8) Unwarranted conclusions
Daniels also arrives at conclusions that simply have no basis on established fact. Here are but a few examples:
a) He tells us that citations in an 1895 (or 1900) catalog prove someone was at Athos on a certain date. But that proves almost literally nothing. A catalog compiled fifty years after the fact MAY serve as evidence a particular writing was read on a particular day, but it doesn’t prove the person who wrote it was in Athos on that very day.
b) He doesn’t seem to realize that saying, “Hey, we have these works with the names Simonides and Kallinikos” REDUCE the time frame Simonides could have been working on Sinaiticus, making it even more unlikely he authored it.
c) His most amusing conclusions concern Kallinikos and 1852, and those will be treated below.
Writing in 1858-59, Stewart gave a surprising amount of details!
Not about Sinaiticus he didn’t. His only mention of it (page 61) is in regard to its authenticity.
Earlier in his narration, he had pointed out that since all the principals in this part of the story were dead, there was no danger to exposing these parts. (Ibid).
There was also no danger in anyone confirming his claims weren’t true. But that also means there was nobody to confirm it as true, either. And really, how did Stewart know this? Was he on Mount Athos in 1837, too?
9) Factual Errors
a) If you have a Bible that is not the King James and published after 1880, then it is likely that there are changes in the text that ultimately come from the Sinaiticus. (page 4)
As Jonathan Borland has pointed out: Aleph stands alone among named manuscripts supporting the NA/UBS text at Mk 15:30 א pc lat and a corrector of Aleph at 2Jn 1:12 אc2 pc vgmss. Those are the only cases of such in the entire Greek NT.
b) No one in recorded history seems to have seen this world-changing codex before 1840. (Ibid)
This is also not true. Of course it wasn’t named Sinaiticus because that came later, but it’s pretty well established it was seen at least as early as 1761. If Daniels can fill in gaps with “I think,” so can I.
d) The American Standard and almost every Bible after it changed its New Testament in many ways to match the readings in Codex Sinaiticus. (he lists none)
Again, see point a.
e) Consider this: almost every single change in a Bible from 1881 to the present, has involved that codex
Continue to reassert wrong things.
But in actuality, Sinaiticus is one of the most corrected of the supposedly ancient texts in history! 23,000 changes in just the parts of Sinaiticus found to date! (page 9)
What’s truly insane is the notion that these guys did a rough draft on EXPENSIVE material, but I guess I can’t expect Daniels or Avery to have an ounce of LOGIC when it comes to reality, right?
e) Tischendorf wasn’t silent only about his meeting with Pope Gregory XVI. He was also very elusive at best about where he acquired the CFA. He didn’t write about it in his 1847 Travels in the East. Not until after 1859 did his lips begin to loosen. (63)
This isn't true, though. Tischendorf DID mention the CFA and exactly where to find out his story on page 273 of the very book Daniels says he's silent about it. (This is some more sloppy research). I'll grant Daniels can't read German as I can, but he didn't look at this one too well.
Anyone who by this point still gives credence to this book I would regard as a hopeless case anyway. If the eight previous pages of documentation aren’t enough for you to understand that David Daniels simply assumed his conclusion and then built his investigation around it, a hundred more examples would not persuade you, either. That being said, let’s deal with a final point that gets right to the heart of the problem: in the David Daniels theory, Tischendorf realizes he’s been duped and decides to fool everybody by staining the manuscript to make it look older. We are then told by the mysterious Kallinikos that he SAW Simonides writing this manuscript on Athos and SAW Tischendorf stealing it and SAW Tischendorf staining it, too! Now, he never says it in those words, but if you’re talking eyewitness testimony, he had to do so else it’s nothing but hearsay evidence. The Kallinikos letters – all of them ACTUALLY later than the first Simonides volley on September 3, 1862 – provide little evidence of anything other than you can’t really expect a forger to do anything but write letters as witnesses. In his attempts to shift the burden of proof, Daniels makes a number of flat out absurd attacks on others, several of which will be answered here.
Once again, this is the difference between a truth-teller like Simonides, and storytellers like Mike Warnke (or Tischendorf at crucial points in his Sinaiticus narrative). He gave dates, places, names, and even specific locations where people may be found to validate his testimony. (page 166)
Except it wasn’t anyone else’s job to go hunting all over the world for witnesses, it was Simonides’s obligation to PRODUCE them. I suspect he gave specific names of people whom he knew were no longer alive. But even if they were, it wasn’t up to someone else to go on a long journey around the world to Mt Athos, either.
“Who is Charles Stewart,” critics ask. From the above we can see first that Charles Stewart’s middle name starts with a B. Second, Granville Square is one mile from the British Museum, just over a mile north of the River Thames, in London! How lazy does someone have to be, not to go and see for him or herself?
Only as lazy as Simonides would be for not bringing him by for questioning. See how that works?
My biographer is Mr. Charles Steuart, who lives at Brighton. His brother, Mr. Henry C. Steuart, lives at 41, Great Percystreet, Islington, W.C. Write, therefore, to him, and he will give thee the reply thou requirest.”
Great Percy Street is just two blocks north of Granville Square! Never in my life have I seen people so unwilling to do a little checking for themselves.
It wasn’t their job to go interview the BROTHER of the guy who allegedly wrote a book. And if it’s so close, why not bring him by yourself? Again, this constant demand that people DISPROVE Simonides’s never proven claims is absolutely hilarious. Simonides could give enough names to show he was familiar with environs, but as a reminder, this clown was in Leipzig and had not a clue that his own work was on display there. And never mentioned this “project” to his biographer, either.
But in the end, the entire thing comes down to two things, Kallinikos and 1852.
In 2019, I confronted Mr. Daniels during the Dean Burgon Society meeting regarding whether or not he is aware of Steven Avery’s Trinity denial. He wound up saved by a crooked referee in pro wrestling parlance AFTER going on the record with his claim that Sinaiticus couldn’t have been stained prior to 1855. But this presents a HUGE problem for the credibility of both Kallinikos and Simonides for the simple reason Simonides claims to have seen: a) the ENTIRE manuscript b) on Sinai in 1852, and it had ALREADY been aged to make it look older. This creates a problem for any claim that Tischendorf stained the manuscript because he was not on Sinai between 1844 and 1853 (to say nothing of the fact it was NOT the entire manuscript). I’ve confronted Steven Avery (Daniels’s ace researcher who is actually more of a Joker) with this, and all he could do was mumble incoherently about Simonides exaggerating. Avery steadfastly refuses TO THIS DAY to call Simonides a liar despite the fact his lies are easily documented. Daniels apparently has a sliver more integrity than Steven Avery does (and not just because he uses his actual name), because Daniels realizes that he has no choice but to explain Simonides and 1852. But his explanation is so self-evidently goofy and atrocious that while he at least can be credited for trying to weave his way through an obvious lie – and Daniels also has the honesty to ADMIT that it is a lie – the fact remains he pivots and simply goes into a sort of Baptist-style revival preaching about man being lost. I have no qualms with saying this about Simonides. Every single thing it is documented he ever did was corrupt and full of lies, so much so that rather than produce the great a cloud of witnesses that could have validated his claims, he simply went and wrote some letters and signed the name of a guy he figured they never could locate. Of course, nowhere in this book does Daniels ever deal with the fact that the researchers he whines never went a couple of blocks DID get a letter from the ACTUAL Kallinikos Hiermonchas, which contradicted every single thing Simonides said. In short, what we have with Simonides is little more than an angry man who wanted fame no matter how it came and was willing to lie his little tail off just to get the recognition. Daniels then concludes with a one world religion conspiracy theory that would shame the late Jack Van Impe.
In the end, the book fails at all points. It fails to establish, prove, or even seriously challenge the fourth century date of the manuscript. It fails at research, it fails at logical flow, it fails at being a good polemic, and it fails to even be entertaining reading. The sad thing is the number of people that includes Mr Pinto, Mr Spencer (Avery), and Mr Daniels who have wasted their time on earth investigating settled issues in order to soothe their own cognitive dissonance. Avery’s bungling Google searches permeate Daniels’s work to the point both may be justifiably considered to be the Wet Bandits (of “Home Alone” fame) of Textual Criticism. As in the research won’t even conquer an eight-year old mind.
