Robert Lubbock Bensly
Robert Lubbock Bensly (born Eaton, Norwich, England, August 24, 1831; died at Cambridge, April 23, 1893) was an English orientalist.
Life
He was born at Eaton, near Norwich, on 24 August 1831. He was the second son of Robert Bensly and Harriet Reeve. He was educated at first in a private school.[1] He was educated at King's College London, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge,[2] studied in Germany, and was appointed reader in Hebrew at Gonville and Caius College 1863. He was elected Fellow 1876; became lecturer in Hebrew and Syriac in his college; was made Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic 1887; examiner in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament in the University of London.
He was a member of the Old Testament Revision Company; and accompanied Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson on the 1893 trip to Saint Catherine's Monastery in Egypt following the sisters' discovery there the previous year of a palimpsest of the Gospels in Syriac. Bensly, together with Francis Crawford Burkitt, played an important role in deciphering the text on this second trip.[3]
He has edited The Missing Fragment of the Latin Translation of the Fourth Book of Ezra, discovered and edited with an Introduction and Notes (Cambridge, 1875); contributed The Harklean Version of Heb. xi, 28–xiii, 25 to the Proceedings of the Congress of Orientalists of 1889; assisted in the editing of the Sinaitic palimpsest; edited IV Maccabees (to which he devoted twenty-seven years of labor), published posthumously (Cambridge, 1895); wrote Our Journey to Sinai, Visit to the Convent of St. Catarina, with a chapter on the Sinai Palimpsest (published posthumously London, 1896); and edited St. Clement's Epistles to the Corinthians in Syriac (published posthumously London, 1899).
Family
Bensly married at Halle, on 14 August 1860, Agnes Dorothee, daughter of Baron Eduard von Blomberg, who, with three children, survives him. His eldest son, Edward, was a professor of Greek in Adelaide University.[1]
References
- 1 2 Bendall 1901.
- ↑ "Bensly, Robert Lubbock (BNSY851RL)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ↑ Soskice, Janet (2010) Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels. London: Vintage, 146 - 187
- Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bendall, Cecil (1901). "Bensly, Robert Lubbock". In Sidney Lee. Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement. London: Smith, Elder & Co.