Agnes Smith Lewis (1843–1926)Christa Müller-Kessler, Lewis, Agnes Smith (1843–1926), in Oxford Dictionary of the National Biography, vol. 33 (Oxford, 2004), pp. 579–580. and Margaret Dunlop Gibson (1843–1920),Christa Müller-Kessler, Dunlop Gibson, née Smith (1843–1920), in Oxford Dictionary of the National Biography, vol. 22 (Oxford, 2004), pp. 89–90. nées Smith (sometimes referred to as the Westminster Sisters), were English Semitic scholars and travellers. As the twin daughters of John Smith of Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, they learned more than 12 languages between them, specialising in Arabic, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, and Syriac, and became acclaimed scholars in their academic fields, and benefactors to the Presbyterian Church of England, especially to Westminster College, Cambridge.

Personal life and education

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.Register of Births of the Town and Parish of Irvine: 1843, at ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk They were educated in private schools in Birkenhead, Cheshire and Kensington, London (1853–62), with travels in Europe guided by their father.Soskice, p.25

After their father's death, they were left a large inheritance. They settled in London and joined the Presbyterian church in Clapham Road.Soskice, p. 56 Already conversationally fluent in German, French and Italian,Soskice, p. 29 they continued to learn languages and travelled in Europe and the Middle East, including travelling up the Nile and visiting Palestine in 1868.Soskice, pp. 33- 51 In 1870, Agnes wrote Eastern Pilgrims, an account of their experiences in Egypt and Palestine.Agnes Smith Lewis, Eastern Pilgrims: The Travels of Three Ladies (London, 1870).

In 1883, the twins, by then also quite fluent in Modern Greek, travelled to Athens and other parts of Greece,Agnes Smith Lewis, Glimpses of Greek Life and Scenery(London, 1884) beginning a lifelong affectionate relationship with Greek Orthodoxy, especially the monks in office at Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai.Alan Whigham Price, The Ladies of Castlebrae (London, 1985), pp. 112. 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; he was also an Anglican clergyman. Each marriage soon ended with the death of the husband.

Margaret was buried with her husband in Dean Cemetery in western Edinburgh. The grave lies on the north wall of the main cemetery. Agnes was buried with hers in Mill Road Cemetery, Cambridge.

Academic work

By 1890, the sisters settled in Cambridge. Agnes began to study Syriac. Inspired by Quaker and Orientalist J. Rendel Harris's account of his discovery at Saint Catherine's Monastery of a Syriac text of the Apology of Aristides they travelled to the monastery in 1892, and discovered one of the earliest Syriac versions of the Old Syriac Gospels next to the earlier known Curetonian Gospels, now in the British Library, which gave insight into the Syriac transmission and added valuable variants to New Testament studies.Bruce M. Metzger, The Syriac Versions: III. The Old Syriac Versions, in The Early Versions of the New Testament (Oxford, 1977), pp. 36–47. It was one of the most important palimpsest manuscript finds since that of the Codex Sinaiticus in 1859 by Constantin von Tischendorf. The year after (1893), they returned with three Cambridge scholars that included Professor Robert L. Bensly and Francis C. Burkitt, and their wives, as well as J. Rendel Harris, to copy the whole of the manuscriptMargaret Dunlop Gibson, How the Codex was Found (Cambridge, 1895), pp. 60–67. The palimpsest manuscript was found to have been overwritten by the Lives of Holy Women in Syriac dated to 779 CE by John the Recluse as well as also having four 6th-century folios with a Syriac witness of the Departure of Mary (Transitus Mariae) underneath.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.Sinai Palimpsest Project.

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),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 and Greek with Gospels (7th/8th centuries),Ian A. Moir, Codex Climaci rescriptus grecus (Ms. Gregory 1561, L), Texts and Studies NS, 2 (Cambridge, 1956). 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.Sebastian P. Brock, The Syriac ‘New Finds’ at St. Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai and Their Significance, in The Harp 27, 2011, pp. 48–49.Sinai Palimpsest Project

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 (German Orientalist).Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson, The Palestinian Syriac Lectionary of the Gospels (London, 1899), pp. XI–XII. Margaret learned Arabic. Price p. 110. During this expedition, Agnes catalogued the collection of Syriac and Margaret of Arabic manuscripts.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. It was also on their first expedition (1892) that they were made acquainted with two additional, complete, and dated Christian Palestinian Aramaic Palestinian Syriac version of the Bible, now designated syrpal, Gospel lectionaries B and C (A.D. 1104 and 1118) and remnant D in the library of Saint Catherine's Monastery,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. which they edited 1899 in a synoptic version, including the earlier published Vatican Gospel A from 1030 (Vat. sir. 19).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.

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);The Forty Martyrs of the Sinai Desert and the Story of Eulogius from a Palestinian Syriac and Arabic Palimpsest (Cambridge, 1912), p. V.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. a nearly complete 11th-century lectionary in 1895The last seven were in the hand of a German collector and are now stored in the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, Germany. of Christian Palestinian Aramaic with noteworthy biblical pericopes, and later 1905 some of the missing folios from a German collector (Westminster College, Cambridge);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. 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.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.. 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.Letter by Meredith-Owen, Dept. of Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts, The British Museum of July 1957. They collected about 1,700 manuscript fragments and books including the acquisition of Eberhard Nestle library with rare editions, now known as the Lewis-Gibson collection, including some formerly of the Cairo Genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, the earliest Hebrew fragments of a Ecclesiasticus manuscript, identified by Solomon Schechter.Agnes Smith Lewis, In the Shadow of Sinai. A Story of travel and Research from 1895–1897 (Cambridge, 1898), pp. 160–162.Paul Kahle, The Cairo Geniza: The Schweich Lectures of the British Academy 1941 (London, 1947), pp. 6, 40.Lewis-Gibson collection. 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.

Though the University of Cambridge never honoured the two scholarly twins with degrees, they received honorary degrees from the universities of Halle, Heidelberg,Soskice, p.280 Dublin, and St Andrews,Soskice, p.271 and both were honoured in addition with the Triennial gold medal of the Royal Asiatic Society, the blue riband of oriental research in 1915.

At Cambridge, they attended St Columba's Church.Soskice, p.282 They were generous hostesses at their home, Castlebrae, off Chesterton Lane, Cambridge, which became the centre of a lively intellectual and religious circle.Price, pp. 162–183. Castlebrae, adjacent to Cambridge Castle, is now part of Clare College, Cambridge.

Benefaction

The sisters used their inheritance to endow the grounds and part of the buildings of Westminster College in Cambridge. This was long after Nonconformists were allowed to become full members of the Oxbridge universities by the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts; and that Presbyterian college moved from Queen Square, London to a site acquired from St John's College, Cambridge in 1899. They also helped the establishment of the Presbyterian chaplaincy to the University of Oxford, now at St Columba's United Reformed Church, Oxford.

Works

Agnes Smith Lewis Eastern Pilgrims: The travels of three ladies (London, 1870) Effie Maxwell (London, 1876) (a novel) The Brides of Ardmore: A story of Irish life (London, 1880) Through Cyprus (London, 1887) Glimpses of Greek Life and Scenery (London, 1884) Catalogue of the Syriac MSS. in the Convent of S. Catharine on Mount Sinai (London, 1894)