Agnes and Margaret Smith
Encyclopedia
Semitic
In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages...
scholars. Born twin daughters of John Smith of Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, they learnt more than 12 languages between them, and became pioneers in their academic work and benefactors to the Presbyterian Church of England, especially to Westminster College, Cambridge
Westminster College, Cambridge
Westminster College in Cambridge is a theological college of the United Reformed Church, formerly the Presbyterian Church of England. Its principal purpose is the training of clergy for ordination, but is also used more widely for training within the denomination...
.
Early life and training
Solicitor
Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...
and amateur linguist. They were trained in private schools in Birkenhead
Birkenhead
Birkenhead is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in Merseyside, England. It is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the west bank of the River Mersey, opposite the city of Liverpool...
and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, interspersed with travels in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
guided by John.
After John's death, they settled in London and joined the Presbyterian church in Clapham Road. Already conversationally fluent in German, French and Italian, they continued to learn languages and travelled in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, travelling up the Nile
Nile
The Nile is a major north-flowing river in North Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world. It is long. It runs through the ten countries of Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Egypt.The Nile has two major...
in 1868. In 1870, Agnes wrote Eastern Pilgrims, an account of their experiences in Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
and Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
.
In 1883, Agnes and Margaret, now quite fluent in Greek, travelled to Athens and other parts of Greece, beginning a lifelong affectionate relationship with Greek Orthodoxy
Greek Orthodox Church
The Greek Orthodox Church is the body of several churches within the larger communion of Eastern Orthodox Christianity sharing a common cultural tradition whose liturgy is also traditionally conducted in Koine Greek, the original language of the New Testament...
, whose monks occupied St. Catherine's Monastery
Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai
Saint Catherine's Monastery lies on the Sinai Peninsula, at the mouth of a gorge at the foot of Mount Sinai in the city of Saint Catherine in Egypt's South Sinai Governorate. The monastery is Orthodox and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site...
at Sinai. In this year, Margaret married James Gibson; and in 1887, Agnes married Samuel Savage Lewis, librarian of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Corpus Christi College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It is notable as the only college founded by Cambridge townspeople: it was established in 1352 by the Guilds of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary...
http://www.millroadcemetery.org.uk/MillRoadCemetery/Page.aspx?p=29&ix=3137&pid=3136&prcid=4&ppid=3136. Both were clergymen. Sadly, each marriage was soon ended with the death of the husband.
Academic work
By 1890, the sisters settled in CambridgeCambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
. Agnes began to study Syriac (Margaret took it up later, in 1893), and improve their Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, which Agnes had begun to learn in 1883. Enthused by Quaker
Religious Society of Friends
The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...
Orientalist
Oriental studies
Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...
James Rendel Harris
J. Rendel Harris
James Rendel Harris was an English biblical scholar and curator of manuscripts, who was instrumental in bringing back to light many Syriac Scriptures and other early documents...
's account of his discovery at Saint Catherine's Monastery of a Syriac text of the Apology of Aristides
Apology of Aristides
The Apology of Aristides was written by the early Christian writer Aristides . Until 1878, our knowledge of Aristides was confined to some references in works by Eusebius of Caesarea and Saint Jerome. Eusebius said that he was an Athenian philosopher and that Aristides and another apologist,...
, and by news of Constantin von Tischendorf
Constantin von Tischendorf
Lobegott Friedrich Constantin Tischendorf was a noted German Biblical scholar. He deciphered the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, a 5th century Greek manuscript of the New Testament, in the 1840s, and rediscovered the Codex Sinaiticus, a 4th century New Testament manuscript, in 1859.Tischendorf...
's rediscovery there of Codex Sinaiticus
Codex Sinaiticus
Codex Sinaiticus is one of the four great uncial codices, an ancient, handwritten copy of the Greek Bible. It is an Alexandrian text-type manuscript written in the 4th century in uncial letters on parchment. Current scholarship considers the Codex Sinaiticus to be one of the best Greek texts of...
, they travelled to the monastery in 1892, and discovered the earliest Syriac version of the Gospels known thus far. The next year, they returned as part of a larger party that included Professor Robert Bensly
Robert Lubbock Bensly
Robert Lubbock Bensly was an English Orientalist.He was educated at King's College London, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, studied in Germany, and was appointed reader in Hebrew at Gonville and Caius College 1863...
and Francis Crawford Burkitt
Francis Crawford Burkitt
Francis Crawford Burkitt was a British theologian and scholar. He was Norris Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, from 1905 until shortly before his death. Burkitt was a sturdy critic of the notion of a distinct "Caesarean Text" of the New Testament put forward by B. H...
, as well as J. Rendel Harris, to transcribe the whole of the manuscript, known as the Sinaitic Palimpsest
Sinaitic Palimpsest
The Syriac Sinaitic , known also as the Sinaitic Palimpsest, of Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai is a late 4th century manuscript of 358 pages, containing a translation of the four canonical gospels of the New Testament into Syriac, which have been overwritten by a vita of female saints...
or the Sinaitic Manuscript (Lewis), which provided fresh stimulus to New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
studies. The palimpsest
Palimpsest
A palimpsest is a manuscript page from a scroll or book from which the text has been scraped off and which can be used again. The word "palimpsest" comes through Latin palimpsēstus from Ancient Greek παλίμψηστος originally compounded from πάλιν and ψάω literally meaning “scraped...
was found to have previously contained a Syriac Lives of the Saints by John the Recluse. During the expedition, Agnes and Margaret also catalogued the monastery's extensive collection of Syriac and Arabic manuscripts. Janet Soskice's account of the expedition describes it as 'disjoint', and recounts it as subject to increasing mutual suspicion and resentment.
The sisters continued to travel and write until the First World War, and were instrumental in other discoveries, including that by Solomon Schechter
Solomon Schechter
Solomon Schechter was a Moldavian-born Romanian and English rabbi, academic scholar, and educator, most famous for his roles as founder and President of the United Synagogue of America, President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and architect of the American Conservative Jewish...
of an early Hebrew manuscript of Ecclesiasticus
Sirach
The Book of the All-Virtuous Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira , commonly called the Wisdom of Sirach or simply Sirach, and also known as Ecclesiasticus or Siracides , is a work from the early 2nd century B.C. written by the Jewish scribe Jesus ben Sirach of Jerusalem...
.
Harris's Cambridge course in palaeography
Palaeography
Palaeography, also spelt paleography is the study of ancient writing. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of...
allowed Agnes to step onto the academic stage as a Syriac scholar 'of international repute' as author of the introduction to the expedition team's 1894 publication of a translation of the palimpsest. Though the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
never honoured them with degrees (it did not admit women to degrees until 1948), they received honorary degrees from the universities of Halle
University of Halle-Wittenberg
The Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg , also referred to as MLU, is a public, research-oriented university in the cities of Halle and Wittenberg within Saxony-Anhalt, Germany...
, Heidelberg, Dublin
University of Dublin
The University of Dublin , corporately designated the Chancellor, Doctors and Masters of the University of Dublin , located in Dublin, Ireland, was effectively founded when in 1592 Queen Elizabeth I issued a charter for Trinity College, Dublin, as "the mother of a university" – this date making it...
, and St Andrews
University of St Andrews
The University of St Andrews, informally referred to as "St Andrews", is the oldest university in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge. The university is situated in the town of St Andrews, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. It was founded between...
, including the first theological doctorates awarded to women.
Benefaction
Oxbridge
Oxbridge is a portmanteau of the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge in England, and the term is now used to refer to them collectively, often with implications of perceived superior social status...
universities by the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts; and that Presbyterian college moved from Queen Square, London to a site acquired from St John's College, Cambridge
St John's College, Cambridge
St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's alumni include nine Nobel Prize winners, six Prime Ministers, three archbishops, at least two princes, and three Saints....
in 1899. They also helped the establishment of the Presbyterian chaplaincy to the University of Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
, now at St Columba's United Reformed Church
United Reformed Church
The United Reformed Church is a Christian church in the United Kingdom. It has approximately 68,000 members in 1,500 congregations with some 700 ministers.-Origins and history:...
.
of Agnes Smith
- Eastern Pilgrims: The travels of three ladies (London, 1870)
- Effie Maxwell (London, 1876) (a novel)
- The Brides of Ardmore: A story of Irish life (London, 1880)
- Through Cyprus (London, 1887)
- Glimpses of Greek Life and Scenery (1884) (London: Hurst and Blackett)
of Agnes Smith Lewis
- Catalogue of the Syriac MSS. in the Convent of S. Catharine on Mount Sinai (London, 1894)
- A Translation of the Four Gospels from the Syriac of the Sinaitic Palimpsest (London and New York, 1894)
- A Translation of the Four Gospels from the Syriac of the Sinaitic Palimpsest (London, 1896) (revised and extended edition)
- Some Pages of the Four Gospels Re-transcribed from the Sinaitic Palimpsest with a Translation of the Whole Text (London, 1896)
- A Palestinian Syriac Lectionary (London, 1897)
- In the Shadow of Sinai: A story of travel and research from 1895 to 1897 (Cambridge, 1898)
- Select Narratives of Holy Women: From the Syro-Antiochene or Sinai Palimpsest (London, 1900)
- Apocrypha Syriaca: The Protevangelium Jacobi and Transitus Mariae (London, 1902) (Texts; English translation)
- Acta Mythologica Apostolorum (London, 1904) (Texts; English translation)
- The Old Syriac Gospels or Evangelion da-Mepharreshê (London, 1910)
- Light on the Four Gospels from the Sinai Palimpsest (London, 1913)
of Margaret Dunlop Gibson
- How the Codex Was Found: A narrative of two visits to Sinai from Mrs. Lewis's journals, 1892 - 1893 (Cambridge, 1893)
- An Arabic Version of the Epistles of St. Paul to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians with part of the Epistle to the Ephesians from a ninth century MS. in the Convent of Saint Catharine on Mount Sinai. Studia Sinaitica (1894). London: C J Clay and Sons
- Catalogue of the Arabic mss. in the Convent of Saint Catharine on Mount Sinai. Studia Sinaitica (1894). London: C J Clay and Sons
of Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson
- The Palestinian Syriac Lectionary of the Gospels (London, 1899)
Further reading
- Whigham Price, Alan (1985) The Ladies of Castlebrae. London: Headline Book Publishing.
External links
- Agnes Smith Lewis, mss. in Catalogue of the Syriac the Convent of S. Catharine on Mount Sinai (1894)