Codex Sinaiticus and Constantine Simonides - Kallinikos Profile, History, Details

Steven Avery said:
The fella was an intern in 2019.
So years have passed.
There is no timetable for the book.

Best would be making the letters available now.
Click to expand...

Well, in an ideal world, that would be great. I want to see them as much as you (as stated before).

I haven't contacted Malcolm Choat personally yet, but plan to. I have a lot of questions I want to ask him myself, and I will at some point.

You've been researching this for probably a decade, possibly more (I don't know) and I've only been looking into this for less than a year. So the deck, theoretically speaking, should be stacked in your favor.

This demanding...must be published now.. and the whole cover up .. conspiracy thing is simply O.T.T.

Patience is a fruit of God's Holy Spirit. ?

I think there may be a sentence or two in these letters that you might be able to twist to your advantage, but I genuinely think (a guess BTW) you will be disappointed. That's not posturing, but honestly what I think.
 
TwoNoteableCorruptions said:
Well, in an ideal world, that would be great. I want to see them as much as you (as stated before).

I haven't contacted Malcolm Choat personally yet, but plan to. I have a lot of questions I want to ask him myself, and I will at some point.

You've been researching this for probably a decade, possibly more (I don't know) and I've only been looking into this for less than a year. So the deck, theoretically speaking, should be stacked in your favor.

This demanding...must be published now.. and the whole cover up .. conspiracy thing is simply O.T.T.

Patience is a fruit of God's Holy Spirit. ?

I think there may be a sentence or two in these letters that you might be able to twist to your advantage, but I genuinely think (a guess BTW) you will be disappointed. That's not posturing, but honestly what I think.
Click to expand...

The letters sound special.
One clearly may give an insight on two points:

a) the theory that there is no actual Kallinikos, he was only a phantom of the opera
b) whether Simonides had a legitimate approach to the heiroglyphics

The others with Simonides and Hodgkin ... all sorts of possibilities.
So I don't really want to conjecture there.

=======================

We only stepped up our game on the textual studies in recent months. Now I have a fellow who understands the issues and has good Greek skills and we work extremely well as a team. At the moment we may be onto something super-special. (No, not on PBF :) ). The biggest difficulty is using our limited time in the most effective ways. What will give insight into the Sinaiticus situation with the most gain for the least pain? He also wrote up his own short overview of how he sees the Sinaiticus questions, which is a good read, maybe I can bring it over.

An example of recent studies are some Cyrillic letters, an uncial form that is not the Greek of the New Testament. This was pointed out by a friend on Facebook in the early days around 2014 but had gotten lost in the shuffle. I bumped into it again because it originally came up in a Theophylact discussion and I was reviewing the info on Theo on Facebook, which relates to the whole issue of dating wacky scrawls and comparing them to 1800s writings that we have in hand.

When did the Cyrillic letters get there? (If that is an accurate way to describe them.) Why? Was that done at the Sinai monastery? You can look at Isaiah section number 117 as an example to see one that is not a bold reinforcement ink. Somehow, it looks like this was missed, or considered prudent to bypass, by Tischendorf, Lake, Milne & Skeat and Jongkind. And maybe even Ken Penner, who has specialized on Isaiah in Sinaiticus in a couple of papers. I have not asked any of the scholars about this yet, since it is new on the 2023 revisit and I also am contacting experts on the Cyrillic alphabet, which is a wild area on its own!

=======================
 
Last edited:
TwoNoteableCorruptions said:
What's stopping you from contacting the library in Australia?
Just request some photographic copies... should be cheeper than a pane flight from America...
Click to expand...

First, it is not clear what archive those specific letters came from, it sounded like it may be one of the UK ones. Also they did some translation, which is helpful.

An Aussie Facebook friend did look at the Aussie archive in Melbourne a while back, and he may go back there now that we know more about what we are looking for and all the backdrop. It seems to be largely Deane, Hodgkin, Stewart, not Simonides directly. And little on Sinaiticus. However, we can try again. Either way, the Forging Antiquities Project should publish the key letters that are all described as the project of one intern.

And I saw some letters at the Grolier Club in NYC in two visits. That is another story.
 
Steven Avery said:
First, it is not clear what archive those specific letters came from, it sounded like it may be one of the UK ones. Also they did some translation, which is helpful.

An Aussie Facebook friend did look at the Aussie archive in Melbourne a while back, and he may go back there now that we know more about what we are looking for and all the backdrop. It seems to be largely Deane, Hodgkin, Stewart, not Simonides directly. And little on Sinaiticus. However, we can try again. Either way, the Forging Antiquities Project should publish the key letters that are all described as the project of one intern.

And I saw some letters at the Grolier Club in NYC in two visits. That is another story.
Click to expand...

No Kallinikos letters?
 
Steven Avery said:
First, it is not clear what archive those specific letters came from, it sounded like it may be one of the UK ones. Also they did some translation, which is helpful.

An Aussie Facebook friend did look at the Aussie archive in Melbourne a while back, and he may go back there now that we know more about what we are looking for and all the backdrop. It seems to be largely Deane, Hodgkin, Stewart, not Simonides directly. And little on Sinaiticus. However, we can try again. Either way, the Forging Antiquities Project should publish the key letters that are all described as the project of one intern.

And I saw some letters at the Grolier Club in NYC in two visits. That is another story.
Click to expand...

Do you have any idea what happened to the original Kallinikos letters that Hodgkin's relinquished, and we're compared with Simonide's handwriting at the Royal Society meeting?
 
TwoNoteableCorruptions said:
Do you have any idea what happened to the original Kallinikos letters that Hodgkin's relinquished, and we're compared with Simonide's handwriting at the Royal Society meeting?
Click to expand...

Maybe in one of the UK archives. Inquiries here and there are possible.

From my Grolier first trip there may be something in long-ago iPad pic archive.
 
cjab said:
What does "Isaiah section number 117" denote in English?
Click to expand...

On the Sinaiticus Isaiah section numbers were added in Greek letters between the columns. Yesterday we noticed that section 117 (you can see the numbers are translated in the transcription) has one of the Cyrillic letters, in its original ink. If I remember, the Z has a tail like a Cyrillic zeta.
 
Steven Avery said:
On the Sinaiticus Isaiah section numbers were added in Greek letters between the columns. Yesterday we noticed that section 117 (you can see the numbers are translated in the transcription) has one of the Cyrillic letters, in its original ink. If I remember, the Z has a tail like a Cyrillic zeta.
Click to expand...
There are no "numbers translated in the transcription." There is no translation. The transcription is Greek. Would you like to refer us to a link pointing out the content to which you refer, or else a chapter and verse in Isaiah.
 
Steven Avery said:
On the Sinaiticus Isaiah section numbers were added in Greek letters between the columns. Yesterday we noticed that section 117 (you can see the numbers are translated in the transcription) has one of the Cyrillic letters, in its original ink. If I remember, the Z has a tail like a Cyrillic zeta.
Click to expand...

Noted: 'like"

"Has a tail like a Cyrillic zeta"

So you're uncertain by the use of "like"?
 
Steven Avery said:
The fella who told me about this said it was a Cyrillic zeta.
And we know it is not the Greek Z.

Now I hope to hear from some Cyrillic experts.
Click to expand...

Grasping at straws on this one Steven.

A lone squiggle on a single letter (in the context of a word for a Greek numeral when the other two letters of the are definitely Greek) hardly makes a solid case for a definite Cryllic word, or a Fruedian slip on the part of a Russian monk from the Rossico (which is where you're really going with this)...
 
TwoNoteableCorruptions said:
Grasping at straws on this one Steven.
A lone squiggle on a single letter (in the context of a word for a Greek numeral when the other two letters of the are definitely Greek) hardly makes a solid case for a definite Cryllic word, or a Fruedian slip on the part of a Russian monk from the Rossico (which is where you're really going with this)...
Click to expand...

Look around. It is not the only Cyrillic letter.
 
[Page 66]: Da uns so eben die Nummer der Πανδώρα, welche den Brief des Hrn. Mustoxydis enthält, zukommt, so entlehnen wir demselben wenigstens einige Stellen: (Vergl. oben S. 48.) j - Αναγνοὺς τὴν Συμαΐδα ἐλυπήθην, διότι ἡ γόνιμος τοῦ συγγραφέως φαντασία, ἀντὶ νὰ περιβάλῃ τὸ πόνημα τὸν κομψὸν πέπλον τῶν ποιήσεως, ἐνέδυσε τὸν σεβάσμιον τῆς ἱστορίας ἱματισμόν. ῞Οσῳ προχωρεῖ τις εἰς τὴν ἀνάγνωσιν τοῦ βιβλίου, τόσῳ μᾶλλον καὶ εἰς τοὺς μὴ ὀξυδερκεῖς καταφαίνεται ἡ μυθοποιΐα. Πρὸς τιμὴν τοῦ Ἔθνους καὶ διὰ τὴν πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἀγάπην ηὐχόμην ἡ λήθη νὰ κατακαλύψῃ τὴν Συμαΐδα, ἥτις φαίνεται εἰς ἐμὲ ἀπαίσιος πρόδρομος τῶν ἄλλων παρ᾽ ὑμῖν ἀνεκδότων. Πρὸς ἔλεγχον τῆς γνησιότητος τῶν χειρογράφων οὔτε διόπτραι ἀπαιτοῦνται παλαιογραφίας, οὔτε περγαμηνῶν δοκιμασία. Ἐὰν δὲ ἔχητε τὴν συνείδησιν, ὅτι τὰ ἄλλα παρ᾽ ὑμῖν χειρόγραφα δὲν εἶναι πλαστὰ καὶ ὑποβολιμαῖα, ἐκδώσατε αὐτὰ, καὶ θέλετε ἀπολάβει ὄφελος καὶ τιμήν. ᾿Αλλ᾽ ἐπαναλέγω, μὲ λυπεῖ ὅτι προηγήθη αὐτῶν ἡ Συμαΐς. – Μὴ ἐπιχειρῆτε παράβολα ἔργα, ἐξ ὧν ἔτι μᾶλλον ταλαιπωρεῖται ὁ βίος. ῾Η εὐφυΐα καὶ αἱ γνώσεις ὑμῶν δύνανται νὰ ὑποδείξωσιν εἰς ὑμᾶς εὐθυτέραν καὶ εὐπορωτέραν ὁδόν.


[Page 66]: Since the number of the Πανδώρα [Pandora], which contains the letter of Mr. Mustoxydis, has just come to us, we borrow at least some passages from it: (Cf. above p. 48.) j - “I was astonished when I saw the Simaida, because the author's fertile [Or: “prolific”] imagination, instead of covering the work with the elegant veil of poetry, clothed it in the venerable garment of history. As the reader progresses in reading the book, so too does the myth-making become obvious to those who may not even be that bright [Or: “astute”]. In honor of the nation and for the love of you, I wish that oblivion will cover over the Symeida, which seems to us a terrible forerunner of the other unpublished ones. To check the authenticity of the manuscripts, neither dioptres [i.e. magnifying devices] are required for palaeography, nor parchment testing. And if you have the conscience that the other manuscripts in your possession are not forged and fraudulent, publish them, and you will reap the benefit and honor. But I repeat, I am saddened by the fact that Simaeus preceded them. - Do not attempt costly works, for which life is rather troubled. Your intelligence and knowledge can show you a more direct and prosperous way.”
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top