Codex Sinaiticus - the facts

[Steven Avery]

In 1908, the publisher of this Catalog, the Sinaitic Sacristan Polykarpos, relayed that the famous Sinaitic Codex had for many years been placed on a shelf in the room of the then Sacristan over the door, and on it were placed coffee cups by the visitors!​

He was analyzing coffee stains and myths from 50 years earlier?

 

[Steven Avery]

And long ago the monks, in order to be rid of annoying and useless things, filled the monastery furnace with old books, amongst which were rare and scarce editions!​

This “long ago” legend may have simply developed from the Tischendorf saved from fire cover story con.

 

[Steven Avery]

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.

After a valid caution, Christfried Böttrich is writing in circles in the “predate” conclusion. If the colophons were for “inflationary” purposes added to increase the potential age-value of the manuscript, they could have been added as late as the 1840s (when they would have significance.)

Here are four considerations:

1) there is a Coislinianus potential exemplar

2) the Coislinianus colophon is NT - the likelihood of a similar transmission schema involving Pamphilius and Cæsarea in both the NT and OT is exceedingly low

3) the pseudo-random 43 leaves (including 5 full intact quires) taken in the Tischendorf 1844 theft were carefully heisted, and the “coincidence” of the two colophons being at the end of the 43 leaves was a major part of the Tischendorf CFA-Sinaiticus con

4) the hand-writing should be compared to Tischendorf and Simonides

==========

Adolf Hilgenfeld and Tischendorf tussled on the significance of the colophons for dating both the colophons and the main text. However their debate had the faux presupposition that the colophons are authentic, although it would be good to check Hilgenfeld’s wording.

Afaik, related to (4) the colophons are not given a firm connection to any other writing on the manuscript.

 

[Steven Avery]

Tischendorf remained good friends with the St Catherine's librarian after 1844. Tischendorf affectionately refers to him as "his old friend" in 1859 etc.
The librarian was always affable and hospitable to Tischendorf whenever he visited the monastery after 1844, and would always ask visitor's from the outside world of any news they might have heard about his friend Tischendorf.

The word you are looking for is “accomplice”.

“Prince Regent” helped cement the bond.

 

[cjab]

I think you are just making this up.

Uspensky read Sinaiticus easily

Uspensky .... a scholar, archaeologist, orientalist, and cataloguer of the ancient manuscripts of the Eastern Church.

I have never heard a claim that the monks in Sinai could not read the text. If you have any actual evidence for your claim, share away.

Monks in Sinai .... scholars NOT. The Codex became disbound and separated, and lost.

Codex Sinaiticus and the use of
manuscripts in the Early Church
Christfried Böttrich/The Expository Times

"After the 12th century, the codex
seems to have vanished silently from the desks
of those devoted to theological work.
Losing its function became the greatest danger
for the Codex Sinaiticus as time went by. One undatable
day, the cover must have been removed
from the book which then remained as a huge
pile of pages. Unbound, it was only a question
of time before the dissolution began. This process
is a matter for speculation: at first some
sheets from the beginning and the end were
used for secondary purposes like bookbinding
and other things; a few of these pages got lost
in the room beneath St George’s chapel in the
northern wall where they were re-discovered in
1975;59 someone had separated a bundle from
the first, already incomplete Old Testament section
as recycling material, setting aside the New
Testament part for a while—and the part taken
out found its way into the ominous basket in the
library; the New Testament including Barnabas
and Hermas disappeared for sometime, being
kept in a side room of the father oikonomos’
cell."

 

[Steven Avery]

Codex Sinaiticus and the use of manuscripts in the Early Church
Christfried Böttrich/The Expository Times

the New Testament including Barnabas and Hermas disappeared for sometime, being kept in a side room of the father oikonomos’ cell.

Did he determine this by the same coffee stain analysis we had earlier?
When is "sometime"?

How did Uspensky find the side room and connect the NT with the rest of the ms. by 1845?

Is this an acknowledgment that the New Testament was the special part of Sinaiticus, not one word lost?

 

[cjab]

Did he determine this by the same coffee stain analysis we had earlier?
When is "sometime"?

How did Uspensky find the side room and connect the NT with the rest of the ms. by 1845?

Is this an acknowledgment that the New Testament was the special part of Sinaiticus, not one word lost?

You'll have to ask Uspensky; though I read this very same account about where the Codex Sinaiticus was kept, and that it had coffee cups placed on it, in a Greek Orthodox publication of 08/1911, "Εκκλησιαστικός Φάρος : επιστημονικόν θεολογικόν σύγγραμμα, Έτος Δ' τόμος Η', τεύχος ΜΔ'" ("ΚΡΙΤΙΚΗ: Πορφνρίου Ούσπέν σκη, Περιγραφὴ τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν χειρογράφων τῆς Μονῆς τῆς ἁγίας Αἰκατερίνης ἐν Σινα, ἐπιστασία Β. Ν. Μπενεσχέβιτς, ὑπὸ Γρηγορίου Παπαμιχαήλ").

 

[Steven Avery]

… I read this very same account about where the Codex Sinaiticus was kept, and that it had coffee cups placed on it, in a Greek Orthodox publication of 08/1911, "Εκκλησιαστικός Φάρος : επιστημονικόν θεολογικόν σύγγραμμα, Έτος Δ' τόμος Η', τεύχος ΜΔ'" ("ΚΡΙΤΙΚΗ: Πορφνρίου Ούσπέν σκη, Περιγραφὴ τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν χειρογράφων τῆς Μονῆς τῆς ἁγίας Αἰκατερίνης ἐν Σινα, ἐπιστασία Β. Ν. Μπενεσχέβιτς, ὑπὸ Γρηγορίου Παπαμιχαήλ").

hmmmm …
Two identical coffee stain reports in 1911.
Sounds like the same myth repeated twice.

 

[TwoNoteableCorruptions]

hmmmm …
Two identical coffee stain reports in 1911.
Sounds like the same myth repeated twice.

Cjab didn't say "coffee stains" at all.

it had coffee cups placed on it

Placed "on it", isn't saying "stains".

 

[TwoNoteableCorruptions]

Cjab didn't say anything about any of the cups actually having any coffee liquid in them while placed upon the Codex.

Nor did he say that there were any coffee stains on the Codex parchment itself.

Nor did he say that there were any coffee stains on the red cloth rapped around Codex.

 

[Shoonra]

Are these stains proven to be from coffee?? I would suspect they are from the inkwell that the scribes were using more than a thousand years ago.

 

[Conan]

Are these stains proven to be from coffee?? I would suspect they are from the inkwell that the scribes were using more than a thousand years ago.

What stains?

 

[Shoonra]

I meant the stains on the Sinaiticus that Avery was writing about.

 

[Steven Avery]

I meant the stains on the Sinaiticus that Avery was writing about.

This should have its own study .

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

IDENTIFYING THE REAL THING
(Prepared by D. van der Reyden of SCMRE, for School for Scanning, Sponsored by the National Park Service and Managed by the Northeast Document Conservation Center, September 11-13, 1996, New York City)

Modern additives, or specific types of stains, might fluoresce special colors under ultraviolet light (the same way a white shirt washed in a detergent with optical brighteners fluoresces in a disco blacklight!). Other additives can be identified with more complex instruments like X-ray Fluorescence or Dispersion (XRF or XRD), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR), or Scanning Electron Microscopic imaging (SEM) or Elemental Dispersive Spectroscopy (SEM-EDS). Fibers in a paper can be identified as stable cotton or acidic ground wood using simple analytical techniques on a polarized light stage microscope.

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

 

[TwoNoteableCorruptions]

Are these stains proven to be from coffee?? I would suspect they are from the inkwell that the scribes were using more than a thousand years ago.

No. Not at all.

No stains from "coffee" (or "lemon" or "tobacco") have ever been Scientifically identified or conclusively found on the Codex Sinaiticus by any of Steven's:

• X-ray Fluorescence or Dispersion (XRF or XRD),
• Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR), or
• Scanning Electron Microscopic imaging (SEM) or
• Elemental Dispersive Spectroscopy (SEM-EDS).

Steven believes a lie.

Told by a notorious liar (far FAR more notorious and dishonest than Tischendorf by a country mile) from the 19th century (1800's).

He's simply diverting to a vengeful and slanderous fantasy made up by Simonides pretending to be Arch-Bishop Kallinikos of Thessaloniki (of which there is no record of him being at Mt Sinai ever) to falsely account for the manuscript parchment and writing on the parchment actually being genuinely ancient.

Simonides has a history of vengeful plots related to him being exposed for forgery.

 

[Steven Avery]

No stains from "coffee" (or "lemon" or "tobacco") have ever been Scientifically identified or conclusively found on the Codex Sinaiticus by any of Steven's:

• X-ray Fluorescence or Dispersion (XRF or XRD),
• Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR), or
• Scanning Electron Microscopic imaging (SEM) or
• Elemental Dispersive Spectroscopy (SEM-EDS)

Very good, Sherlock!

Since the libraries have not allowed any tests …

We have no test results.

========

We can, however look at the pictures.

 

[Shoonra]

Can you provide the pictures of these stains??

 

[Steven Avery]

Hi Shoonra,

Here are two contiguous Jeremiah pages, recto and verso, one at the British Library at the left, one at Leipzig 1844 on the right

Quire 46, Folio 8v
British Library
Jeremiah, 9:20 - 10:25 library: BL
https://codexsinaiticus.org/en/manu...lioNo=8&lid=en&quireNo=46&side=r&zoomSlider=0

Quire 47, Folio 1r
Leipzig University Library
Jeremiah, 10:25- 11:23 library: LUL
https://codexsinaiticus.org/en/manu...lioNo=8&lid=en&quireNo=46&side=v&zoomSlider=0

 

[Shoonra]

I see very old and much-used pages covered with smudges and the like, but I don't see a stain that would be the bottom of a coffee cup.

I am quite willing to accept that, during more than a thousand years, the hundreds of hands that handled Sinaiticus might not all have been clean, and that the book might have been dropped on the ground, etc., but there's nothing in these photos that suggests any relation to coffee.

 

[Steven Avery]

the bottom of a coffee cup … any relation to coffee.

Stains to artificially age the yellowed appearance of parchment can involve liquids like lemon juice, herbs, tea or coffee. Sinaiticus has never been tested.

The coffee cup stain discussion came out of some oddball comment from around 1900, and was humor and is not relevant.