Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson defied every convention of the Victorian era to make remarkable contributions to biblical scholarship.
Identical twins, Agnes and Margaret Smith were born in 1843, in Irvine, Scotland. Their mother died shortly afterwards, and they were raised by their father in a Presbyterian Christian home. Defying any constraints on women’s education, their wealthy father sent them to private schools and promised the girls a trip to every country whose language they learned. Soon the twins had mastered French, German, Spanish and Italian, and gained a passion for language and travel.
When the twins were 23 their father died, leaving them an enormous fortune. Now totally independent the sisters decided to travel up the Nile, a daring venture for unmarried women. On their return they moved to London where, rejecting any frivolous social life, they gained reputations as women writing and studying languages. After mastering modern Greek, they travelled to Greece in 1883. Back in England Agnes began studying Arabic and Margaret married James Gibson, a former church minister with a love for languages.
This was a time when the trustworthiness of the New Testament was being attacked, with accusations that it had been written several centuries after the events it described. A response to this was to seek out older manuscripts of the New Testament and one – the Codex Sinaiticus – had been found at the Greek Orthodox monastery of Saint Catherine, deep in the harsh desert of Sinai. But were there other even older manuscripts? To find out, the sisters decided to visit the monastery in 1886 but got no further than Cairo. Shortly afterwards, Margaret’s husband died after just three years of marriage.
The twins then moved to Cambridge where Agnes met and married Samuel Lewis, a university librarian and archivist. Through him they became acquainted with scholars in biblical studies and ancient languages. The sisters were outsiders in every way: female, Scottish, lacking university degrees and, in a largely Anglican setting, determinedly Presbyterian. They were also firm believers that the Bible was indeed God’s word written. Nevertheless, the sisters’ intelligence and language skills won them friendship and acceptance.
In 1891 Agnes suffered a tragedy identical to that of her sister when her husband died. Widowed and again independent, the sisters planned a new visit to Sinai. In preparation Agnes studied Syriac, a dialect of the Aramaic that Jesus spoke, and both learned how to photograph documents. In 1892, after a week’s demanding travel by camel from Cairo, they arrived at Saint Catherine’s monastery. Their fluency in modern Greek gained them a warm welcome and they began examining manuscripts. One they found was an ancient palimpsest, a volume made of pages where the original words had been erased and a new text written on top. With much excitement, Agnes recognised that the almost illegible underlying text was that of the gospels in Syriac. The sisters carefully photographed pages and, on their return to Cambridge, their discovery aroused intense interest. An immediate follow-up trip to Sinai with scholars was arranged and soon the whole manuscript was carefully copied and demonstrated to be another early witness to the reliability of the biblical text.
During the following years the sisters made several more trips to Egypt and Sinai and added to their discoveries by purchasing old manuscripts. Back at Cambridge, despite having no formal academic qualifications, the sisters became accepted as authorities on biblical texts and their research was published in numerous important volumes.
Outside their work with texts, the sisters were also involved in many other ‘good works’: they part-funded a new Presbyterian college at Cambridge and quietly and generously contributed to church work and poverty relief. Globally respected in their later years, they were awarded honorary degrees from a number of universities (but not Cambridge!) in Britain and elsewhere. The sisters lived well into the 20th century, with Margaret dying in 1920 and Agnes in 1926.
The twins soon became largely forgotten figures, often unfairly portrayed as no more than eccentric women who had accidentally stumbled on valuable manuscripts. In fact, they knew what they were looking for, had the skills to find it and the ability to recognise it when they found it. In recent years their importance has been recognised, helped by a splendid and sympathetic biography The Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospelsby Janet Soskice.
We may find it hard to relate to the story of Agnes and Margaret. Few of us have their extraordinary gift for languages or their seemingly endless wealth and, thankfully, the patronising masculine superiority that they had to endure has largely disappeared. What should speak to all Christians, however, is the way that the twins were good stewards of all they had been given by God.
First, they were industrious in their stewardship. They could easily have frittered away their time and money, but they didn’t. They were ceaseless in their good works: learning languages, planning trips, writing publications and engaging in every kind of charity.
Second, they were audacious in their stewardship. Even today, most of us would be unwilling to go on camel expeditions to deepest Sinai. There was a boldness to what the twins did that should inspire us. And let’s not overlook that quiet, persevering courage required for ‘outsiders’ to make their way into a rather cosy academic community.
Third, they were judicious in their stewardship. The sisters didn’t simply throw their finance and energy at any and every needy cause. There was strategy in their actions. Their faith told them that ancient texts would be vital arguments against scepticism and that such manuscripts had to be sought.
Agnes and Margaret were clearly remarkable women. They believed that their duty was to use the time, talents and treasure they had been given by God for his kingdom. Would that more of us had such a sense of their responsibility before God!
J.John
Reverend Canon
