 After earning his doctorate there in 1886, he undertook specialized studies in the Old Testament and Semitic languages at Vienna, Breslau and Berlin from 1898 to 1900.He served as a priest in Stroiești from 1887 to 1889, as a priest and religion teacher in Suceava from 1889 to 1896 and as a priest in Czernowitz ("Cernăuți") from 1896 to 1898.After the death of Isidor Onciul in 1897 and resulting vacancy of the Old Testament and Hebrew language professorate in the Czernowitz theology faculty, Tarnavschi was hired as a teaching assistant for those subjects in 1900.