Is the "World's Oldest Bible" a Fake?

Unbound68

Well-known member
What a coincidence. As "Providence" would have it, I was reading Kirsopp Lake's work on Sinaiticus last night, and he mentioned that there are some notes written at the end of the books of Esther and Ezra in the Codex Fred. Aug. (Sinaiticus) which were written to explain that the manuscript was corrected according to Codex Pamphili and resided at the Caesarean library between the 5th to 7th centuries.

The notes Lake provided are in Greek, which I can't read, but the work that Shoonra was obviously "inspired" to provide last night by the British Museum had those very notes translated in English!

And I thought my dream the other day that had a voice telling me:

"there are notes in the manuscript......what if they mean something?.....the corrector wants you to know something......Sinaiticus is not a forgery........Simonides is lying.....there are notes.....get them translated.....

was just my overactive imagination.

(For those of you who don't know what I'm referring to with my tongue in cheek, read the opening pages of Daniels's book "Is the world's oldest Bible a fake.")
Notes translated on pg. 17.
 

Steven Avery

Well-known member
According to the newsreel, the British Museum paid £ 100,000 to Russia for its share of the Sinaiticus. I find it hard to believe that the Brits would part with that much money - especially when dealing with the Communists - without first having made the most thorough examination to make sure they were buying a genuine article.
There is a bit in that book about a forgery concern.

There is no record of a thorough examination, only what occurred on arrival day.
 

Maestroh

Well-known member
You seem to prefer the straight-out lying and theft of Tischendorf over uncertainties in Athos or Sinai.

So the lies of Simonides…..you won’t call them that. That’s fatal to the credibility of any objective researcher.

Besides - the one thing we are certain of is Simonides didn’t write it on Athos, in Queens, or anywhere else.


For a guy who supposedly wrote it, he sure didn’t know much about it.

I will also remind you for the ten thousandth time that my position doesn’t depend on Tischendorf stealing it or borrowing it or even knowing which planet he was on.


Yours does depend on Simonides telling the truth and the guy lied about his own birthday. And everything else.
 

Steven Avery

Well-known member
Here is the Reuss catalogue entry on the 1821 Zozimus Moscow NT (pages 113-114). It appears to me that Reuss is saying it adopts the Elzivir TR text, which does not explain the variants in Sinaiticus.
https://archive.org/details/bibliothecanovi01reusgoog/page/112/mode/2up?view=theater

That is correct.
The usage of the Zosimas Moscow Bible would be in the OT.

Post #307 spoke of how the Septuagint was a primary focus of Benedict.

“First, that my undo Benedict, being by profession a theologian, and versed in twelve languages, intending to publish both the Old and New Testaments, and the writings of the Apostolic Fathers with exegetic scholia of the ancient commentators, and specially to reply to what had been written against the Septuagint, began this work while Professor in the College of Cydon in the year 1784."
 

Steven Avery

Well-known member
How do you know that to be a verifiable fact instead of your blindly believing Simonides' brazen, unproven, conflicting, self-serving claims?

Actually, the claims of Simonides are generally consistent, and are born out by the "facts on the ground". It is the Tischendorf tissues of lies that are a cover story for brazen thefts and false claims meant not for honest scholarship, but his own glory. You have to be a very clever and deceptive thief to turn around your theft into being a saviour (from fire.) He even came up that creative fabrication fifteen years after the theft!
 

Shoonra

Well-known member
Whatever yarns Tischendorf told about his acquisition of the Sinaiticus are irrelevant in evaluating Simonides's story. Simonides is not confirmed by the facts on the ground; there is evidence that the Codex was seen and described in the 18th century, Simonides claimed to have worked up the Codex in one week, he also claimed to have copied a Russian Bible in Greek, which had a TR text, he could not explain (or predict) the variants found in the Codex, and there is ample evidence that the Codex is older than 1840.
 
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