The False Claims of Constantine Simonides Regarding Sinaiticus

Gaslighting by Simonides: no evidence of any such "textual preparations" has ever been produced, Benedict himself was conveniently dead, and unavailable to affirm or deny what Simonides said, and why didn't Benedict publish his own work?

Have you got any evidence other than your own personal faith in the liar Simonides?

No.

Absolutely none of his arguments are anything OTHER than "because Simonides said," as if Simonides was the 19th century version of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin.
 
It is clear from Lykurgos that Simonides was especially interested in the CFA manuscript.
One source on this is Luciano Canfora.

So far, additional information on whether he saw the manuscript, and what discussions may have ensued, is not available.

I read somewhere (and I'll find it when I get time) that Simonides was a regular (daily) visitor of the Codex Sinaiticus while on public display in Leipzig.

He was, in all probability, already planning (and researching) his revenge on Tischendorf for his role in exposing his prior forgeries.


RÜDIGER SCHAPER

"Forschen, Finden, Fälschen. Der zivilisatorische Dreisatz am Beispiel des griechischen Schriftgelehrten Konstantin Simonides"

RÜDIGER SCHAPER

"Research, find
[Or: "locate" "spot" Perhaps "target"], falsify [Or: "forge" "fake"]. The civilizational rule of three using the example of the Greek scribe Konstantin Simonides."



A very accurate description of Simonides slimy tactics "research, find/target, falsify", don't you think?

Secondly.

Research is not limited by your finite perimeters or abilities (in other words limited by what information you have found or currently know about) Mr Avery.
 
I read somewhere (and I'll find it when I get time) that Simonides was a regular (daily) visitor of the Codex Sinaiticus while on public display in Leipzig.

Kevin McGrane is sometimes helpful on this type of information.
e.g. in his paper about Bill Cooper's writing McGrane says of the manuscript in St. Petersburg:

From 1862 to 1869 the codex was secure in a fireproof safe in the custody of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

(Likely true, but often he neglects giving the references. Hopefully, that will improve if he does come out with his book.)

Which is when Tischendorf was pushing the early date.
Basically, nobody could compare the two manuscripts sections and see the colour and staining disparity. The scholars were pointed to the Tischendorf facsimile edition, which masked the fundamentals about the phenomenally good condition.

Tischendorf did ask the question about Simonides in Leipzig in 1856, but that tells us little. Outiside of some comments from Tischendorf, there was little acclaim for this fragment. Simonides is the only one we know who made special inquiry about the CFA, as reported by Lykourgas. Likely, Uspensky did not know it was connected to what he saw in Sinai.
 
Last edited:
Research is not limited by your finite perimeters or abilities (in other words limited by what information you have found or currently know about) Mr Avery.

And I definitely agree. However, very few have looked at the variuos elements of Sinaiticus as a unified study. Mostly there is a presuppositional approach, let's assume Sinaiticus is 4th century and paper over any problems from that assumption.
 
So you mean telling the truth, as Tischendorf did, is redefined by YOU as "a cute trickster argument"?

Sure.
He omitted the major spot where Zosimas would be helpful, the Old Testament and the Apocrypha and falsely implied that the NT would close the issue. To be fair, Tischendorf also mentioned the two main books where Sinaiticus is more influenced by Latin or Syriac, Tobit and Judith, and thus distant in those books from the Zosimas Moscow Bible, which is all in the Greek tradition starting from Alexandrinus.

Another interesting example of Latin influence is the sophisticated rubrications, formatting and headings of Song of Songs. Zosimas does not have that, since it represents a Greek tradition. I mentioned this earlier and cjab responded:


Colometry has been dated to 2nd/3rd century Greek manuscripts of the Septuagint.

Bruce Metzger: "Manuscripts of the Greek Bible," 1981, p.38-40 notes that codex Vaticanus (B) and codex Sinaiticus (aleph)) copy the ‘poetical’ books of the Septuagint colometrically—Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Job, Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus.

As for the New Testament, the oldest colometric arrangement is codex Bezae (D) (5th century), but this is certainly to indicate patterns of breathing and phrasing rather than anything about poetry or traditional material. (PEPPARD "‘Poetry’, ‘Hymns’ and ‘Traditional Material’," JSNT 30.3 (2008) 319-342).

Per Metzger, p.39 "Colometry is the division of a text into κώλα and κόμματα, that is, sense-lines of clauses and phrases so as to assist the re ader to make the correct inflection and the proper pauses. It was applied to the Septuagint Greek text of the poetical books of the Old Testament. One of the earliest examples of a portion of the Septuagint arranged in cola is the second- (or third-) century a.d. Bodleian fragment of the Psalms [Edited by J . W. B. Barns and G. D. Kilpatrick, Proceedings of the British Academy, xliii (1957), pp. 227 f.]" [/QUOTE]

However, none of this compares to the sophisticated rubrications, formatting and headings of the speakers, with commentary, given in the Sinaiticus Song of Songs.

That is totally in the style of the late Latin manuscripts, this is covered very nicely by Jay Curry Treat in:
Lost Keys: Text and Interpretation in Old Greek "Song of Songs" and Its Earliest Manuscript Witnesses (1996).
 
Last edited:
Sure.
He omitted the major spot where Zosimas would be helpful, the Old Testament and the Apocrypha and falsely implied that the NT would close the issue. To be fair, Tischendorf also mentioned the two main books where Sinaiticus is more influenced by Latin or Syriac, Tobit and Judith, and thus distant in those books from the Zosimas Moscow Bible, which is all in the Greek tradition starting from Alexandrinus.

Another interesting example of Latin influence is the sophisticated rubrications, formatting and headings of Song of Songs. Zosimas does not have that, since it represents a Greek tradition. I mentioned this earlier and cjab responded:


Colometry has been dated to 2nd/3rd century Greek manuscripts of the Septuagint.

Bruce Metzger: "Manuscripts of the Greek Bible," 1981, p.38-40 notes that codex Vaticanus (B) and codex Sinaiticus (aleph)) copy the ‘poetical’ books of the Septuagint colometrically—Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Job, Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus.

As for the New Testament, the oldest colometric arrangement is codex Bezae (D) (5th century), but this is certainly to indicate patterns of breathing and phrasing rather than anything about poetry or traditional material. (PEPPARD "‘Poetry’, ‘Hymns’ and ‘Traditional Material’," JSNT 30.3 (2008) 319-342).

Per Metzger, p.39 "Colometry is the division of a text into κώλα and κόμματα, that is, sense-lines of clauses and phrases so as to assist the re ader to make the correct inflection and the proper pauses. It was applied to the Septuagint Greek text of the poetical books of the Old Testament. One of the earliest examples of a portion of the Septuagint arranged in cola is the second- (or third-) century a.d. Bodleian fragment of the Psalms [Edited by J . W. B. Barns and G. D. Kilpatrick, Proceedings of the British Academy, xliii (1957), pp. 227 f.]"


I see you're back to arguing like a liberal. AGAIN!

Do the rest of us a favor - quit this "Tischendorf didn't say" or "this guy didn't say" CHILDISH argument that even you don't believe.

And the rest of this post was filler nonsense.


Do you have ANY PROOF the Zosimas edition was even used?
Huh?

Simple yes or no.

If the answer is "yes," you've had years to give it but never have.
 
In the late manuscript theory, Simonides would almost have to be one of the scribes.

For his tale to be true, he'd have to be the ONLY one.

Clearly, he did not do all the text.

Of course not - when you don't do ANY of the text you also don't do ALL of it.

Scribe A did the New Testament and Barnabas.

So...you're taking the theory of people who actually worked on it and dated it to the fourth century and accepting ONLY the ideas that support your assumption?



Thus you would expect Simonides to be scribe A, he actually published a "Sinaitic" Barnabas in 1843. Also the hieroglyphics pointed out by George Webber Young are in the New Testament sections of scribe A and hieroglyphics was a Simonides specialty.

They were? How do you know this? Where did you document this?

Based on the surviving leaves, it has been suggested that Scribe A copied the bulk of the manuscript (some 995 out of 1,486 pages); while the other three scribes shared the remaining pages roughly equally (scribe B1 copying slightly more than the other two). The scribes also corrected their own work (some also correcting the work of others), and some books within the Codex were clearly worked on by more than one scribe. Based on the patterns of correction, it has been suggested that Scribe D, though he copied relatively few pages himself, was the head scribe, directing the work of the others and correcting it as needed – he appears to have been the most competent of the four scribes.

It's amazing that Simonides couldn't simply prove his case by presenting ONE of the OTHER THREE scribes.......I mean, if his REAL concern was to prevent a new manuscript from being foisted as an old one on the world, this one is easy. Just say "four of us did this and here's one of the other ones."

Thus, on this theory, or suggestion, based on some extrapolations and the modern scribal analysis, Simonides did do more than 2/3 of the manuscript.

In short, you're using the work of people you tell us are dupes as if they have to be right - and then trying to subtly suggest they make it possible for Simonides to have written it.

With the rest of the manuscript split among three other scribes. One of the three may have had the oversight of the project, since we now know that Benedict was in fact alive at the time of our c. 1840 production, he may have been the scribe D.

How was this even possible?

On page 7 of a biography Simonides himself was distributing, it says Benedict couldn't do this anymore because of an eye inflammation.

With Simonides having done far more of the manuscript than any other scribe, and all the New Testament, and the bulk of the manuscript, the statements from Simonides and Kallinikos that place him as the manuscript scribe are thus sensible representations.

With Simonides having NOT DONE - even by your own admission - all of it, his and Kallinikos's claims he did it are falsified and constitute lies.


The theory of Ludwig Traube has scribe A doing only the NT, nothing in the OT. This would reduce the percent.

The reality is that Simonides did 0% of it.
 
From Avery's page, quoted above:

Steven Avery:
The makers of Codex Sinaiticus - Dec 17, 2015
Cillian O’Hogan, Research Fellow, University of Waterloo, formerly Curator of Classical and Byzantine Studies, British Library
http://blog.britishmuseum.org/2015/12/17/the-makers-of-codex-sinaiticus/

Based on the surviving leaves, it has been suggested that Scribe A copied the bulk of the manuscript (some 995 out of 1,486 pages); while the other three scribes shared the remaining pages roughly equally (scribe B1 copying slightly more than the other two). The scribes also corrected their own work (some also correcting the work of others), and some books within the Codex were clearly worked on by more than one scribe. Based on the patterns of correction, it has been suggested that Scribe D, though he copied relatively few pages himself, was the head scribe, directing the work of the others and correcting it as needed – he appears to have been the most competent of the four scribes.


Funny thing is, I can't find any trace of that article on that blog.
 
From Avery's page, quoted above:




Funny thing is, I can't find any trace of that article on that blog.
I believe this is the article Avery referenced. The article may have been once on the British museum website exhibition blog but as it is dated to 2015, it has likely been removed, as exhibition stuff doesn't stay there forever.
 
I believe this is the article Avery referenced. The article may have been once on the British museum website exhibition blog but as it is dated to 2015, it has likely been removed, as exhibition stuff doesn't stay there forever.
Incidentally, Cillian O’Hogan (who Avery quotes) is/was Curator of Classical and Byzantine Studies at the British Library and an editor of Codex Sinaiticus: New Perspectives on the Ancient Biblical Manuscript, also edited by Scot McKendrick (Head of Western Heritage at the British Library), David Parker (Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology and Director of the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing at the University of Birmingham), Amy Myshrall (Research Fellow at the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing at the University of Birmingham).

There is no article in the above book that doesn't agree with a circa 4th century date. Avery is clutching at straws in his blog, as usual. He lives in his own closed world of fantasy, like Simonidis.
 
it has likely been removed, as exhibition stuff doesn't stay there forever.
I was able to go back to archived articles from as far back as 2015, but that particular article wasn’t among them.

Thanks for tracking it down!
 
It is clear from Lykurgos that Simonides was especially interested in the CFA manuscript.
One source on this is Luciano Canfora.

So far, additional information on whether he saw the manuscript, and what discussions may have ensued, is not available.

This is only believable if one is stupid enough to actually believe:
a) a forger wasn't interested in the oldest known NT manuscript
b) Kallinikos actually saw what he claimed a decade earlier, recognized it as Simonides's work - and DIDN'T BOTHER TO SAY A WORD TO HIM ABOUT IT!!!
 
It was Benedict that worked with the Zosimas Moscow Bible in the textual preperations.

You have PROOF of this? Huh?

That was the SECOND STORY Simonides told after it was pointed out to him, "There's no time for what you're claiming here."
He made up a story to fill the time element.

Of course, this begs the question of why Simonides had to do a rough draft of an already made rough draft, too.

Tischendorf pulled out a cute trickster argument here, simply emphasizing that the Zosimas would not supply the New Testament, which is true, but ignoring the Old Testament and Apocrapha.

The onus wasn't on Tischendorf to prove Simonides didn't use something; it was on Simonides to prove he did.
And you know this.


In general, Sinaiticus aligns with Alexandrinus in the Old Testament,

Which makes it all the more problematic why Simonides didn't make that argument....


and Zosimas is in the lineage of Alexandrinus editions. (Simonides also mentioned using Alexandrinus, which may refer to one of the earlier printed editions.)

What you mean is, "Even though I have no reason to believe Simonides, I'm going to propose an alternate scenario and accept that's what happened simply because I want to believe this."
 
There are significant differences between Alexandrinus and Sinaiticus in the Septuagint. You don't know the Septuagint.

He sorta denies the LXX but is careful to never come right out and say he holds the Ruckman point of view that the LXX is a back translation done years later and thus is a "myth." Will Kinney - whom Avery btw recommends as a scholar - isn't nearly so careful. That, of course, is because he's just more honest than Shade Thrower is.
 
Amy Myshrall — Codex Sinaiticus, it’s Correctors and the Caeserean Text of the Gospels. WRONG says Avery!

Dirk Jongkind — Scribal Habits of Codex Sinaiticus. WRONG says Avery.

David Parker — Codex Sinaiticus, the Story of the World’s Oldest Bible. WRONG says Avery.

Milne and Skeat — Scribes and Correctors of Codex Sinaiticus. WRONG says Avery.

Gregory Paulson — Scribal Habits in Codex Sinaiticus. WRONG says Avery.

J. Elliott — Codex Sinaiticus and the Simonides Affair. WRONG says Avery.


Other authors, some of whom Avery has willingly misrepresented because of what they wrote on “colouring,” but who still date Sinaiticus to the 4th or 5th centuries:

Shenton. WRONG says Avery.
Uspensky. WRONG says Avery.
Donaldson. WRONG says Avery.
Head. WRONG says Avery.
Hernandez. WRONG says Avery.
Nongbri. WRONG says Avery.
Snapp. WRONG says Avery.
Hixson. WRONG says Avery.
Epp. WRONG says Avery.
Batovici. WRONG says Avery.
Lake. WRONG says Avery.
Metzger. WRONG says Avery.
Bottrich. WRONG says Avery.


I repeat here, no scholar outside of KJVOism agrees with Avery and his F.A.R.T. team on dating Sinaiticus to the 19th century!

None!

It takes a special kind of arrogance.

Gordon Fee wrote an entire chapter on the sudden transition from the Western to Alexandrian text after the first 8 chapters of John that was issue in a 1993 "Studies and Documents." The original was published in 1968.

Avery doesn't seem to understand that it isn't the issue of AGREEMENT that settles it - as he is wont to pretend on Hermas. It is the DISAGREEMENTS that tell the tale of a common exemplar. After all - most manuscripts agree with each other substantially, it's the unique readings that tell the accurate story.

Amusingly enough, this awkward shift in the Gospel of John is a rather obvious proof Simonides never saw the thing at all.
 
Now take note of the incredulous use of the same name "Callistratus" in his two different account's of the same alleged discovery "at the Mt. Sinai monastary" (i.e. St. Catherine's) below.



"The Journal of sacred and Biblical Literature"
Vol. 3, 1863
"Miscellanies"
Page 216-217


"In 1852 [...] [Page 217] I then began my philological researches, for there were several valuable MSS. in the [St. Catherine's Mt. Sinai] library, which I wished to examine. Amongst them, I found the pastoral writings of, Hermas, the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, and the disputed Epistle of Aristeas to Philoctetes (all written on Egyptian papyrus of the first century), with others not unworthy of note,
All this I communicated to Constantius, and afterwards to my spiritual father, Callistratus at Alexandria..."

[St. Catherine's, Mt. Sinai added by me]

https://www.google.co.nz/books/edit...AAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA215&printsec=frontcover


Did you note the name "Callistratus"?

Which in Greek would be Καλλίστρατος

This is the same fake name (supposedly) of his "spiritual father" in "Alexandria", which somehow, is the same name of the alleged writer - of the very same fake Hermas manuscript, which he's supposedly describing as being discovered, in his failed 1857 magazine "Memnon":


"Memnon"
By Constantine Simonides

[No page numbers are in this magazine]
Munich, 1857
[the year after Simonides' arrest and imprisonment in Berlin]
My summary

ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΡΑΤΕΙΟΝ
ἀπόγραφον ( α )
ΑΙ ΠΟΙΜENIΚΑΙ ΓΡΑΦΑΙ ΕΡΜΑ ΑΣΥΓΚΡΙΤΟΥ ΛΑΟΔΙΚΕΩΕ ΤΟΥ ΑΠΟΣΤΟΛΟΥ.

KALLISTRATEION
Copy ( a )
"HOLY SHEPHERDS, A WRITING OF HERMAS FROM THE PEERLESS WORD OF THE LAODICIAN APOSTLE"

Discovery location: Τὸ ἀπόγραφον τοῦτο ἐν τῇ κατὰ τὸ Σίναιον ὄρος μονῇ τῷ 1852 ἀνακαλυφθὲν, "this copy was discovered in the monastery on Mt Sinai in 1852"
Discovery date: 1852
Date written: 1st century A.D./C.E.
Material: Papyrus
Manuscript type: ἀπόγραφον "a copy"
Language: Egyptian (Egyptian Greek?)
Script: Unicial/Majuscule
Format: Four columns, fifty two verses,
Copyist: Καλλίστρατος ἐκαλεῖτο ἐξ Ἀντιοχείας "Callistratus, so-called, from out of Antioch"




This same name coincidence, is more than a little weird.


The Journal of Sacred Literature
By John Kitto, Henry Burgess, Benjamin Harris Cowper
Publication date 1848
Page 212, Paragraph 1


“Whereupon the holy monk Callistratus, having compared it [i.e. the Codex Sinaiticus allegedly] with other codices of the same monastery at the bidding of the Patriarch Constantius, and having corrected it in part, left it in the library, awaiting the return of Simonides.”

https://archive.org/details/journalsacredli15cowpgoog/page/212/mode/1up

I thought I'd just point this out, to show the snowballing incredulity in his continuous lies, and the characteristic anomalies that he unwittingly creates - as he creates yet more and more lies to cover over his even older lies, and as he gets roasted in the media, and called out, yardy yardy ya...along the way.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top