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

Note the injury to the parchment was specifically "BY TIME" in Simo-Kallinik-nade-os' first version (i.e. original) story, with the adjective "MUCH", as in "MUCH INJURED BY TIME".

The cause of the "INJURY" (i.e. to the parchment) is specified as "TIME", more specifically, "MANY CENTURIES" of "TIME" (note "MANY").
 
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Note the injury to the parchment was specifically "BY TIME" in Simo-Kallinik-nade-os' first version (i.e. original) story, with the adjective "MUCH", as in "MUCH INJURED BY TIME".

The cause of the "INJURY" (i.e. to the parchment) is specified as "TIME", more specifically, "MANY CENTURIES" of "TIME" (note "MANY").
Note that Avery has recently declared that the "veracity" of Simonides's statements and claims is immaterial to the 19th century dating of the manuscript!
 
Simonides (alias Kallinikos) said that the Sinaiticus:

"had been PREPARED apparently MANY CENTURIES AGO [...] MUCH INJURED BY TIME"

How, when, and why did he/they change from "MUCH INJURED BY TIME", to injured by Tischendorf?

Simonides originally said (effectually) that the manuscript material was ancient "PREPARED...MANY CENTURIES AGO"

Three questions I want convincing answers to, in Simonides' and/or Kallinkos' own unambiguous words (not made up or distorted/twisted stories by latter 20th/21st century conspiracists)!

  1. Where did Simonides (or his alter-ego Kallinikos) them/him-self actually say that the parchment skin for their bazar-Tsar-project was actually grown, tanned, (i.e. manufactured) in the 19th century?
  2. How do we get from a carefully-selected ancient materials story, to a newly grown and tanned parchment story?
  3. Where, and when did that change take place?
You may have misconstrued it. According to this blog (written by a Simonides dupe), Simonides said it was only the "short discourse" attached to the empty vellum sheets than was "much injured by time" (which is anyway remarkable given the good condition of the Vellum sheets).

“… being short of parchment, I selected from the library of the monastery [i.e. on Mount Athos in the year 1839], with Benedict’s permission, a very bulky volume, antiquely bound, and almost entirely blank, the parchment of which was remarkably clean, and beautifully finished. This had been prepared apparently many centuries ago – probably by the writer or by the principle of the monastery, as it bore the inscription (a Collection of Panegyrics), and also a short discourse, much injured by time.

(Evidently he didn't want to produce the "short discourse".)
 
This part of Simonides's story, about finding a book with many blank vellum pages and using those pages for the Sinaiticus, is particularly improbable. The whole Sinaiticus ran roughly 400 pages of fine vellum (the entire LXX with Apocrypha, the entire NT plus at least two documents of the Apostolic Fathers). A book of 400 blank pages would have been enormous, and it strains credulity to think that the monks would have left those 400 pages untouched, unused for other books, for fourteen centuries.

Another improbability is the story that BAM showed up at the University of Leipzig to examine its share of the Sinaiticus and was turned away at the door. I do not think that BAM would have brought its heavy, delicately-tuned equipment to Leipzig, but instead Leipzig would have brought some or all of its Sinaiticus pages to the BAM hq for the examination. I sent an email to the University asking about this story and, altho they acknowledged my email, they haven't responded about the story; so I have to surmise how an examination would have been done.

PS: I really didn't have any doubts about the Book of Mormon, but I wish someone would start a new thread on a different topic, like the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Aleppo Codex.
 
This part of Simonides's story, about finding a book with many blank vellum pages and using those pages for the Sinaiticus, is particularly improbable.

So is the part about "I wrote it all myself in 8 months."

That one is so preposterous even the SART team won't endorse it.
They won't say "Simonides lied" about it, but maybe I'm not being fair.

David Daniels at least, despite his other problems with treating the truth like kryptonite, actually has a section called "Simonides' Big Lie," which puts him light years ahead of the other cowards on his team that refuse to say "Simonides lied" but want me to think "Tischendorf lied" is supposed to be some sort of magical argument.

The whole Sinaiticus ran roughly 400 pages of fine vellum (the entire LXX with Apocrypha, the entire NT plus at least two documents of the Apostolic Fathers). A book of 400 blank pages would have been enormous, and it strains credulity to think that the monks would have left those 400 pages untouched, unused for other books, for fourteen centuries.

It's even more preposterous to think that Sinaiticus was just a rough draft he was going to write all over again.


Another improbability is the story that BAM showed up at the University of Leipzig to examine its share of the Sinaiticus and was turned away at the door.

This is slightly more believable but only because there are degrees of ludicrousness.

What was it? "Wham, BAM, thank you man," at the door of Leipzig?


I do not think that BAM would have brought its heavy, delicately-tuned equipment to Leipzig, but instead Leipzig would have brought some or all of its Sinaiticus pages to the BAM hq for the examination.

As a reminder, we're being asked to trust a source that has lied repeatedly (including in this thread), refuses to admit error, and doesn't know a guitar string from a bread string.

But yeah.

I sent an email to the University asking about this story and, altho they acknowledged my email, they haven't responded about the story; so I have to surmise how an examination would have been done.

Hans probably turned to Franz and said, "They are here to BLOW (hand claps) US up!!"
 
So is the part about "I wrote it all myself in 8 months."
I honestly think it would be a challenge to merely read, not also write, the whole of LXX and the whole of NT in eight months. That suggests a speed that would not produce the careful lettering and marginalia of the Sinaiticus.
 
So who in the world does credit Simonides with writing Sinaiticus? (forgive my ignorance)
Avery.
Cooper.
Daniels.
Ross.
Pinto.

And a few others who are ignorant of the history of Sinaiticus and Simonides, who uncritically accept and believe the tales told all over the net by the 5 names above.
 
You may have misconstrued it. According to this blog (written by a Simonides dupe), Simonides said it was only the "short discourse" attached to the empty vellum sheets than was "much injured by time" (which is anyway remarkable given the good condition of the Vellum sheets).

“… being short of parchment, I selected from the library of the monastery [i.e. on Mount Athos in the year 1839], with Benedict’s permission, a very bulky volume, antiquely bound, and almost entirely blank, the parchment of which was remarkably clean, and beautifully finished. This had been prepared apparently many centuries ago – probably by the writer or by the principle of the monastery, as it bore the inscription (a Collection of Panegyrics), and also a short discourse, much injured by time.

(Evidently he didn't want to produce the "short discourse".)

From my point of view, and from how I read/interpret the English text, I don't agree that there is a real distinction in Simonides word's between his description of the manuscript base material (i.e. parchment) and his description of the inscriptions (i.e. on the parchment base material). There's a possible distinction, but is it simply part of the overall description of the parchment tacked on at the end of the sentence/paragraph (context) - rounding up his thought. This is subjective IMO. (See "This...it bore...and also...much injured by time". Note particularly the "It" in "it bore the inscription..."!) "Much injured by time", separated by a comma, is a subjective add on that could be interpreted either way. But what's definitely NOT in Simonides word's is an "only" in "and also a short discourse [comma] 👉 , 👈 much injured by time". The "only" is Chris Pintos spin on the text. The "much injured by time" is part of the overall wider context of the parchment base material's description. To my thinking "much injured by time" antecedents/connects with the near context of "prepared...many centuries ago" as a continuation of the overall description of the parchment.

But, then there's the added complication of how accurate is the English translation (including the comma) from Simonides Greek original? And I think (from memory) there's two English translations/versions of this letter which need to be compared together. But where's the original Greek letter? Is it in someone's archives somewhere? How well does it reflect the original letter's Greek grammar?
 
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From my point of view, and from how I read/interpret the English text, I don't agree that there is a real distinction in Simonides word's between his description of the manuscript base material (i.e. parchment) and his description of the inscriptions (i.e. on the parchment base material). There's a possible distinction, but is it simply part of the overall description of the parchment tacked on at the end of the sentence/paragraph (context) - rounding up his thought. This is subjective IMO. (See "This...it bore...and also...much injured by time". Note particularly the "It" in "it bore the inscription..."!) "Much injured by time", separated by a comma, is a subjective add on that could be interpreted either way. But what's definitely NOT in Simonides word's is an "only" in "and also a short discourse [comma] 👉 , 👈 much injured by time". The "only" is Chris Pintos spin on the text. The "much injured by time" is part of the overall wider context of the parchment base material's description. To my thinking "much injured by time" antecedents/connects with the near context of "prepared...many centuries ago" as a continuation of the overall description of the parchment.

But, then there's the added complication of how accurate is the English translation (including the comma) from Simonides Greek original? And I think (from memory) there's two English translations/versions of this letter which need to be compared together. But where's the original Greek letter? Is it in someone's archives somewhere? How well does it reflect the original letter's Greek grammar?
My impression is that not that many scholars today are interested in Simonides. They are far more interested in Tischendorf. Most serious scholars have long discounted Simonides. It looks like the Elliot 1982 book "Codex Sinaiticus and the Simonides Affair" is the place to go to for all the info on Simonides. It will probably reveal the places to go for his letters as well. I am not certain where his letters are, or even what language they are written in. I suggest you might need to get hold of the Elliot book to pursue this further.

There is so much nonsense written by the KJVO crowd, it would take ages to plough through it all. I don't have time to read all their stuff, and anyway I've already satisfied myself that the Simonides story is 100% fake, and the KJVO crowd of amateurs chasing after the wind. I don't have much motivation to pursue this topic further (too much else to do).
 
My impression is that not that many scholars today are interested in Simonides.

Largely because once you know someone is a forger, you simply do not worry about anything he says.



That's because he "discovered" the manuscript.

They'd be interested in Simonides if there was one whiff of a burp of evidence he wrote it.

Most serious scholars have long discounted Simonides.

Let me politely correct you - ALL serious scholars discount Simonides.
To take him seriously is to be a joke.


It looks like the Elliot 1982 book "Codex Sinaiticus and the Simonides Affair" is the place to go to for all the info on Simonides. It will probably reveal the places to go for his letters as well. I am not certain where his letters are, or even what language they are written in. I suggest you might need to get hold of the Elliot book to pursue this further.

I've got it for anyone who wants it.
It's difficult to get and quite expensive, too.

There is so much nonsense written by the KJVO crowd, it would take ages to plough through it all. I don't have time to read all their stuff, and anyway I've already satisfied myself that the Simonides story is 100% fake, and the KJVO crowd of amateurs chasing after the wind. I don't have much motivation to pursue this topic further (too much else to do).

But the conspiracy theorists are always with us, too.
 
It appears that the Team Simonides consists entirely of KJVOs who are grasping at any pretext to disparage or marginalize the Sinaiticus and other early manuscripts that differ from the Textus Receptus.

Once again, I was happy to defend the authenticity of Sinaiticus, and did so on the textual forums in Nov, 2011 ... until I really looked at the evidences.

In terms of our pure Bible, Sinaiticus is of no value, authentic or fake. Dean Burgon showed that decisively.

However, it is very interesting to see how easily the textual establishment was duped.
 
Another improbability is the story that BAM showed up at the University of Leipzig to examine its share of the Sinaiticus and was turned away at the door. I do not think that BAM would have brought its heavy, delicately-tuned equipment to Leipzig, but instead Leipzig would have brought some or all of its Sinaiticus pages to the BAM hq for the examination. I sent an email to the University asking about this story and, altho they acknowledged my email, they haven't responded about the story; so I have to surmise how an examination would have been done.

Dr. Ira Rabin specifically said they were turned down and away that day at the Leipzig library. She spoke about it at the Zoom conference on Sinaiticus hosted by Brent Nongbri. She did not talk about whether they showed up with heavy equipment, and I would not presume that BAM brought heavy equipment that day. It is also possible that some testing would have been brought back to the BAM labs. Again, not discussed.
 
You may have misconstrued it. According to this blog (written by a Simonides dupe), Simonides said it was only the "short discourse" attached to the empty vellum sheets than was "much injured by time" (which is anyway remarkable given the good condition of the Vellum sheets).

Good catch.

And I placed the whole section here.
https://forums.carm.org/threads/the...egarding-sinaiticus.11880/page-29#post-970095

Since it was obvious that TNC was deliberately ignoring the context.

The page you linked to from James Asch has some excellent material.
 
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The page you linked to from James Asch has some excellent material.

One example, James Asch from Kallinikos adds an element from the markings controversy, which could be another factor supporting Hermas being in the New Finds.

Kallinikos also made mention of the special markings that Simonides placed inside the Codex Sinaiticus. In a letter published Nov. 2, 1863 in The Literary Churchman he said that:

“A portion of [the codex] was secretly removed from Mt. Sinai, by Professor Tischendorf, in 1844. The rest, with inconceivable recklessness, he mutilated and tampered with, according to his liking, in the year 1859. Some leaves he destroyed, especially such as contained the Acrostics of Simonides; but four of them escaped him, viz.,one in the Old Testament, and three in Hermas, as I long since informed Simonides …”

This is in:

Journal of Sacred Literature (1863)
https://books.google.com/books?id=l7cRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA227

This is what I had earlier on this topic, but the markings part should be added.

There is one other room of the monastery for the manuscript, which has a latter part of Hermas, the New Finds of 1975.

In Sinaiticus-Tischendorf mythology, this makes no sense. Tearing apart the most valuable manuscript in the monastery? Absurd.

Plus, in writing of his 1845 visit Uspensky mentions Hermas, without any indication that the Codex only had a small section of Hermas. Hmmmm.

However, once you study the problem that Tischendorf had with the Simonides Hermas, published years before the Sinaiticus Hermas, it all makes far more sense. The less Hermas the better, as Tischendorf had attacked the very similar Simonides text as being not ancient, but a medieval retranslation. So part of Hermas was separated and ended up in a dump room, out of sight. (Many details on the Pure Bible Forum.)
 
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