Janet Martin Soskice

When I was a child, I used to wish that I had a twin. (Probably from reading all of those Bobbsey Twins books and watching The Parent Trap!) I hadn't thought about my childhood wish in ages, until I picked up this biography of twins Agnes Smith Lewis and and Margaret Smith Gibson. How I would have loved living the life of those Victorian sisters!

The twins lost their mother shortly after their birth, and they were raised by their father in Scotland. The girls were were well educated, and they show more absorbed Presbyterian teaching so that it became part of their fundamental nature. Mr. Smith received a substantial inheritance from a relative, enabling the family to develop a love for foreign travel. Mr. Smith required his daughters to learn the language of a country before they were allowed to visit it. In this way, the twins discovered an aptitude for learning languages that shaped the rest of their lives.

Both twins married fairly late in life, and both marriages sadly ended after about three years with the sudden deaths of their husbands. Thus, on most of the sisters' adult travels, they lacked a male escort. The twins had traveled to Greece and the Middle East before their marriages, and had learned how to successfully negotiate with guides. Agnes's brief marriage to a Cambridge Fellow brought the sisters into contact with scholars of ancient languages and manuscripts. Having already learned Greek, the sisters proceed to learn Syriac and Arabic. Their friend, Professor Rendel Harris, encouraged the sisters to visit the monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai. On a previous visit, Professor Harris had learned of the existence of some ancient manuscripts, but only at the end of his visit, when he had little time left to examine them.

The sisters' ability to speak modern Greek created a favorable impression with the monks of St. Catherine's. They were permitted to stay at the monastery and examine the manuscripts Professor Harris had told them about. Agnes had learned enough Syriac to recognize the importance of a Syriac text that had been overwritten by another, later work. The underlying Syriac text turned out to be an ancient copy of the Gospels in that language, and an important find for biblical studies.

When the twins returned to Cambridge, they found it difficult to attract the attention of the male scholars, and once they did, there were plenty of men willing to take credit for the sisters' discovery. The Cambridge establishment – male, English, and Anglican – were either unable or unwilling to recognize the sisters' intelligence and abilities. They found recognition and acceptance among the non-conformists in Cambridge – fellow Scots Presbyterians, Quakers, and Jews – and among the monks of Sinai.

Agnes and Margaret were fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. They were healthy enough to travel in the Middle East, and they had the money to fund their trips and pursue their intellectual interests. Their studies prepared them to recognize important manuscripts when they saw them, and friends in their Cambridge circle provided the necessary references and introductions to gain access to the repositories of the manuscripts at a time when interest in the discovery and transcription of ancient manuscripts was higher than it had ever been.

Author Janet Soskice struck just the right tone in this biography. She writes of scholarly and and arcane topics in a way that will appeal to both scholars and general readers. Highly recommended for readers with an interest in biblical studies and manuscripts, the Victorian era, and women's studies. show less

Janet Soskice's The Sisters of Sinai tells the truly remarkable story of the twin sisters who traveled to St. Catherine's monastery in the Sinai peninsula and found one of the earliest known copies of the gospels, a Syriac manuscript on parchment dating from the late fourth century. I didn't know much at all about Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson before, but Soskice's book brings them and their works to life beautifully.

An excellent account of the discoveries made by Lewis and Gibson at St. show more Catherine's, their indefatigable efforts to get these discoveries into print and make them available to the world, and their indirect but important involvement with the discovery of the Cairo Geniza, a tremendously important source of early Jewish manuscripts. Soskice dispels some of the strange myths and confusions that previous treatments of these topics have promulgated, and does a good job at putting the finds into the context of the scholarly debates over biblical interpretation that were raging during the period (and which, of course, continue).

Soskice also delves into the academic turf battling which occurred over the Gospel text, handling the whole process with the same careful documentation and deft narrative hand on display throughout the book. show less

This book was exciting to me! Two sister, already in middle age, traveled by camel across the Sinai desert to discover forgotten manuscripts and influenced male dominated scholarship. I knew about the 19th century discoveries that demonstrated that the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments had changed and evolved but I did not know about Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson.

Agnes and Margaret were twins. Born in the 1840s at a time when women and girls could go to school but the Universities show more of Oxford and Cambridge didn't award degrees to women. They were mostly educated at home and mastered a good number of modern and ancient languages. Their skill with languages served them well both in traveling in remote and primitive places and in understanding and interpreting the ancient manuscripts that they sought. In the library of St. Catherine's Monastery Agnes found a forgotten and neglected manuscript that she recognized as a palimpsest, a manuscript written over an earlier writing. Before the invention of paper most books were written on velum, made from layers of calf skin. It was expensive and often reused by scraping off the older writing. The older writing was sometimes visible and possible to decipher. The document that Agnes found contained the four Gospels of the New Testament underneath a collection of the lives of women saints.

Their discoveries aroused great interest but also jealousy and opposition from the male dominated scholarly world. Margaret and Agnes both became well regarded in the academic world. While Oxford and Cambridge still wouldn't award degrees to women many other universities awarded honorary doctorates to both sister. The sisters made many expeditions to Egypt, the Sinai and other Middle Eastern sites. They also helped recover some stolen manuscripts. After their travels were over they continued to study, transcribe and translate manuscripts in Cambridge.

The author of The Sisters of Sinai is Janet Soskice. She is a professor at Cambridge University where women now can be awarded degrees. show less

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1620456.html

Back when I was an undergraduate I spent two years living in the "Colony", the sprawl of buildings owned by Clare College at the foot of Castle Hill. The central building of the complex is a late Victorian mansion called Castlebrae, which had the following inscription on a plaque in the front hall:

This house was originally the home of
DR AGNES SMITH LEWIS (1843-1926) and
DR MARGARET DUNLOP GIBSON (1843–1920)
Inseparable twins, tireless travellers, show more distinguished Arabic & Syriac scholars.
Lampada Tradam. [Let me hand on the torch]

I never went much to Castlebrae but was always intrigued by the plaque and hope that some day I would find out the story behind it. Thanks to Janet Soskice's book, I now know much more: the Smith sisters, Agnes and Margaret, born in Scotland and fabulously rich, developed a strong interest in the roots of ancient scripture and had the means, motivation and ability to cultivate the monks of St Catherine's monastery in Sinai, where in 1892 they discovered a palimpsest which contained the oldest Syriac text of the Gospels known today. Then in 1896 they alerted Jewish scholars to the existence of the Cairo Genizah, which is still being transcribed in Cambridge to this day. For these efforts the University of Cambridge gave them no official recognition at all (it was not until 1921 that women were even awarded degrees for which they had qualified, and not until 1948 that they were given formal equality with men in the university). They also founded Westminster College, which nestles at the corner of Madingley Road. Janet Soskice has made it a fascinating story of women infiltrating the intellectual establishment (granted, rich women who had no children and no need to actually work) in the social and geopolitical context of the day. Strongly recommended. show less