[edit]A plaque commemorating the Smith Sisters in Westminster College, CambridgeThe grave of James Young Gibson and Margaret Dunlop Gibson, Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh
Agnes and Margaret Smith, twins born on 11 January 1843 to Margaret Dunlop and John Smith, a solicitor and amateur linguist. Their mother died three weeks after their birth, and they were brought up by nannies, a governess, and their father.[3][1][2] They were educated in private schools in Birkenhead, Cheshire and Kensington, London (1853–62),[1][2] with travels in Europe guided by their father.[4]
After their father's death, they were left a large inheritance.[1][2] They settled in London and joined the Presbyterian church in Clapham Road.[5] Already conversationally fluent in German, French and Italian,[6] they continued to learn languages and travelled in Europe and the Middle East, including travelling up the Nile and visiting Palestine in 1868.[7] In 1870, Agnes wrote Eastern Pilgrims, an account of their experiences in Egypt and Palestine.[8]
In 1883, the twins, by then also quite fluent in Modern Greek, travelled to Athens and other parts of Greece,[9] beginning a lifelong affectionate relationship with Greek Orthodoxy, especially the monks in office at Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai.[10] On 11 September 1883, Margaret married James Young Gibson, a scholar trained for the ministry of the United Presbyterian Church, but later working on Spanish translations. In 1887, Agnes married Samuel Savage Lewis, a classicist, librarian, and fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Samuel was also a clergyman. Each marriage soon ended with the death of the husband.[2][1]
Her second most valuable attribution to the field of Aramaic (Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Syriac) studies and New and Old Testament text critique was the purchase of another unique palimpsest manuscript, the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, in Egypt (Cairo 1895; Port Tewfik 1906), and the largest batch from an anonymous Berlin (Germany) scholar (1905), containing underneath several individual manuscripts in Christian Palestinian Aramaic of various lectionaries with Gospels, Epistles, and Old Testament pericopes, an early apocryphal text Dormition of Mary with the hagiographic story of Peter and Paul (5th–7th century),[15][16] and Greek with Gospels (7th/8th centuries),[17] overwritten by the Syriac translation of Scala paradisi and Liber ad pastorem by the monk John Climacus of Sinai (8th–9th century), of which now surfaced the missing quire at Saint Catherine’s Monastery.[18][19]
After the return from their first trip to Sinai Agnes made herself acquainted with Christian Palestinian Aramaic (Palestinian Syriac) by the help of a script table by Julius Euting (GermanOrientalist).[20] Margaret learned Arabic.[21] During this expedition, Agnes catalogued the collection of Syriac and Margaret of Arabic manuscripts.[1][2][22] It was also on their first expedition (1892) that they were made acquainted with two additional, complete, and dated Christian Palestinian Aramaic (Palestinian Syriac) Gospel lectionaries B and C (1104, 1118), and remnant D in the library of Saint Catherine's Monastery,[23] which they edited 1899 in a synoptic version, including the earlier published Vatican Gospel A from 1030 (Vat. sir. 19).[24]
In their travels to Egypt, Agnes S. Lewis and Margaret D. Gibson were able to acquire among other unique manuscripts in Christian Palestinian Aramaic as e.g. an hagiographic palimpsest manuscript The Forty Martyrs of Sinai, and Eulogios the stone-cutter from the 6th–7th century (1906) overwritten by a Christian Arabic text (8th century);[25][26] a nearly complete eleventh-century lectionary in 1895[27] of Christian Palestinian Aramaic with noteworthy biblical pericopes, and later 1905 some of the missing folios from a German collector (Westminster College, Cambridge);[28][29] several leaves under Syriac Christian homilies where Agnes detected separate 7th and 8th century Qu'ranic manuscripts, which she and Alphonse Mingana dated as possibly pre-Uthmanic.[30][31][32] These palimpsest folios were lent to the exhibition “Internationale Ausstellung für Buchgewerbe und Graphik" in Leipzig 1914, and due to the outbreak of the First World War they were only returned in 1936 after the successful intervention by Paul Kahle.[33] They collected about 1,700 manuscript fragments and books including the acquisition of Eberhard Nestle library with rare editions,[1] now known as the Lewis-Gibson collection, including some formerly of the Cairo Genizah of the Ben Ezra SynagogueinOld Cairo, the earliest Hebrew fragments of a Ecclesiasticus manuscript, identified by Solomon Schechter.[34][35][36] The sisters continued to travel and write until the First World War when they slowly withdrew from their activity as scholars due to ill health.[1][2]
At Cambridge, they attended St Columba's Church.[39] They were generous hostesses at their home, Castlebrae, which became the centre of a lively intellectual and religious circle.[40]
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. (London, 1894)
Catalogue of the Arabic mss. in the Convent of Saint Catharine on Mount Sinai. (London, 1894)
An Arabic Version of the Acts of the Apostles and the Seven Catholic Epistles. (London 1899)
The Commentaries of Ishodad of Merv, Bishop of Hadatha c. 850 ad. (London 1911)
Matthew and Mark in Syriac. (London 1911)
Luke and John in Syriac. (London 1911)
The Acts of the Apostles and the Catholic Fathers. (London 1913)
A collection of scrapbooks of press cuttings relating to Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson can be found at the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.[41]
Müller-Kessler, Christa (2004), Dunlop Gibson, née Smith (1843–1920), in Oxford Dictionary of the National Biography, vol. 22. Oxford: Oxford Press, pp. 89–90. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/55585.
Müller-Kessler, Christa (2004), Lewis, Agnes Smith (1843–1926), in Oxford Dictionary of the National Biography, vol. 33. Oxford: Oxford Press, pp. 579–580. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/34510.
Whigham Price, Alan (1964), The Ladies of Castlebrae. The Life of Dr. Agnes Smith Lewis and Dr. Margaret Dunlop Gibson (Annual Lecture to the Presbyterian Historical Society, October 1964; University of Durham. Durham.
Whigham Price, Alan (1985), The Ladies of Castlebrae. London. ISBN0-86299-228-1
Cornick, D. and C. Binfield (editors) (2006) From Cambridge To Sinai United Reformed Church. ISBN978-0-85346-251-4
Jefferson, Rebecca J. W. (2009) "Sisters of Semitics: A Fresh Appreciation of the Scholarship of Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson" in Medieval Feminist Forum 45/1, pp. 23–49 [1]
Soskice, Janet (2009), Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels. London. ISBN978-1-4000-3474-1
Brock, Sebastian P. (2014), Agnes Lewis (1843–1926) and Margaret Gibson (1843–1920), in Predrag Bukovec (ed.), Christlicher Orient im Porträt – Wissenschaftsgeschichte des Christlichen Orients. Religionen im Vorderen Orient (RVO) 2. Hamburg. pp. 267–280. ISBN978-3-8300-7812-8
^Agnes Smith Lewis, Eastern Pilgrims: The Travels of Three Ladies (London, 1870).
^Agnes Smith Lewis, Glimpses of Greek Life and Scenery(London, 1884)
^Alan Whigham Price, The Ladies of Castlebrae (London, 1985), pp. 112.
^Bruce M. Metzger, The Syriac Versions: III. The Old Syriac Versions, in The Early Versions of the New Testament (Oxford, 1977), pp. 36–47.
^Margaret Dunlop Gibson, How the Codex was Found (Cambridge, 1895), pp. 60–67.
^Sebastian P. Brock, Grigory, Kessel, The ‘Departure of Mary’ in Two Palimpsests at the Monastery of St. Catherine (Sinai Syr. 30 & Sinai Arabic 514), in Christian Orient: Journal of Studies in the Christian Cultures of Asia and Africa 8 (2017), pp. 115-152.
^Agnes Smith Lewis (ed.), Codex Climaci rescriptus: Fragments of the Sixth-Century Palestinian Syriac Texts of the Gospels, of the Acts of the Apostles, and of St Paul’s Epistles (London, 1909), pp. XI–XVI.
^Christa Müller-Kessler, An Overlooked Christian Palestinian Aramaic Witness of the Dormition of Mary in Codex Climaci Rescriptus (CCR IV), in Collectanea Christiana Orientalia 16, 2019, pp. 81–98. Collectanea Christiana Orientalia
^Ian A. Moir, Codex Climaci rescriptus grecus (Ms. Gregory 1561, L), Texts and Studies NS, 2 (Cambridge, 1956).
^Sebastian P. Brock, The Syriac ‘New Finds’ at St. Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai and Their Significance, in The Harp 27, 2011, pp. 48–49.
^Sebastian P. Brock, Agnes Lewis (1843–1926) and Margaret Gibson (1843–1920), in Predrag Bukovec (ed.), Christlicher Orient im Porträt – Wissenschaftsgeschichte des Christlichen Orients. Religionen im Vorderen Orient (RVO) 2. (Hamburg, 2014), pp. 267–280.
^The Gospel B had been already described before by Jan P. van Kasteren, "Emmaus-Nicopolis et les auteurs arabes", Revue Biblique 1 (1892), p. 96.
^The Palestinian Syriac Lectionary of the Gospels Re-edited from Two Sinai MSS. and from P. De Lagard’s Edition of the Evangeliarium Hierosolymitanum (London, 1899), pp. IX–XVI.
^Tiny fragments of the beginning of the manuscript and one folio from the middle were in the hands of a German collector; see Friedrich Schulthess, Christlich-palästinische Fragmente, in Zeitschrift der Deutsche Morgenlândischen Gesellschaft 56, 1902, pp. 257–261.
^Agnes Smith Lewis, A Palestinian Syriac Lectionary containing Lessons from The Pentateuch, Job, Proverbs, Prophest, Acts, and Epistles (London, 1897), pp. V–XI.
^Agnes Smith Lewis, Supplement to a Palestinian Syriac Lectionary (Cambridge, 1907), p. 4.
^A. George, Le palimpseste Lewis-Mingana de Cambridge: Témoin ancien de l’histoire du Coran, in Compte rendue de séances l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres 2011, pp. 377–429.
