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

[Maestroh]

Good example.

We hired a professional translator and made the Uspensky comments available in English.

You mean the man who dated it to the fifth century?

Nobody had discussed his comments in English properly.

A comment that assumes that just because you never found something, it must not exist.

Like the Lampros catalog, confirming Benedict, Kallinikos and Simonides at Athos c. 1840, this is a critical piece of information.

You mean the catalog entry that claims 1841 (not sure why you're claiming the wrong date here.....oh that's right, it's because Benedict WAS DEAD!!!

And thus, it doesn't prove what you're hoping.

Elliott totally missed it, and the Farrer discussion.

Which is irrelevant.
After all, you either missed Uspenski dating Sinaiticus to the fifth century or you're hiding it - one or the other.

Wanna tell us which?

Similarly the fact that Tischendorf stole five full quires in 1844.

Because that's a CLAIM, not a FACT.

Nowhere mentioned.

You mean until Simonides wrote as Kallinikos.....

We searched down other information, like the thief's talk of Tischendorf, writing to his family that the 1844 leaves had simply come into his possession. Then we confirmed that he only made up the con-man 'saved by fire' idea in 1859. Super-con.

In other words, your research was about slandering Tischendorf but not actually doing any firsthand manuscript work.

By your own admission or acknowledgement or both.

Yet the writers before the SART team missed, again and again, critical information.

Nobody has missed anything relevant.

Well, except you continue to post this already debunked nonsense rather than deal with, you know, Simonides's unreliability.

(And this only scratches the surface, examples.)

Nope.

This is delusional at every level.



What you have to prove is that SIMONIDES actually wrote this in the 19th century.

Not that Tischendorf might have stolen something (if he did, though, it was due to value, not to wanting a replica for himself).
Not that Donaldson made a bunch of erroneous claims about the Greek.
Not that Simonides claimed he saw the manuscript aged in 1852 when Tischendorf wasn't near it while the SART team accuses Tischendorf of aging it.


(This last begs an obvious question: did the SART team actually:
a) get ahold of some new material
b) treat it with lemon juice or whatever
c) actually fool anyone about a date


If not then you didn't do research nor did you conduct any experiments, you just repackaged Simonides much as New Age repackaged Hinduism and threw it out there.

 

[Maestroh]

The manuscript was not described by name.

Ha ha.

Of course it wasn't - because it hadn't been named yet!!!


(Now again - did you NOT know this basic fact? Or did you know it and hope nobody would point it out?)

 

[Maestroh]

Parchment loses flexibility and suppleness over time.

Daniel Wallace's CSNTM just posted on this fact.

What date does Dr. Wallace - who unlike any member of the SART team has been to BOTH St Catherine's monastery AND seen Sinaiticus with his own two eyes - give Sinaiticus?

Wouldn't you consider it at least somewhat disingenuous to:
a) use someone's material to make your so-called point when
b) that person holds the exact opposite viewpoint and has more expertise than you do?

 

[Maestroh]

Did Simonides himself say that one of the proofs of his claim that he wrote the Sinaiticus is the ease of page turning?

If so where is that recorded in a letter etc?

Nope.

 

[Maestroh]

How in the world did you go from this on October 9

The prep work was likely over some years by Benedict,

to this on October 16?

Benedict did the New Testament prep work.

How do you go from likely to he did it?

Also, this contradicts the first claim, so how do you reasonably answer that?


Thanks!

 

[Steven Avery]

How in the world did you go from this on October 9
to this on October 16?
How do you go from likely to he did it?
Also, this contradicts the first claim, so how do you reasonably answer that?
Thanks!

The more definite statement is clear from the chronology, and this quote, post 201, gave the helpful backup.

Christian Remembrancer (1863)
https://books.google.com/books?id=rPQDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA396

" [...] he [Benedict] recalled me to Athos. I sailed from the Pireaus in the month of November, 1839, and landed again at Athos for the fifth time. After a few days I undertook the task of transcribing the Codex, the text of which as I remarked before, had many years previously been prepared for another purpose"

Years earlier means Benedict, without any Simonides assistance.

 

[Shoonra]

In 1934, the British Museum published a book about Sinaiticus, including a chapter on its authenticity; The Mount Sinai Manuscript of the Bible.
https://archive.org/details/mountsinaimanusc0000brit_e2m8/mode/2up

 

[Shoonra]

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.

 

[TwoNoteableCorruptions]

The American Archivist, vol. 1, 1938, has an article on the extensive repairs the British Library had to make to its portion of Sinaiticus, indicating its extreme age.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b666469&view=1up&seq=32&q1=parchment

Parchment books were known and used in NT times (2Tim 4:13).

Here's more (i.e. comprehensive) information on the complete reconstruction of Codex Sinaiticus' binding, which clearly accounts reasonably for the "easy-peasy" page turning.

https://codexsinaiticus.org/en/project/conservation_codicology.aspx

Douglas Cockerell is the specialist book binder who did it.

 

[Maestroh]

You didn't answer the question I asked you, so I'll ask it a second time:


How in the world did you go from saying:
The prep work was likely over some years by Benedict,
on October 9

to saying this
Benedict did the New Testament prep work.
on October 16?

How in the world did you go from "likely over some years" to he "did" it.

Did the so-called SART team take a trip to Mt Athos and find something in those seven days that you changed what you're saying?
Did you just not word your opinion correctly one of those two times?
How do you go from likely to he did it?

The more definite statement is clear from the chronology, and this quote, post 201, gave the helpful backup.

Christian Remembrancer (1863)
https://books.google.com/books?id=rPQDAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA396



Years earlier means Benedict, without any Simonides assistance.

Ah, so again - your view that Benedict did prep work years before - starting in 1784 when ACCORDING TO YOU Benedict would have been 16 years old and Simonides's parents probably not yet born.......is based on nothing more than the altered claims of Simonides.

Thank you for clarifying that for us - that your view does involve anything other than taking the words of a man even Farrer said was a lying forger.

 

[Steven Avery]

In 1934, the British Museum published a book about Sinaiticus, including a chapter on its authenticity; The Mount Sinai Manuscript of the Bible.
https://archive.org/details/mountsinaimanusc0000brit_e2m8/mode/2up

Yes. Archive.org has that funny free borrow for an hour at a time feature.

The text without pics is also available here.

The Apostolic Bible Polyglot Translator's Notes
Charles van der Pool
http://www.apostolicbible.com/mountsinai.pdf

And Charles van der Pool is very aware of the Sinaiticus authenticity problems, we have talked some, this is from the writing above:

I recently was invited to stay at the Monastery of St. John the Theologian on the Island of Patmos a place mentioned in this pamphlet as a destination of Constantine Tischendorf. As mentioned in the pamphlet, the library of the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, had “ancient catalogues of the monastic library.” It therefore seems very unlikely to me that an uncial codex would be in a waste paper basket. ... I find in incredulous that a German or Englishman that wasn’t a Orthodox Christian would even be able to have access to the library, and that an offering to purchase an uncial codex would be accepted by the monks with anything less than rebuke. Then if the codex was entered into a catalog, as mentioned in the brochure, why would it be in a waste paper basket of all places...and then just when Tishendorf appeared? Also to have one codex containing the whole of the Bible is also suspect, as far as I am concerned, especially when non-canonical books are included.

Lastly I find it somewhat comical that the charge against a forger was that he was convicted of forgery...that would seem to be more of a proof of his “credentials” ..

 

[Maestroh]

And Charles van der Pool is very aware of the Sinaiticus authenticity problems, we have talked some, this is from the writing above:

Which makes Simonides's claims to have used manuscripts it is OBVIOUS he didn't use all the more telling that he didn't do it.

Thank you for pointing that out for us!

 

[Unbound68]

In 1934, the British Museum published a book about Sinaiticus, including a chapter on its authenticity; The Mount Sinai Manuscript of the Bible.
https://archive.org/details/mountsinaimanusc0000brit_e2m8/mode/2up

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.")

 

[Steven Avery]

In 1934, the British Museum published a book about Sinaiticus, including a chapter on its authenticity; The Mount Sinai Manuscript of the Bible.
https://archive.org/details/mountsinaimanusc0000brit_e2m8/mode/2up

There is a very nice spot in this writing that I had missed when I looked at it some years ago.

The Mount Sinai manuscript of the Bible (1935-4th edition)
https://archive.org/details/mountsinaimanusc0000brit_e2m8/page/n11/mode/2up
https://apostolicbible.com/mountsinai.pdf

It was during this time (in May) that he was seen by Mr. James Finn, Consul for Jerusalem and Palestine, at Jerusalem.3 Mr. Finn's diary contains a somewhat confused account of the case.

3 Diary of Mr. Finn, quoted by Miss Constance Finn in The Times, 1 February1934. Her letter is inaccurate in giving the impression that Tischendorf had the Codex with him; what the diary actually says is that he had had the Codex ‘conveyed to St Petersburgh in original’. Even this is incorrect; as we shall see, Tischendorf did not take the Codex until September of that year. A year later, 1 May 1860, the Archimandrite Porphyrius Uspenski (afterwards Bishop of Chirgin) told the diarist that he had discovered the Codex some time before and published something about it. This is the usual claim put forward in such circumstances by some one who ‘knew about it all the time’. Doubtless after Tischendorf found the 129 leaves in the waste-paper basket in 1844., Porphyrius or others looked for the rest and found it. What Porphyrius did do was, after Tischendorf’s first visit, to find in the binding of another book fragments of two leaves. This was in 1845. In 1863 he published a Russian brochure attacking the orthodoxy of the Codex. Porphyrius also told Mr. Finn that Tischendorf arrived at Sinai just when the Archbishopric was vacant, and promised Cyril, the ambitious president of the convent, to have him made Archbishop if he would make a present of the manuscript to the Russian Emperor. ‘This bargain has been fulfilled on both sides.’ We have to thank Miss Finn for permission to consult the actual text of the diary.

James Finn may be a confirmation of the account that of Tischendorf blatantly stealing the ms. in 1859, (not just in 1844) Prince Regent a tool for inebriation, and taking off at night with the ms. (This is from memory, the account is in PBF and may be in David's book.)

In the far more likely history, (rather than the British Museum saying a double incorrect about Finn) Tischendorf took refuge at the Russian Consulate in Cairo, and then was in a better bargaining position (possession being 9/10 of the law.) This should also help explain why the copy he supposedly made with two Germans in Cairo never showed up anywhere.

With Tischendorf you always have to unravel his cover stories.

The British Museum liked his tissue-dorfs of lies.

Note that the British Museum did not even know that Uspensky had placed his accounts in two books published in the 1850s, so they look silly attacking Uspensky in the paragraph above.

 

[TwoNoteableCorruptions]

What Porphyrius did do was, after Tischendorf’s first visit, to find in the binding of another book fragments of two leaves.

Fragments of the Codex Sinaiticus were found "b[ou]nd" up in "another book"?

Hmmm.

Why would Simonides bind (i.e. stitch up) his work up in "another book"?

 

[Steven Avery]

Which makes Simonides's claims to have used manuscripts it is OBVIOUS he didn't use all the more telling that he didn't do it.

To what manuscripts are you referring?

 

[Maestroh]

James Finn may be a confirmation of the account that has Tischendorf stealing the ms. in 1859,

Tischendorf stealing the manuscript makes an ancient date FAR MORE LIKELY, wouldn't you say?

Or are you again trying to have it both ways:
a) he was a crafty and deceitful and smart little devil but
b) so dumb he didn't know fakes from real

Prince Regent a tool for inebriation, and taking off at night with the ms. (This is from memory, the account is in PBF and may be in David's book.)

So AGAIN......you just come back with more old quotes.....

In the far more likely history, (rather than the British Museum saying a double incorrect) Tischendorf took refuge at the Russian Consulate in Cairo,

In other words, you have no evidence this happened, but you're gonna with it anyway.

and then was in a better bargaining position, (possession being 9/10 of the law.) This should also help explain why the copy he made with two Germans in Cairo never showed up anywhere.

Maybe he never made one....

The British Museum liked his tissue-dorfs of lies.

Mind reading from an individual who apparently likes the lies of Simonides enough to repeat them here.

Note that they did not even know that Uspensky had placed his accounts in two books published in the 1850s, so they look silly attacking him in the paragraph above.

Yes, in 1934 LESS THAN A YEAR after they got the manuscript, they knew everything there was to know about it.

You have the benefit of hindsight, but it is naive to suggest that just because you know more now about something that you therefore know more about everything across the board, particularly since you take the opposite tack when it comes to Greek scholarship.

 

[Steven Avery]

Fragments of the Codex Sinaiticus were found "b[ou]nd" up in "another book"?
Hmmm.
Why would Simonides bind (i.e. stitch up) his work up in "another book"?

The manuscript was mangled in various ways from 1840 to 1859, and any binding was dismanted.
Uspensky might have found those fragments any which way, but Simonides was not in control of what occurred at Sinai.

 

[Maestroh]

To what manuscripts are you referring?

From his own words, the Moscow Bible.

From your theories, some never seen exemplar prep work done by Benedict.

 

[Maestroh]

The manuscript was mangled in various ways from 1840 to 1859, and any binding was dismanted.
Uspensky might have found those fragments any which way, but Simonides was not in control of what occurred at Sinai.

He wasn't in control of anything at Athos, either, since he didn't write this - and even you know it.

This is reaching the level of attention-seeking.