Codex Sinaiticus - the facts
- Thread starter cjab
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Steven Avery
Well-known member
There are much higher research priorities.
Feel free to ask for commentary from Arabic epigraphical and palaeographical experts. In my experience they have not weighed in on Sinaiticus.
christ_undivided
Well-known member
List your priorities?
Do they change every time someone points out a flaw in your system?
Steven Avery
Well-known member
The current priorities involve textual issues that show relationships between Sinaiticus scribes or correctors and individual manuscripts.
Also features that indicate Sinaiticus dependence on later manuscripts, including later Latin manuscripts.
As is your usual wont, you fixate upon some radical and unprovable opinion (indeed nothing more than a conjecture by his own analysis), here offered by the 19th century author Donalson, whose speculations hold little authority in modern research, to formulate a conspiracy theory. which you erroneously label "research." Many writers now see the Palatine as a 4th century Latin translation. commensurate with the era of Sinaiticus (see "The Christology of the Shepherd of Hermas: Investigating the Shape of Early Christology" by Mina Fouad Tawfike Salib), so your conspiracy theory would not prove anything as to the date of Sinaiticus, even if could be shown to have merit (which is a long way off). For uncertainty pervades everything Donaldson says:
"Was the Palatine derived from a different text, or how did it arise ? The prevalent idea is , that it is later than the Vulgate and based upon
it, and that the more recent translator tried to improve the older translation so as to bring it nearer to the original Greek. The matter is not yet decided, and requires further investigation—an investigation , however, which must be postponed till we have something like a satisfactory edition of the Vulgate."
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Steven Avery
Well-known member
James Donaldson (spelling)
The issues there were raised first by Tischendorf, and were never answered. Modern research generally has not addressed the issues, and they were content with the dismissal from Westcott that Donaldson "proves too much" (Westcott does not mention the original Tischendorf arguments!). So they give no conclusions of significance. There is one scholar who is aware of at least the Donaldson writings, and is helpful in our studies.
On Maximo, you simply have not understood the retroversion argument, most of this was on a thread that was deleted after some rants by a non-Christian writer. From my perspective, your comments were helpful, nonetheless. At the moment, I don't see much purpose in going over your confusions again.
Although now you do seem to want to allow there to be retroversion translations from the Palatine to Sinaiticus, with the hopeful monster that it all happened very, very quickly, which is extremely unlikely. None of the existing Hermas scholarship discusses this possibility. None. So we have made some headway!
Notice that my reference was to many separate indications about Sinaiticus text and corrections (in each case it is one or the other) connections to extant manuscripts, and also late features. Not just one. There actually is a need to do some specific ms. studies related to Hermas, but it is not the research du jour. It is interesting that some of these connections relate to mss. at Mt. Athos.
The key problem is he atomistic nature of Sinaiticus scholarship. Which allows for the evidences to be bypassed, since the 4th century date is the circular presupposition.
Some of the issues were pointed out back in the days of Tischendorf aggressive early date pushing. An example: Benjamin Harris Cowper wrote cogently, and conservatively, about the sophisticated formatting and rubrications and headings in the Song of Songs. Today, we have more of the background information and it is clear that the evidence shows that Sinaiticus picked up its features from later Latin manuscripts. (Unless you are stuck in accepting the Tischendorf dating errors.)
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christ_undivided
Well-known member
How often has this changed?
How do you classify later Latin manuscripts? Are you a student of Latin or are you just pretending?
Well, there's not many scholars around today who see other than a Latin name in Maximo. I have asked you before to explain the issue, in all its gory detail, but you have remained silent. From which I conclude you don't fully understand the issue yourself.
One problem for your theory is that the appeal to the vulgate (Old Latin) translation is no longer a relevant argument today, (whereas it might have been in Tischendorf's day), because scholars have concluded that there were multiple versions of Hermas, some shorter, some longer, and in the light of that, no authority can be imputed to the Vulgate over the Palatine or over Sinaiticus. The Tischendorf allegation as I think I understand it, although he is very difficult to understand, is that Simonides or one of his colleagues had transcribed a Greek version of Hermas from the Palatine. So the Maximo theory was only relevant in the context of a mistaken assumption about the authenticity of the Simonides Athos manuscript. Once that fell away, the Tischendorf allegation also had to be withdrawn, as there were no evidence that Sinaiticus was reverse translated from the Latin; and no evidence either that the Latin Palatine translation ever reached the Levant (I believe the only copies are to be found in Europe and it is also very rare).
Steven Avery
Well-known member
How often has what changed?
The features in the Latin manuscripts are referenced with their dates, locales, libraries, script, etc.
There is no particular need to "classify".
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Steven Avery
Well-known member
It was explained to you, but the non-Christian rants caused the thread to be deleted. I have my bookmarks from that thread, on a puter that is out of commission for a day or three, and I have the information summarized in a special writing.
You cherry-pick your quotes, since the Vulgata Hermas is generally considered hundred of years earlier than the Palatine. The issue is not what is given "authority", the issue is the indications that the Sinaiticus Greek is in various spots, indicative of having a Latin-->Greek transmission history And that, in cases like Maximo, the Latin is the Palatine.
When you go through the Tischendorf arguments, you have to drop any where Sinaiticus does not have text, also any where the Athous and Sinaiticus texts differ. You are still left with a good number of strong attacks against the dating of the Athous (and Sinaiticus) manuscripts. These attacks by Tischendorf were made before 1859, so they have a special "clean room" element.
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christ_undivided
Well-known member
Your priority changes. How often have these changed.
Sure you do. So you have only one classification? All equal in quality and pedigree.
You didn't mention your skill with Latin. Care to answer?
christ_undivided
Well-known member
Your making many assumptions here. If you going to question one document, you need to be honest and sincere in establish what you do not question..
"Old" doesn't mean authoritative, for the reason I have explained: it is thought that there were multiple versions of the Greek Hermas, which is independently discernible without recourse to Sinaiticus. The Vulgate was based on one such version, and as has been remarked, the vulgate is "liberal" in translation. The original Greek text of Hermas is deemed unrecoverable.
This is unsubstantiated, for this specific reason: Hermas was written in Rome, possibly as early as AD70, and from someone not particularly well educated and not refined in the Greek language, as were the apostles. For this reason it contained Latinisms from the inception, and is different from the New Testament canonical writings. So you cannot say " indicative of having a Latin-->Greek transmission history" without a qualification if it being "unsubstantiated conjecture." Who are the modern scholars that support you?
This general waffle is meaningless.
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Steven Avery
Well-known member
The reason for the current priorities.
Discovered amazing connections between Sinaiticus text and correctors and manuscripts. These were largely overlooked till late 2022.
Working with the gentleman with special language skills, who was with me on the James Snapp debate.
Looked more into the special situations, like the rubrications, formatting and headings of Song of Songs.
Have time and health by the grace of God to be on the projects.
I continue on other elements as well, but this has been the priority interests, and will likely stay that way for awhile.
Steven Avery
Well-known member
Actually we are careful about assumptions. Often the connections are noted in the scholarship, but they only consider possible explanations that match the presupposition that Sinaiticus must be 4th century. Or they do not give explanations to get an airing.
There are cases where you look for controls.
e.g. Does Vaticanus, Bezae or Alexandrinus have any similar relationships to extant manuscripts?
So: if the correctors of Sinaiticus match one manuscript, you want to go through it variant by variant, and you want to consider various possible explanations. Longer omissions in Sinaiticus are especially interesting, especially if they may be homoeoteleuton.
A person could theorize that the Sinaiticus manuscript was in some foreign land, like Mt. Athos, and the corrections in Sinaiticus, but not the text, were used in the making of the new manuscript. That ultra-difficult theory can be compared with the far simpler, Ockham-friendly conclusion that the manuscript was actually used for the Sinaiticus corrections.
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Steven Avery
Well-known member
You call this a "waffle", yet it is exceedingly clear.
It might help you to go through the Tischendorf material. It is easy enough to find out which of his arguments do not have extant text in Sinaiticus, therefore they cannot apply to the Sinaiticus text. It is a bit more involved to determine where Sinaiticus does not have the same text as Athous.
Then you are left with the ones that attack Athous and Sinaiticus both. This is Tischendorf who is de facto attacking the Sinaiticus text as medieval.
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He has no skill with Latin.
He has no skill with French.
He has no skill with German.
He has no skill with Russian.
He has no skill with Greek.
Despite not knowing any of those languages, you will find him daily offering excerpts from whatever 19th century works he can find to cherry pick for his cause.
He has no skills in any foreign language, but he thinks Google Translate gives him proficiency in all of them.
Steven Avery
Well-known member
Maximo does not arise from a Latinism, it comes from an error in the Latin tradition, and it does not explain the magna in the Vulgata. I pointed this out to you numerous times and you only threw sand.
You have no data on which to state the above. Maximo is a Latinism, deriving from the Latin name "Maximus". There is no need to "explain the magna" in the Vulgata, which clearly uses a different Greek version to Sinaiticus, or else was a liberal translation wide of the mark. Maximo is also found in Hermas Bodmer Papyri XXXVIII, as well as in the Mt. Athos Hermas, and so its dissemination was widespread in the Levant in Greek manuscripts. As for correlations between these manuscripts: per PAPYRUS BODMER XXXVIII. Erma: II Pastore (Ia-IIIa Visione), edito con introduzione e commentario critico da ANTONIO CARLINI (con la collaborazione di LUIGI GIACCONE) and the review of the same by A. Kirkland Novum Testamentum, Vol. 34, Fasc. 3 (Jul., 1992), pp. 302-303:
"Carlini attempts to discern a pattern in the readings of the fourth- and fifthcentury witnesses to the text of the Shepherd (the Codex Sinaiticus (= S), the Palatine Latin version (= L2), the Bodmer papyrus (= B) and the Ethiopic version), but without any conclusive result. The fourth-fifth century witnesses agree against the (millennium later) Athous Codex (= A) and the (centuries earlier) Vulgate Latin version (= L1) in 15 instances; B and S converge in 23, B and L2 in 8, S and L2 in 3. But B and L1 converge in 6 cases, and L1,B,L2 agree against SA 21 times, while B and A converge in 7 cases and BA agree against S 11 times.
"All Carlini can discern is a "polimorfismo testuale" (TEXTUAL POLYMORPHISM). Given the widespread dissemination of the Shepherd at this date, such a conclusion is not surprising."