The Shepherd of Hermas is the single longest document of the Apostolic Fathers. Nobody, ancient or modern, would suppose it could completely fit the relatively few surviving pages of Hermas. If Simonides (or anybody) was working with a limited number of blank pages there are quite a few documents of the Apostolic Fathers any one of which would have fitted completely in the surviving pages of Hermas. For all I know, other Apostolic Fathers documents were also in the Sinaiticus but now are lost with the missing pages of Hermas.
David Parker touches on the accessibility of the New Finds room for Sinaiticus fragments in the 1840s-1850s by Uspensky and Tischendorf
- Thread starter Steven Avery
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The Shepherd of Hermas is the single longest document of the Apostolic Fathers. Nobody, ancient or modern, would suppose it could completely fit the relatively few surviving pages of Hermas. If Simonides (or anybody) was working with a limited number of blank pages there are quite a few documents of the Apostolic Fathers any one of which would have fitted completely in the surviving pages of Hermas. For all I know, other Apostolic Fathers documents were also in the Sinaiticus but now are lost with the missing pages of Hermas.
Steven Avery
Well-known member
On one end, if Uspensky saw the whole Hermas, as appears to be his description, the discard to the New Finds happened in the Tischendorf years, likely after 1855. And likely due to his textual embarrassment, that Sinaiticus could be sunk by the Athous Hermas linguistic, textual similarities.
The Tischendorf Dump is not consistent with an ancient manuscript.
And other New Finds dumps were also quite delicate, like the 1 Chronicles duplicate section and the Genesis fragment in the acrostics controversy.
This might also allow the conclusion that Simonides said what was convenient about the “first part” of Hermas, using the Tisch lingo. No biggy, other than putting a question mark on any supposed pre-1859 doc with the phrase, that does not have pre-1859 provenance.
(Also there is the possibility of stopping and later continuation of the manuscript, this would come into play if there were parchment, ink or codicology differences between the New Finds and 1859 Hermas. And I am happy to put that aside in evaluation.)
So I would say the first part, Tischendorf dumping what was inconvenient from the manuscript, is the super-big element. There is no scenario in the manuscript universe where that should occur with a truly ancient manuscript.
Along with the confirmation of the New Finds accessibility as a dump room between 1844-1859.
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Steven Avery
Well-known member
See the beginning of this thread
.David Parker touches on the accessibility of the New Finds room for Sinaiticus fragments in the 1840s-1850s by Uspensky and Tischendorf
https://forums.carm.org/threads/dav...840s-1850s-by-uspensky-and-tischendorf.17264/