Robert Lubbock Bensly (born in Eaton,

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of the county of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. It lies by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. The population of the Norwich ...

, England, 24 August 1831; died in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

, 23 April 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 Baptist private school in Norwich founded by the father of

John Sherren Brewer John Sherren Brewer, Jr. (March 1809 – February 1879) was an English clergyman, historian and scholar. He was a brother of E. Cobham Brewer, compiler of ''Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable''. Birth and education Brewer was born in Norwic ...

. His school fellows included the headmaster's grandson

Henry William Brewer Henry William Brewer (7 August 1836 – 6 October 1903) was a British illustrator, notable for his detailed city panoramas, held to be one of the most outstanding architectural draughtsmen of his day. Family and early life Brewer was born in ...

, later a notable architectural illustrator, the clinician and physiologist

Sydney Ringer Sydney Ringer FRS (March 1835 – 14 October 1910) was a British clinician, physiologist and pharmacologist, best known for inventing Ringer's solution. He was born in 1835 in Norwich, England and died following a stroke in 1910 in Lastingham, ...

and the architect

Edward Boardman Edward Boardman (1833–1910) was a Norwich born architect. He succeeded John Brown as the most successful Norwich architect in the second half of the 19th century.King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

, and

Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Gonville and Caius College, commonly known as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348 by Edmund Gonville, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and ...

, studied in Germany, and was appointed reader in Hebrew at

Gonville and Caius College Gonville and Caius College, commonly known as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348 by Edmund Gonville, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges an ...

in 1863. He was elected Fellow in 1876; became lecturer in Hebrew and Syriac in his college; was made

Lord Almoner's Professor of Arabic The Lord Almoner's Professorships of Arabic were two professorships, one at the University of Oxford and one at the University of Cambridge. They were both founded before 1724, but records of the holders of the chairs only date from that year. The ...

in 1887; examiner in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament in the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

. 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 Saint Catherine's Monastery ( , ), officially the Sacred Autonomous Royal Monastery of Saint Catherine of the Holy and God-Trodden Mount Sinai, is a Christian monastery located in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. Located at the foot of Mount Sinai ...

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

following the sisters' discovery there the previous year of a

palimpsest In textual studies, a palimpsest () is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off in preparation for reuse in the form of another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid ski ...

of the

Gospels Gospel originally meant the Christian message (" the gospel"), but in the second century AD the term (, from which the English word originated as a calque) came to be used also for the books in which the message was reported. In this sen ...

in Syriac. Bensly, together with

Francis Crawford Burkitt Francis Crawford Burkitt (3 September 1864 – 11 May 1935) was an English theologian. As Norris Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge from 1905 until shortly before his death, Burkitt was a sturdy critic of the notion of a dist ...

, played an important role in deciphering the text on this second trip. He 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); and edited ''St. Clement's Epistles to the Corinthians in Syriac'' (published posthumously; London, 1899).

Family

On 14 August 1860 in Halle, Bensly married Agnes Dorothee, daughter of Baron Eduard von Blomberg, who, with three children, survived him. His eldest son, Edward von Blomberg Bensly (born 1863), was professor of Classics at the

University of Adelaide The University of Adelaide is a public university, public research university based in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third-oldest university in Australia. Its main campus in the Adelaide city centre includes many Sa ...

in the years 1895-1905 and then professor of Latin at Aberystwyth College at the University of Wales. His wife Agnes wrote ''Our Journey to Sinai: Visit to the Convent of St. Catarina, with a chapter on the Sinai Palimpsest'' (published London, 1896), GoodReads website, ''Our Journey to Sinai: A Visit to the Convent of St Catarina'', by Agnes Bensly
/ref> the story of the couple's journey with the Gibson party in 1893.

References

;Attribution *

External links

*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bensly, Robert Lubbock 1831 births 1893 deaths People from Norwich (district) English orientalists Alumni of King's College London Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge British Hebraists Lord Almoner's Professors of Arabic (Cambridge) 19th-century Anglican theologians