I find it somewhat puzzling to see you constantly taking positions contrary to the fruits of your own research. An unsubstantiated and imprecise statement from Grosche is hardly quotable, as contrasted with the findings in "A full Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus with the received text of the New Textament," (1864) Scrivener, per your own website, and similar remarks in DC Parker, Jongkind etc., which date the twelve Arabic notes at sundry times, the earliest contemporaneous with the correctors, and then extending up until 15th century at the latest.And I can't help that you do not know the facts. Richard Goesche told Tregelles that the Arabic notes were "very recent". What facts do you have that show these notes were before 1840?
A similar question can be asked about the wacky scribbles, who has shown that that type of writing was used in antiquity?
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Samuel Tregelles in a letter written July 3, 1862:
"Here and there a later hand has written Arabic notes in the margin, and these Tischendorf imagines are from the same hand that has made some corrections (apparently) in the eighth century: if so this would be an uncommonly ancient piece of Arabic writing: I showed the lithographed facsimile of the page to Dr. Goesche of the Royal Library, Berlin; and he tells me, (what I strongly suspected before) that the Arabic is very recent, also that it is by the hand of some Syrian, being (as I before knew) a liturgical note."
Some Unpublished Letters of S. P. Tregelles Relating to the Codex Sinaiticus, Evangelical Quarterly, 1976 Timothy C. F. Stunt, p. 20
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Richard Gosche (1824-1889)
Richard Gosche – Wikipedia
de.wikipedia.org
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Also note that Tregelles (no friend of Tischendorf) hjad also derided Simonides' claims:
From Stunt's biography of Tregelles (SPT) in "The Life and Times of Samuel Prideaux Tregelles":
"........the antipathy displayed by Tischendorf [to Tregelles] in whose opinion
Tregelles was a humbug, ‘always acting so piously, always bandying talk
of “God” and “God’s word” around, without scorning to use the most
spiteful weapons of this world’.[43]
[43] "C. Tischendorf (Paris, 1 December 1864) to S. Davidson (Glasgow/UGL, GB247 MS
Gen 527/7). The quoted extracts are from the translation by Dr James Bentley in his Secrets
of Mount Sinai: The Story of the Codex Sinaiticus (London: Orbis, 1985), 124–25, 88."
"There is a delicious irony in the fact that although Tischendorf regretted
having allowed Tregelles to see the Sinaitic Codex in Leipzig in 1862,
his having done so enabled the English scholar to give his wholehearted
support to Tischendorf in his controversy with the mischievous but gifted
calligrapher Constantine Simonides who claimed that as a young man in a
monastery on Mount Athos, it had been he who had written the Codex
Sinaiticus. There was a potentially comic element in this part of the story,
as Tischendorf had earlier played an important part in exposing Simonides
as a very skilful forger of ancient documents, and the German scholar’s
indignation was now aggravated by his belief that a desire for revenge was
Simonides’s deliberate motive for casting doubt on Tischendorf’s credentials.
For Tregelles, it was a sacred duty to testify to the authenticity of the
Sinai Codex against the spurious claims of Simonides. On the other hand,
it was a bit galling for Tischendorf to welcome SPT’s support for the cause
of truth. [45]
[45] "For most of SPT’s letters on the Simonides affair, see Stunt, See
Some Unpublished Letters of S. P. Tregelles Relating to the Codex Sinaiticus,
Evangelical Quarterly, 1976 Timothy C. F. Stunt, pp. 23–25. SPT’s profound disapproval
of Simonides’ behaviour was still apparent in an indignant letter that he
wrote some years later, ‘Codex Mayerianus and Simonides’, Notes and Queries
4th series 3 [24 April 1869] 369. Having examined the original codex when visiting Tischendorf
in Leipzig, Tregelles was able to confirm ‘as an eyewitness’ certain statements about the
codex made by another scholar, F.H.A. Scrivener in a lecture given in Plymouth in October
1863. SPT disagreed with Scrivener on many matters but probably attended the lecture to
give his support in person to Scrivener’s rejection of the claims of Simonides. F.H. Scrivener,
"A Full Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus, with the Received Text of the New Testament, to which
is Prefixed a Critical Introduction," (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell and Co, 1864), xxxi, n.6."
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