Constantin von Tischendorf

Lobegott Friedrich Constantin (von) Tischendorf (January 18, 1815 – December 7, 1874) was a world leading biblical scholar at his time. In 1844 he discovered the world's oldest and most complete Bible dating from 325, with the complete New Testament not discovered before. This Bible is called Codex Sinaiticus, after the St. Catherine's Monastery at Mt. Sinai, where Tischendorf discovered it. The codex can be seen either in the British Library in London, or as a digitalised version on the Internet. Textual disputes are resolved when the two oldest books, Codex Sinaiticus (source aleph, 4th AD) and Codex Vaticanus (source beta, 4th AD), agree with each other. Tischendorf was made an Honorary Doctor by Oxford University on 16 March 1865, and an Honorary Doctor by Cambridge University on 9 March 1865 following this find of the century. While a student gaining his academic degree in the 1840s, he earned international recognition when he deciphered the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, a 5th-century Greek manuscript of the New Testament. '''