James Rendel Harris (27 January 1852 in Plymouth, Devon – 1 March 1941) was an English biblical scholar and curator of manuscripts, who was instrumental in bringing back to light many Syriac Scriptures and other early documents. His contacts at the Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in Egypt enabled twin sisters Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson to discover there[1] the Sinaitic Palimpsest, the oldest Syriac New Testament document in existence. He subsequently accompanied them on a second trip, with Robert Bensly and Francis Crawford Burkitt, to decipher the palimpsest.[2] He himself discovered there other manuscripts (073, 0118, 0119, 0137, a Syriac text of the Apology of Aristides[3] etc.,). Harris's Biblical Fragments from Mount Sinai appeared in 1890. He was a Quaker.[4]
- ^ Lewis, Agnes Smith, In the Shadow of Sinai, p. vi
- ^ Soskice, Janet Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels. London: Vintage, 157 – 180
- ^ Soskice, Janet Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels. London: Vintage, 110 – 111
- ^ Bernet, Claus, in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL), Band 30, Nordhausen 2009 [1]