Bensly, Robert Lubbock

BENSLY, ROBERT LUBBOCK: Orientalist; b. at Eaton (2 m. s.w. of Norwich), Norfolk, England, Aug. 24,1831; d. at Cambridge Apr. 23, 1893. He was educated at King's College, London, and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; studied in Germany; was appointed reader in Hebrew at Gonville and Caius College 1863; elected fellow 1876; became lecturer in Hebrew and Syriac in his college; was made professor of Arabic 1887; examiner is the Hebrew text of the Old Testament in the University of London; was a member of the Old Testament Revision Company; accompanied Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson on the trip to Sinai on which the palimpsest of the Syriac Gospels was discovered (see Bible Versions, A, III, 1, § 2). He has edited The Missing Fragment of the Latin Translation o f 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 (London, 1896); edited St. Clement's Epistles to the Corinthians in Syriac (London, 1899).

Bibliography: H. T. Francis, In Memoriam R. L. Bensly, Cambridge, 1893; DNB; Supplement, vol. i, 171.