The Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels

The Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels
by Janet Soskice
Knopf, 2009. 316 pgs. Nonfiction

Agnes and Margaret Smith's beginnings were not exactly humble, but who could have predicted that they would grow up to be world-renowned for biblical scholarship and the discovery of a great number of priceless ancient texts. Enormously wealthy from an unexpected windfall (a story in itself), the twins' father believed deeply in the education of women and gave his girls every opportunity for formal education and informal study. When they showed an early facility for languages, he promised them a trip to every country whose language they learned and they visited France, Germany, Spain, and Italy in fairly rapid succession. But when they traveled to Egypt after the death of their father, they would discover a manuscript of great antiquity and enormous importance, a Syriac transcription of the four gospels. Later accounts from miffed scholars and journalists with an eye to an amusing story suggest the sisters discovered the codex accidentally when a page was used as a "butter dish" at the monastery of St. Catherine at the foot of the mountain, but, in fact, the sisters went to Sinai with malice aforethought, as it were, looking for manuscripts in a "dark hole" described to them by a previous visitor to the monastery. Because the sisters had no scholarly credentials (and were not allowed to have them at the Cambridge of that era) they called upon scholars in the field for help in transcription and translation. These "gentlemen" tried to devalue the sisters' contributions but Agnes and Margaret stuck to their guns (Agnes even learning Syriac so she could translate the text herself) and were finally fully recognized not only for this find, but for their catalogue of mss. in the St. Catherine's library, and for saving great numbers of ancient texts from black marketeers. This is a fascinating story. It reads better than most novels and is filled with the kind of information that makes the reader want to know much more.

LW