-4th century, and the translation it preserved went back to the 2nd century, very close to the fountainhead of early Christianity.

A most important find, indeed. But the story of how the twins came to be there and what happened after they returned to Cambridge is a testament to how academia regarded women of their time, no matter how talented they were. Read the rest of the story at Atlas Obscura.


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