WHOSE IS THE CODEX?

Evening Star, Issue 21634, 1 February 1934, Page 8

WHOSE IS THE CODEX?

The acquisition by the British Museum of the ‘ Codex Sinaiticus,’ one of the two oldest manuscripts of the Greek Bible, has been described as the most important purchase the Museum has ever made and its price as the biggest price. Possession of the famous treasure, however, is not to be enjoyed without challenge. For centuries it reposed in an ancient monastery of the Greek Church at Mount Sinai. According to one story, it was presented early in the ’sixties to the Tsar Alexander 11., the protector of the Greek Church, in return for gifts to the value of 9,000 roubles. At the revolution it came into the hands of the Bolshevists, who admit no value in the past except a cash value, and who have sold it to the Museum for £IOO,OOO after demanding twice as much. But there is still an Archbishop of Sinai. Every dignitary on earth must envy him his title, which makes the Archbishop of Canterbury appear like a parvenu and the Bishop of Rome like a modern. And the Archbishop of Sinai has protested. The great Codex, he declares, never properly belonged to either the Tsar Alexander or the Bolshevists. It belongs morally to no one but his monastery. The Tsar got it by tricks and menaces. If there is any justice in the world- it must be returned to his monastery. He is ready to publish a book to establish his case. It is fortunate that this issue lies with the Museum, and not with the Archbishop of Canterbury. No one will expect the Museum to handle it except upon business principles. If it lay with the archbishop, it might be too much like the wrangles over holy places in Jerusalem, which have not reflected credit upon ■ Christendom. The history of the Codex has been sufficiently romantic however a past Tsar—and Tsars, it is well known, could bo high-handed—may have got possession of it. The Greek monks did not value it much when a German scholar, the famous Tischendorf, in the mid-forties, penetrated their seclusion. In the. waste paper basket, among a number of leaves of manuscript on the way to be consigned to the furnace, his eye happened to light on forty-three leaves of a manuscript of the Old Testament, obviously of very great antiquity. For once the time and the place and the loved object beyond all price had come together. It was a marvellous coincidence when we consider that the manuscript had been waiting for fifteen hundred years—probably for many centuries—in this remote monastery. Of course the visitor could have the useless leaves. Many more of them, he was informed, had been' burned from time to time. Yes, there were more remaining—but by this time new ideas of value were being awakened in the monks’ minds, and they would not part with more. With a warning to them to take care of the rest the scholar went his way, and his pages were deposited in the University of Leipzig. Twice afterwards, at long intervals, he revisited the monastery, and on the second occasion, when it was firm in his mind that the remainder of the manuscript must have been disposed of since bis first arrival, since he could learn nothing of it, fortune came his way. Talk with the steward—posably a new steward—happening to turn upon the subject of the Septuagint version, that official stated that he had a copy of it, which he produced. It proved to be indeed a prize. To quote Sir Frederick Kenyon, former Director of the British Museum: “Not only was there much of the Old Testament, but (far more valuable) there was the whole of the New Testament, perfect from beginning to end, together with two early Christian works which were sometime associated with the canonical books, the Epistle of Barnabas and a great part of the ‘ Shepherd ’ of Hermas. Of the former no Greek copy was then known to exist; and Tischendorf (thinking it, as he said, sacrilege to sleep) spent the rest of the night in transcribing it. He could not prolong his visit to the monastery, but he persuaded the monks to send the manuscript to Cairo, where a first transcript of it was hurriedly made; and on his return to Europe he set more powerful forces in motion. Eventually the monks were prevailed on to present the precious treasure to the Tsar, the patron of their church, in return for gifts to the value of 9,000 roubles; and so it was conveyed to the Imperial Library at St, Petersburg, which was its home until the Russian Revolution. An edition in facsimile type was published in 1862, some advance sheets of which were a feature of the Great Exhibition of that year in London.” Now the London authorities, and many besides them, can gloat on the original manuscript, which will be the chief glory of the Museum. It has been cheaply acquired, as the authorities agree, at a , price considerably less than is often paid for a single picture by some Italian old master. But how did the Tsar get his hands on it, and what about the archbishop’s challenge? The Museum has refused to be perturbed, so far, by these new thunders from Sinai. A previous archbishop, it points out, definitely assigned the Codex to the Tsar and specially thanked Tischendorf for his offices in the matter. That archbishop is dead. The Tsar is dead. If the records of the monastery are kept as it kept the Codex before Tischendorf’s eye lit upon it those are not likely to throw any more light on the matter. An Archbishop of Canterbury might feel constrained to probe the past more closely. The Museum will hardly do so. It lias paid its £IOO,UOO.

THE FAR EAST. Ix pursuance of his campaign to replace the existing currency and credit system by his own, and so lay a solid foundation for lasting prosperity, Major Douglas warned the community at Palmerston North yesterday not to imagine its troubles wore over because the price of wool has risen. A Job’s Comforter, he declares signs of returning prosperity to be ominous, because their basis is the expectation of war. In particular ho tolls wool growers that their increased returns are due to Japan’s competition, for she is buying heavily for war purposes. He may bo right on this latter point, but the most recent indications are that in quite a number of matters Japan has changed her former rather belligerent tone for one distinctly more placatory. The change really dates from America’s recognition of the Soviet. When Litvinoff was in Washington U.S.A. departmental officials showed him documentary evidence that in 1918 Woodrow Wilson sent General Graves and his troops to Siberia not to fight Bolshevism, but to check Japan’s Imperialistic plans in Eastern Asia. This was to demonstrate that America was still anti-Japanese and wanted Moscow to know it. Immediately afterwards the Soviet Ambassador to Japan emphasised in Tokio the significance of the rapprochement of two big countries like America and Russia in “ consolidating world peace.” The Japanese, who lie geographically between those two nations, appreciate the point, and the immediate result has been a distinct gain of the industrial and commercial moderate section in Japan in their political tug-of-war with General Araki and the militarists. Very astutely Mr Roosevelt simultaneously withdrew part of the United States Pacific fleet, obviating the alarm on which militarists flourish. Prior to this the Japanese Ambassador in Moscow had been told that Japan would be held responsible for all anti-Soviet acts in Manchuria and that Manchukuo was only a Japanese puppet. Then, when in November a Japanese air squadron flew over Siberian territory, Moscow warned Tokio that next time the aeroplanes would bo fired on. The Soviet is now in confident mood, believing the Red Army to excel the Japanese array in both fighting spirit and mechanical equipment, that Russia’s war industries are superior to Japan’s, and that after two years of intensive activity in Siberia the Khabarovsk region (on the Amur River, adjoining Manchuria) is now largely independent of European Russia in respect of supplying ammunition, food, clothing, and soldiers. The Japanese retreat in the sphere of diplomacy has been contemporaneous with Russian renouncement of any selfish interest in Manchuria even as a Russian sphere of influence, and a Russian declaration for a strong, united China, including Manchuria. Both Russia and America refuse recognition of Manchukuo as prejudicial to the territorial integrity of China. A student of Far Eastern affairs declares that Russia’s new military strength in Siberia, coupled with the RussianAmerican rapprochement, is a guarantee of Far Eastern peace; that the atmosphere of Japan internally is electric with possibilities of violent change; and that ultimately the Powers may have to get together to save Japan from her social-economic-territorial dilemma and from herself.