Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels by Janet Soskice
| Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels by Janet Soskice | |
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| Category: Biography | |
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Reviewer: Trish Simpson-Davis
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| Summary: Two Victorian ladies trek across Egypt to unearth one of the earliest copies of the Gospels. A readable and scholarly account of the lives of extraordinary Scottish twins, Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 352 | Date: August 2010 |
| Publisher: Vintage | |
| ISBN: 978-0099546542 | |
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Sisters of Sinai tells the story of two extraordinary, Victorian women who unearthed an important early copy of the Gospels from a remote monastery in Egypt. It hardly seems possible that they organised and executed such remarkable feats of unaccompanied travel during an age in which women's freedom was hidebound by their status as the inferior sex. Janet Soskice is well-placed as a feminist philosopher and theologian to explore their lives.
Agnes and Margaret were unusually well-educated - for girls - by their Scottish Presbyterian father. They seem to have been lively characters, although rather too serious minded for a 'butterfly' social life – their interests were more in religious affairs, travel and fitness. They were particularly gifted linguists. As teenagers, they learned to speak three modern languages fluently, travelling extensively on the Continent. At twenty-three, Agnes and Margaret inherited a large family fortune which assured their independence and allowed them to follow their own interests. Their enthusiasm for travel took them into the more difficult and dangerous pre-Baedeker Middle East. They went on to master, mainly by self-teaching, nine languages, including modern and classical Greek, Arabic and Syriac.
The twins lived their adult lives together, although both were briefly married. Margaret's husband was a melancholic Presbyterian clergyman who died after only three years of marriage. Some years later Agnes married a brilliant and gregarious antiquarian who was Fellow of the Parker Library of Cambridge University. Samuel Lewis also died in untimely fashion three years later, but this marriage brought the twins to settle in Cambridge. Lewis introduced both women to the highly-stratified and politicised society of University academia, dominated by clergymen.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, (contemporaneous with Darwinism clean-sweeping through universities) huge research efforts were being made in order to publish an authoritative version of the Bible, particularly the New Testament. Early versions were recorded in several different languages, translated from the original language of the Gospels. Subsequent interpretation depended on the insight and skill of both the original and modern translators, leaving many areas of doubt for Victorian theologians. Extant copies demonstrated how, over time, parts of the original story were distorted or even expunged as the Word was handed down. The earlier the manuscript, the more valuable its discovery to both fortune hunters and scholars.
Moving in academic circles alerted the women to the potential of manuscripts to be found at St Catherine's Monastery on the Sinai peninsular. With their previous experience of travelling in Egypt, Agnes and Margaret were sure they could obtain an invitation into the monastery, even though an excess of colonial-style pillage by previous visitors had made the monks wary of Western scholar-adventurers.
By dint of tact, charm, integrity and their modern language skills, the twins gained the confidence of the monks. They found an early palimpsest with an underlying text in Syriac of the Gospels, of great value to modern scholars, and photographed the pages (rather than appropriating them). Unlike the men who had preceded them, the twins tried to work with local religious leaders for their mutual benefit, for example in producing a catalogue of the manuscripts held by the monastery. Unfortunately a subsequent visit, with male professorial colleagues resulted in a very public falling out over the ensuing academic glory. The resulting Cambridge cold shoulder meant that it was years before the twins' self-taught erudition was properly recognised. That, and their gender, explains their lack of renown, despite their notable achievements.
Surprisingly, the twins lived out their lives in Cambridge and were major benefactors to the new, all-male, Westminster College. They continued with an utter determination to contribute what they could to their society.
Biographies can suffer from an inadequacy of evidence, so that the author is forced to imagine vast chunks of the action to make a readable narrative. Fortunately this book is well-supported by letters, diaries and published articles held by the University from Agnes, Margaret and contemporaries. Janet Soskice tells the story with scholarly conviction, allowing the twins' splendidly upright and persistent characters to make the running. The author's imagination sets the scenes and fills in domestic detail, while verisimilitude is never threatened. If you enjoy meeting interesting people, then this good, thick biography is one to be earmarked.
Janet Solstice's feminist stance is explored in her other books: The Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender and Religious Language and Metaphor and Religious Language.
I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to The Bookbag.
Victorian themes thrown up by this book might be further explored in: A Corkscrew is Most Useful: The Travellers of Empire by Nicholas Murray; Darwin: A Life in Science by John Gribbin and Michael White; and for a historical fiction set in nineteenth century Cairo, The Mistress of Nothing by Kate Pullinger.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels by Janet Soskice at Amazon.com.
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