Codex Sinaiticus - the facts

[TwoNoteableCorruptions]

"Constantinos Simonidis in the Gennadius Library"
By Pasquale Massimo Pinto
Page 99
Footnote 26​

The letter is pasted onto the front endpaper of the volume bearing the call number BB 1226.69 and containing the works described just below under D. Here is the text of the letter from Farrer to Hodgkin: “50, Ennismore Gardens, Prince’s Gate. / Dear Mr. Hodgkin, I am leaving all the papers I took away the other day, except the curious uncial tracing, which seems to be from the Shepherd of Hermas. This I am anxious to compare at the Brit. Museum / with Tischendorf’s Facsimile of the same at the end of his Codex. I expect your volume of Lithograph letters contains a treatise by Simonides on Aγιογραφια, on the Church Art of Mt. Athos. A letter I found / from Alexander Sturzas (at least I think he is meant by A. S. S.) is dated from Odessa, April 14, 1852, and acknowledges the receipt of it. If so, the presumption is that the other letters were really also lithographed about that time. My arrangement of the papers is quite [a word was probably left out], but will, I hope, / facilitate reference for future use, should such ever be required. Yours very truly J. A. Farrer».

https://www.academia.edu/899443/Constantinos_Simonidis_in_the_Gennadius_Library​

• Why would Simonides even need tracings of what could quite possibly be Tischendorf's text, when he himself allegedly wrote the said text, and could reproduce it at will with his own hand?

We know the answer...it's obvious...

Mr Avery, following closely in the footsteps of his master, Simonides (a master-liar), will now proceed to INVENT an alibi...out of thin air...

 

[Unbound68]

McGrane's work is awesome.

He's (by memory) bringing out, not just another review, but a full on book on Simonides. Did anyone else read or hear something to that effect?

Yes. I thought it was gonna be focusing more on Tischendorf, but I could be wrong. I think the mentions something about it in the file I emailed you.

 

[Unbound68]

Kevin McGrane, in correspondence with Steven Avery:
I would suggest that before wasting more of your time and everyone else's on following Simonides' lies that Benedict = Basilaeus = Bessarion => Vissarion all the way into another identity theft (as Simonides did by making out Benedict was the hegumen of St Panteleimon) you spend a few years learning some languages, starting with Greek and Russian, and then you will be able to read all the biographical material and see how deceived you have been.

BTW, yours and Daniels' description that Uspensky wrote his papers in Old Slavonic is utterly hilarious. Your Ukrainian translators must have been having a laugh.



Steven Avery:
Does David or I say that Uspensky wrote in Old Slavonic? Or simply that the script is Slavonic and perhaps some words as well (which is what was shared by the translators, the less professional ones in Ukraine did the work in two steps.) There is also a distinction made between Church Slavonic and Old Slavic. If we made a mistake in the description then most definitely we would want to make a correction. Afaik, I have never written that Uspensky wrote his papers in Old Slavonic.



Kevin McGrane:

Steven Avery, CARM forum, April 22, 2016: "Another unusual question was asked about reading the language of Uspensky...What is strange about this is that the SART team is the only one that have translated into English and published the salient Porfiry Uspensky Old Slavonic sections...We use a Slavonic translator, one with the skills that go beyond today's Russian translators"​

​

Steven Avery, Biblical Criticism & History forum, February 6, 2016: "up until today you simply can't read Uspensky in English. (The Old Slavonic of a couple of sentences was placed on a web-site or two and then on Wikipedia, without translation, by the Ukrainian scholar Leszek Janczuk...)​

​

Steven Avery, Fighting Fundamental forum, May 6, 2016 "The sources that have been used for the Codex Sinaiticus research are wide-ranging. As one simple example, this includes our having original finds and translations of the Uspensky and Morozov material, from Old Slavonic and Russian." ​

​

David Daniels "I and my fellow researchers, Steven Avery and Mark Michie, wanted to know what Uspensky wrote. But none of us knows Old Slavonic. Thankfully, a missionary to Ukraine, John Spillman, got it translated for us, from Old Slavonic, into Russian, then into English."​

I would have to take issue with this laudatory language about 'original finds'. What this 'SART team' really means is that they were ignorant of it. It was inaccessible to THEM because they couldn't read Russian, didn't realize that Russian orthography was different in the nineteenth century, and were conned into believing it was Old Slavonic, and made fools of themselves by repeating such twaddle. Someone must really be having a laugh at their expense since Old Slavonic has been extinct for 900 years. And, if we are to believe Daniels, one of this SART team, their translation was a translation of a translation via a third language, Russian!).

Btw, I have those exact same posts of Avery’s saved that McGrane lists. The Daniels reference to old Slavonic is from his book “Is the World’s Oldest Bible a Fake?,” pg. 132, Kindle edition.

 

[Unbound68]

As much as he likes to scramble his Google fighters to cherry pick quotes from19th century works, you’d think he would’ve googled his own name with the phrase “old Slavonic” before playing dumb with McGrane.

 

[Steven Avery]

McGrane's work is awesome.
He's (by memory) bringing out, not just another review, but a full on book on Simonides. Did anyone else read or hear something to that effect?

It would be wonderful if his book comes out, maybe on Three Constantines. McGrane actually wants to argue for a Sinaiticus c. AD 700 and Tischendorf being unreliable. I believe he would properly advance Sinaiticus studies towards the 1800s, even though that is not his purpose.

 

[Maestroh]

It would be wonderful if his book comes out, maybe on Three Constantines. McGrane actually wants to argue for a Sinaiticus c. AD 700 and Tischendorf being unreliable. I believe he would properly advance Sinaiticus studies towards the 1800s, even though that is not his purpose.

Of course you "believe" that.


You believe the moon landings were all faked, too, so don't think this exactly fills anyone else with confidence.

 

[TwoNoteableCorruptions]

It would be wonderful if his book comes out, maybe on Three Constantines. McGrane actually wants to argue for a Sinaiticus c. AD 700 and Tischendorf being unreliable. I believe he would properly advance Sinaiticus studies towards the 1800s, even though that is not his purpose.

Or you might simply be made to eat your words.

 

[Steven Avery]

Nongbri recounts an error made by Tischendorf, as identified by Milne and Skeat (in 'Scribes and Correctors'), relating to ‘certain cursive notes’, and another made by Milne and Skeat, relating to whether the Sinaiticus Codex was copied by dictation, which both concern their dating analysis of the Codex.

(a) Tischendorf (Prolegomena, p. 9) was alleged by Milne and Skeat to have made a mistake in attributing seven instances of these 'cursive notes' to a later Corrector B(a), but "identity of ink and the fact that they accompany only corrections by Scribe D make it certain that they are from his hand." This renders the cursive notes contemporaneous with the original date of the Codex.

It is easy to claim that notes are later than the main text without any real evidence.

Tischendorf himself showed at Matthew 5:45, according to Milne and Skeat, that a scribe could combine full-size uncials, and smaller letters that are a correction, from the same hand. And the smaller letters could easily be wrongly thought to be of a later date, not having the formal script of the main text. Milne and Skeat gave about seven examples.

This leads to a fundamental question. Is there really any script reason for dating the looser script colophons and the Three Crosses note (which really must be a scriptorium or monastery note by context) as later than the main text? Or are those dates based on invalid external considerations? A type of poof palaeography.

It is well known that there has been a tendency to write in colophons just to give an appearance of age, so this is a critical question. One manuscript with connections to Sinaiticus is Coislinianus, and it has a similar colophon that could have been an exemplar. And Sinaiticus scholars have pointed out that these colophon claims should not be casually accepted, without noticing that this destroys the traditional palaeographic dates.

Were the Sinaiticus scholars duped by hearing of Pamphilus and Origen's Hexapla and Antonius? And since those references were supposed to be much earlier than the notes in the codex, they dated by the very weak supposition that the colophons were actually authentic.

 

[cjab]

Were the Sinaiticus scholars duped by hearing of Pamphilus and Origen's Hexapla and Antonius? And since those references were supposed to be much earlier than the notes in the codex, they dated by the very weak supposition that the colophons were actually authentic.

But you haven't even shown that the colophons are inauthentic. And why would they be inauthentic, given the grand scale of the work? Moreover the colophon issue didn't arise until later. Possibility is not a probability!

"[Re] two famous colophons after the text of 2 Esdras and Esther claiming a correction of the text in Caesarea at least in the 6th century: such colophons should be viewed with caution because they became inflationary in later times, being copied from one codex to the other, but these two predate such secondary usurpation." (pg. 470) "

Christfried Böttrich of Greifswald University (Germany) "Codex Sinaiticus and the use of Manuscripts in the Early Church." Expository Times 128.10 (2017): 469-478.

______________

In any case, atacks on the intepretation of colophons are wholly unpersuasive in your case: uncials fell into total disuse by the end of the 9th century, and four column pages are concomitant with the use of papyri at the turn of the third century AD. In parchment codices, they are otherwise unknown.

If you are going to attack the date of Sinaiticus, you will have to start with asking what date the 4 column format is consistent with. Failure to consider the potential dates for the four column format is one reason why Nongbri's article may be seen as inadequate. The use of the four column format suggests a very early date: the era of Constantine being very probable.

It is extremely unlikely that the four column format would have been used any time after the three column format had become normalized.

 

[Steven Avery]

But you haven't even shown that the colophons are inauthentic. And why would they be inauthentic, given the grand scale of the work? Moreover the colophon issue didn't arise until later. Possibility is not a probability!

Actually, there is a far greater burden of proof on anybody who claims they are authentic, quite obviously. Even if you accept the absurd early dating of both Sinaiticus and the colophons.

Ironically, you even pointed out this caution, from Christfried Böttrich, in

Codex Sinaiticus and the use of manuscripts in the Early Church
Expository Times128.10 (2017): 469-478

You were quoting p. 470.

Third: there are two famous colophons after the text of 2 Esdras and Esther claiming a correction of the text in Caesarea at least in the 6th century; such colophons should be viewed with caution because they became inflationary in later times, being copied from one codex to the other, but these two predate such secondary usurpation.

cjab
“Moreover the colophon issue didn't arise until later.”

Beautiful, classic circularity!

==========

And the pristine condition of Sinaiticus, the “phenomenally good condition” would in fact mean that the colophon issue arose c. 1840, with knowledge of the Coislinianus (used for Sinaiticus corrections, see and understand the Wilhelmina Bousset analysis) colophon well known.

 

[Steven Avery]

The Textual Affinities of Sinaiticus' Correctors in 2Esdras: An Analysis of Proper Nouns (2017)
Pete Myers
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...c?sequence=1&usg=AOvVaw1JXOKzfGyjG8oNCvsmBqLi

Taking these colophons at face value, Lake dated the year of the exemplar used by the corrector who wrote them to 309 and claimed that there was only one step between the corrector and the Hexapla.9 In contrast, Parker gives reasons to be sceptical that the colophons were authored by the Sinaiticus corrector, considering it more likely that they were written for a papyrus original and transmitted through at least one parchment intermediary.10 Yet, whether authored by the Sinaiticus corrector or copied from an intermediary, the colophons claim that the text that they are associated with originated from Origen's Hexapla.

 

[Steven Avery]

David Parker- should we believe the colophon?

David Charles Parker
Codex Sinaiticus: The Story of the World’s Oldest Bible. London/Peabody, MA 2010

Should we believe this claim? There are arguments both for and against it. In favour of it is the fact that there is evidence that the text given by cpamph is indeed similar to the form of the Septuagint known to Origen. Against it is the frequency with which a colophon making similar claims appears in very different texts and manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments.

Another difficulty is that the size of the codex described in the colophon is problematical. There is no evidence that Christians were producing parchment codices as early as about 310, when Pamphilus was in prison, and the circumstances under which he and Antoninus would have been working are such that everyday papyrus seems a more likely material to have been available. But no single papyrus p. 83

And the leaves of 1844 are some of the most remarkable in the Codex, containing as they do the extensive Pamphilian corrections to 2 Esdras and Esther with their accompanying colophon, and the three crosses note. p. 133

Isn’t it amazing (sarcasm alert!) that Tischendorf received these most remarkable leaves in a supposed random basket find! (liar alert, Tischendorf took out five intact quires and part of a sixth from what Uspensky saw a year later).

Sinaiticus - the Land of Coincidences!

 

[Steven Avery]

And the pristine condition of Sinaiticus, the “phenomenally good condition” would in fact mean that the colophon issue arose c. 1840, with knowledge of the Coislinianus (used for Sinaiticus corrections, see and understand the Wilhelmina Bousset analysis) colophon well known.

Wilhelm Bousset

=======

Skeat discuss the Coislinianus colophon.

Sinaiticus, Vaticanus and Constantine (1999)
T. C. Skeat
https://books.google.com/books?id=Qux5DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA229

"The corrector Ca... his text agrees very closely in the Epistles with that of a manuscript called Hpaul, which at the end of the Pauline epistles has a long colophon beginning with the name of Evagrius and ending with a statement that the manuscript had been collated with a copy in the library at Caesarea which was in the autograph of Pamphilus. As Lake says 'Considering the close textual relationship between cod. Hpaul and the corrector Ca of the Codex Sinaiticus... '”

Here we have a very similar colophon being used for New Testament text!

hmmmm

 

[cjab]

Actually, there is a far greater burden of proof on anybody who claims they are authentic, quite obviously. Even if you accept the absurd early dating of both Sinaiticus and the colophons.

Ironically, you even pointed out this caution, from Christfried Böttrich, in

Codex Sinaiticus and the use of manuscripts in the Early Church
Expository Times128.10 (2017): 469-478

You were quoting p. 470.



cjab
“Moreover the colophon issue didn't arise until later.”

Beautiful, classic circularity!

==========

And the pristine condition of Sinaiticus, the “phenomenally good condition” would in fact mean that the colophon issue arose c. 1840, with knowledge of the Coislinianus (used for Sinaiticus corrections, see and understand the Wilhelmina Bousset analysis) colophon well known.

Actually, there is a far greater burden of proof on anybody who claims they are authentic, quite obviously. Even if you accept the absurd early dating of both Sinaiticus and the colophons.

Ironically, you even pointed out this caution, from Christfried Böttrich, in

Codex Sinaiticus and the use of manuscripts in the Early Church
Expository Times128.10 (2017): 469-478

You were quoting p. 470.



cjab
“Moreover the colophon issue didn't arise until later.”

Beautiful, classic circularity!

Yes, you have a serious problem in relying on Colophons to "prove" anything with these early manuscripts.

==========

And the pristine condition of Sinaiticus, the “phenomenally good condition” would in fact mean that the colophon issue arose c. 1840, with knowledge of the Coislinianus (used for Sinaiticus corrections, see and understand the Wilhelmina Bousset analysis) colophon well known.

I have little idea what you're talking about. Bousset's name is Wilhelm, not Wilhemina, and what precisely are you alleging he showed, other noting a similar colophon in Coislinianus to that in Sinaiticus, i.e. "the book was compared with the copy in the library at Caesarea, written by the hand of Pamphilus the saint" What is the "issue"? I am sure that there were many manuscripts corrected by this Pamphilius manuscript. So what? Do you have any valid point?

 

[Steven Avery]

. Bousset's name is Wilhelm, not Wilhemina,

Yes, that was an auto-correct error — that I had already corrected above.

 

[TwoNoteableCorruptions]

Isn’t it amazing (sarcasm alert!) that Tischendorf received these most remarkable leaves in a supposed random basket find! (liar alert, Tischendorf took out five intact quires and part of a sixth from what Uspensky saw a year later).

Sinaiticus - the Land of Coincidences!

No coincidence.

Nor supposed.

The baskets were real.

You're the one lying, and believing a lie, that they, the baskets, were (your words) "a total fabrication".

In the link below there are pictures of the very real wickerwork baskets that were uncoincidentally used in (guess where?) the library (and guess when?) through the 1700's up to the 1900's - that are still - at (guess where again?) St Catherine's monastery today!

Tischendorf's story has hard physical evidence to back it up.

Your story, on the other hand, that this is a "total" lie, is therefore proven false.

https://forums.carm.org/threads/con...eaps-in-baskets-etc.13467/page-2#post-1094672

They did - and DO - exist!

St Catherine's Monastery
Sacred Inheritance
The Religious Treasures of the Sacristy

"The manuscripts room also houses a seventeenth–eighteenth century basket, with a well-made interior lining, which until recently was kept in the library and had most probably have been used to store scrolls. It appears that baskets were indeed used to store scrolls and manuscripts in the Sinai library, but their use was finally discontinued around the end of the nineteenth century."

BY MARINA MYRIANTHEOS - KOUFOPOULOU, ARCHITECT, RESTORER, PHD HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE, MOUNT SINAI FOUNDATION

https://stcatherines.mused.org/en/stories/31/introduction-to-the-monastery-and-museum


For a picture see below:


St. Catherine's Monastery At God-trodden Mount Sinai
Saint Catherine, South Sinai Governorate

Basket for the Storage of Scrolls

Date: Seventeenth - eighteenth century (?)
Dimensisons: Height 64 cm, diameter 55 cm

"This basket is made of vertical, wooden battens around which thin strips of wood have been meticulously woven. This construction is further wrapped in heavy cotton fabric, dyed with indigo blue, and tied with cord. The four handles are made of rope, and then wrapped with the same kind of cord. The lid is made of thin, wooden planks held together with iron nails. Three ornate hinges that are attached along the diameter of the lid allow half of it to fold up on top of the other half. The base is made of thin, wooden planks and two wooden rails that raise it from the ground. This basket was located in the Library of the monastery, and was used to store scrolls."

https://stcatherines.mused.org/en/items/146877/basket-for-the-storage-of-scrolls
​

See picture in the attachment.

 

[Steven Avery]

You're the one lying, and believing a lie, that they, the baskets, were (your words) "a total fabrication".

You are so untrustworthy, notice that you do not quote me.
You falsely accuse me of lying based on your own trickery. Typical Matt.

The "SAVED from FIRE" story is the total fabrication.

Sheets of beautiful parchment are not burned for heat.
Full, intact quires (we even see that in 1933) of pristine like new parchment will not be burned.

Finding the quires in a basket is quite unlikely, as Uspensky saw the manuscript all together in 1845, not knowing what Tischendorf had pulled out.

The existence of baskets is quite incidental, but it was helpful when the Tischendorf con made up the Saviour of Parchment story 15 years later, in 1859.

 

[cjab]

You are so untrustworthy, notice that you do not quote me.
You falsely accuse me of lying based on your own trickery. Typical Matt.

The "SAVED from FIRE" story is the total fabrication.

Sheets of beautiful parchment are not burned for heat.
Full, intact quires (we even see that in 1933) of pristine like new parchment will not be burned.

Finding the quires in a basket is quite unlikely, as Uspensky saw the manuscript all together in 1845, not knowing what Tischendorf had pulled out.

The existence of baskets is quite incidental, but it was helpful when the Tischendorf con made up the Saviour of Parchment story 15 years later, in 1859.

The Sinaiticus manuscript originally contained 743 leaves. There are 43 leaves which are now at Leipzig University Library. There are 347 leaves now in The British Library (previously known as 'Codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus', as they were kept in St Petersburg between 1863 and 1933). Parts of six leaves are held at the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg. Eighteen pages of the Codex Sinaiticus are preserved in the Monastery of Sinai (some intact, and others in fragments).

Do the maths. What happened to the rest, if there were not disposed of by the monastery of St. Catherines "in the fire?"

Any notion that animal skin cannot burn in fire is misconceived. There is a youtube video of 10,000 animal skins being burnt in campaign to protect species.

 

[TwoNoteableCorruptions]

You are so untrustworthy, notice that you do not quote me.
You falsely accuse me of lying based on your own trickery. Typical Matt.

The "SAVED from FIRE" story is the total fabrication.

Sheets of beautiful parchment are not burned for heat.
Full, intact quires (we even see that in 1933) of pristine like new parchment will not be burned.

Finding the quires in a basket is quite unlikely, as Uspensky saw the manuscript all together in 1845, not knowing what Tischendorf had pulled out.

The existence of baskets is quite incidental, but it was helpful when the Tischendorf con made up the Saviour of Parchment story 15 years later, in 1859.

The quotation of: "a total fabrication" was from one of your comments on James Snapp's blog.

James Snapp
The Text of The Gospels Blog
Post: Tuesday, March 21st, 2017
Sinaiticus Is Not A Forgery - Setting The Stage

Steven Avery
James Snapp blog comment
Tuesday, March 21st, 2017

"the basket story was a total fabrication. We know from Uspensky that the ms was whole. And the basket was not referenced by Simonides (which is what your quote says). It was created by Tischendorf in 1859, 15 years after the first theft."
[...]
Steven Avery
SART - Sinaiticus Authenticity Research Team

https://www.thetextofthegospels.com/2017/03/sinaiticus-is-not-forgery-setting-stage.html?m=1​

You know that.

How do I know, that you know that?

Because I posted the same quotation on an earlier post, but on a different thread on this very forum.

Here's the link below:

Constantine Simonides and Codex Sinaiticus - fragments in book covers and bindings and in disordered heaps, in baskets etc
Page 2
Post #36
March 8th, 2023

https://forums.carm.org/threads/con...eaps-in-baskets-etc.13467/page-2#post-1094672
​

Which you are aware of.

Which...

Is in fact...

The link refered to in red font as 'In the link below..." in that post, post #696 linked above.

Codex Siniaticus - The Facts
Page
Post #696
Tuesday, April 4th, 2023

https://forums.carm.org/threads/codex-sinaiticus-the-facts.12990/page-35#post-1121993​

So you know exactly what I was on about...

My (note My) material point is clear...

The baskets are real. They were not created by Tischendorf's imagination. They are not a fabrication.

Now scream and cry and spit the dummy as much as you want, but I was being honest about what I (note I) was talking about.

 

[Steven Avery]

Here was the conversation from 6 years back.
James changed his text in the blog as he had made a major error (he also changed a typo I pointed out.)

You confuse a statement of James as if it was mine. (Typical)

His blog otherwise is a good read, we agree that the “SAVED from FIRE” is nonsense. You should deal with that, instead of playing games.

James Snapp found some excellent material, but did not even know all the details, such as:

1) his thief’s letter to Julius, explaining that leaves just came into his posession

2) five complete intact quires, easy to steal, that we see corroborated in the 1933 video

3) fact that Tisch fabricated the story 15 years later, in 1859, (covered well by Kevin McGrane) as a cover story for the 1844 theft. Since the connection of the two ms. would come out in public sometime.

4) no monastery corroboration of his supposed right to take the 43 leaves.

5) the “coincidental” remarkable notes right at the end of the supposedly random 43 leaves

6) the accurate account from Kallinikos about Tischendorf abstracting the 1844 leaves, for which you think Simonides had a network of spies at the monastery

7) Tisch’s tendency to using “Prince Regent” for monastery sneakiness

8) the Uspensky report from 1845 shows an intact manuscript

That is more than enough to know Tisch was lying in a desperate attempt to cover for the 1844 theft.

(Btw, we also have an account from 1859 that speaks of a midnight ride of Tischendorf Revere.)

Amazingly, we still have dupes.

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

James Snapp (originally):

"according to Simonides, is how its pages turned up there in a basket in 1844"

My correction to James:

“ - the basket story was a total fabrication. We know from Uspensky that the ms was whole. And the basket was not referenced by Simonides (which is what your quote says). It was created by Tischendorf in 1859, 15 years after the first theft. “

==========

“the basket story” refers to the total lie from Tisch that he saved the 43 leaves in a basket from fire.

You flunk Context 101 again.