Tischendorf

When Paul, Luke and John wrote parts of the Bible, they wrote on papyrus, a thick and brittle kind of paper. When the early Christians got a letter from Paul, they kept it carefully, and read it often. But imagine what happened to those letters after fifty years, a hundred, a hundred fifty years. Yes, they simply wore out. Before the papyrus wore out, the Christians made hand-written copies of the Bible books. But later those copies wore out, and still others were made.

Have you ever copied something by hand? Did you make any mistakes? Yes of course, everybody does. Now if somebody were to copy your copy, maybe he would copy some of your mistakes, and make some mistakes of his own. And if you lost the original, and he was left with only copies of copies, how could he know exactly what your original had said? To discover that, he would want to find the oldest copies he could.

Let me introduce you to a German scholar named Konstantin von Tischendorf, who lived and worked 150 years ago. When he was a student, he heard about a strange Bible with invisible writing. No, it was not supposed to be invisible. 1,400 years before, someone had carefully copied this Bible on thin sheets of leather. It was fine leather, and lasted for hundreds of years. In fact the leather lasted longer than the ink. After 600 years the ink writing faded, But the beautiful leather pages remained. Somebody decided it would be better to have a new book he could read, than an old Bible he couldn't read. So this somebody erased the fading letters of the Bible, and over them copied another book.

800 years went by. This new book was passed down from one person to another. None of them knew that underneath the letters of their book was hidden an old Bible. Finally the new writing also began to fade. People trying to read the faint letters, noticed even fainter letters underneath. They could read them just enough to tell it was a Bible, but what exactly did it say?

During the two years he spent as a student in Paris, Tischendorf did his best to discover the hidden writing. At first he had no more success than had others before him. But he had studied some chemistry, and knew about invisible writing. He experimented with different chemicals. Finally he found a way to make the invisible letters appear. He then was able to read the old Bible.

He continued to look for old Bibles. He heard that in the Vatican Library at Rome was a very old Bible, older than any he had seen, older than anyone else had seen. The Roman church knew it was valuable, perhaps the most valuable Bible in the world. It was so valuable that nobody read it. They wouldn't even let anyone look at it. You see, the French leader Napoleon once stole that Bible, and the church didn't get it back for six years. This time they were taking no chances. Nobody could steal that Bible, nobody was allowed even to look at it.

But to Rome came Konstantin von Tischendorf. He went to the Vatican library and asked permission to see the old Bible. The librarian told him, "Of course not; nobody gets to see that Bible. Go away."

So Tischendorf went away. The next day he came back, and asked permission to see the old Bible. Again he was told to go away. He did. But the next day he came back again. This went on for months! The librarian got tired of seeing him. How to get rid of this pest! So he agreed: Tischendorf could look at the Bible, but only for six hours, and he could not take notes. Fine!

When at last he held the book in his hands he could tell that this was truly the oldest Bible in the world. He studied it carefully; very carefully. When his time was up he thanked the librarian, and hurried back to his room. There he spent many hours writing out by memory what he had just read.

Years passed. Tischendorf returned to the Vatican library, and received permission to study the Bible for three hours a day. Again the librarian forbade him to take notes. Yet somehow he did. On the eighth day he was caught, but he had already copied most of the ten-inch three-column pages. Amazingly, he talked the librarian into letting him have six more days. That was all the time he needed. By then he had copied the whole text. He published this Bible for others to study.

Tischendorf continued searching for old Bibles, traveling farther and farther from home. Eventually he came to an old monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai.

He found many old books, but what caught his interest was the waste basket. The monks had been tearing pages from some of their old books and throwing them away. They had already burned two baskets of torn pages. He rescued the basket of torn pages, and discovered that some of them were from the Bible. And this writing was just as old as the Bible he had studied in the Vatican, maybe older.

He trembled with excitement as he asked about the discarded pages. Yes he could have them, 43 of them. But then he got so excited that the monks became suspicious. If these tattered pages were valuable, maybe the monks owned an undiscovered treasure. And if they did, they wanted to keep it.

He learned that yes, there were more sheets, Tischendorf even saw some of them, but he couldn't have them. The monks refused to say if there were more besides. Tischendorf felt excited, delighted, frustrated, angry all at once. But there was nothing he could say that would convince the monks. If there was a secret, it was their secret, and they would keep it. The year was 1844.

Tischendorf left Sinai. He published copies of the pages he had, but kept his secret of where he had found them. He had found a great treasure, and was not about to tell anyone else where it was. Six years went by. Tischendorf returned to Sinai. The monks would show nothing, would say nothing. Seven years later, he visited again. This time he determined that nothing would make him excited. He would be friendly but bored. The monks showed him this and that in the library. They knew by now that he was a world-famous scholar. They hoped to impress him. But no, he yawned. Nothing was very interesting. The monks got frustrated.

One evening one of the monks invited Tischendorf to his own room for supper. They talked about old books, while Tischendorf remained bored. Then the monk said, "I have an old Bible; I wonder if you would like to see it." Yes, as a favor to his host, Tischendorf would be willing to look at it.

The monk brought out from its hiding place a large book wrapped in red cloth and laid it on the table. Yes! This was the ancient Bible which he had hunted so long. This time Tischendorf controlled his excitement. He asked casually if he could take the book to his own room, to read it at leisure. Permission was granted.

Although many parts were missing, the book still had most of the Old Testament, and all of the New Testament. It was the oldest complete copy of the New Testament in the world. He spent the whole night feverishly copying from his treasure.

For the next several weeks he both studied the Bible, and made himself useful to the monks. Did they have any perplexing troubles that he might be able to help? Yes, they needed to conduct some business with other monks and other authorities in far away places. They needed someone who could be their ambassador. Could Tischendorf help them? Yes he could, and did so.

Eventually he won the confidence of the monks. He revealed that his trip had been supported by the Czar of Russia, a leader the monks greatly admired. He explained that their old Bible really deserved to be kept in a safer place than their monastery could provide. Would they be willing to loan their Bible for safe keeping, to the Czar, the Emperor of all Russia? Yes they would. And in return, the Czar was willing to protect them from some of the dangers they faced.

So in Tischendorf's care, the Bible traveled from the Sinai desert to Moscow, where it was placed among the treasures of the Czar. Meanwhile Tischendorf had the all the time he needed to study the text of this ancient Bible, and tell the world what it said.

In time the monks decided to make their loan permanent. The Czar rewarded them with $7,000 which they used to meet their needs. Years went by while the Bible remained a treasure of the Russian royal family. Then in 1917 the last Czar of Russia was killed with all his family. The new government was controlled by communists, who hated God and everything to do with religion. They had no love for an old Bible, or any Bible for that matter.

The English government offered to buy the old Bible from the Russians. The children of England joined in the project. They raised money in many ways, and gave their offerings to buy that one special Bible. By 1933 they had collected $500,000. The old Bible moved from Russia to London, to the British Museum where I have seen it, and where maybe you can too.

There is an old story that when the Roman Emperor Constantine decided to make a gift to fifty churches, he gave each of them a hand-written copy of the Bible. And although we can't be sure, many scholars believe that the Bible Tischendorf found in Sinai was one of those Bibles copied 1,500 years before.

It is partly because of the work of Tischendorf that when we read our modern Bible translations, we can be sure that we are reading the accurate word of God. And now you know a little more about how we got our Bible.