Coloring the Truth: Sinaiticus

[RandyHelzerman]

The author of any manuscript which was forged prior to the mid 20th century would have had absolutely no idea about the invention of radiocarbon C14 dating.

But it's the oldest forger's trick in the book to take some old material from the period and use it to construct the forgery. They could have harvested some blank pages from the frontispieces or ends of a very old book, or even a quire or two from a very old book, and carefully doctored some contemporary sheets of vellum to fill out the bulk of the book.

The best way to make something look old is for it to be made out of stuff which actually is old.

Until then church dogma rules over scientific facts.

Oh geez, don't we already have enough conspiracy theories? There are plenty of sound secular and scientific reasons not to compromise the integrity of an artifact. How many archeological sites have been ruined forever by early and inept digging techniques? How many times does something like that have to happen before we just exercise some caution before we do irreparable damage to an irreplaceable artifact?

[ebion]

Thanks LC - I don't know the history.

Until then church dogma rules over scientific facts. It is just kicking the can down the road for the following generations to deal with.

(Or sweeping under the carpet until they get some more things to sweep under the carpet to smooth out the lumps.)

I'd qualify that, and point out that the British Library is it's own Den of Thieves. It's iniquity is quite independent of the iniquity of the Church of England! And the British Library is paid for by the British taxpayer, so should be held accountable for their coverup of the Codex Simonides.

PS: Do you have any opinion on this quote by Lamsa: https://www.atour.com/forums/peshitta/338.html
quoted in full https://bismikaallahuma.org/bible/excer ... e-m-lamsa/
Old Scratch was found about the same time, and in about the same place, as the Codex Simonides.

[Steven Avery]

The best way to make something look old is for it to be made out of stuff which actually is old.

With Sinaiticus there was very little effort involved.
The parchment is largely like new and thr ink is often super-ink.

More effort was put into keeping the two distinct sections widely separated and unavailable for examination.

[Leucius Charinus]

Thanks LC - I don't know the history.

///

PS: Do you have any opinion on this quote by Lamsa: https://www.atour.com/forums/peshitta/338.html

Old Syriac New Testament Gospels are Forgeries?
Mar-18-2001 at 11:52 AM (UTC+3 Nineveh, Assyria)

Akhi Kulkhon:

In a book frm Dr.Lamsa in chapter 21 it says:
The Old Syriac" Manuscript of the four gospels, known as the Sinatic Pamplist, discovered by Mrs. Anes Lewis in the Covent of St.Catheerine on Mt. Sinai in 1892, unfortunately was forged by the Monks, dilibertly, before it was sold to Mrs. Lewsi and her companions. They made a hole in the date of the manuscript, thus apparently increasing its age by 900 years. The work actually was finished in the year 1599A.D. The Englsih scholoars who examined it first, placed its date as of 697A.D. Then , not being sure , they made a second inspection, ands assigned to it a later date , at 778A.D. Dr. Burkitt(then a young student), at the time of its discovery, thought that the hole in the date was natural, that is , in the skin when dated. He failed to realize that no responsible scribe would date a manuscript near a hole in such a way as to leave the reader in doubt as to the exact date.

This being the case , we should ignore the Old Syriac Texts, and stick to the Peshitta alone as the only authentic Aramaic Text and manuscript of the Aramaic New Testament. Is it any wonder that Greek monks in a Greek covent would try to forge a Syriac translation of the Byzantine Greek to claim the Greek originality of the ne wTestament? No wonder no body in the East takes these Greek Aramaic forgeries seriously, they revere only the Peshitta alone. Shlama W'Berkhata, Shmuel El;eizer

I have no opinion on the above except to say that we need to be entirely skeptical of "ancient manuscripts".

If priests forged records - and priests are noriously inclined to pious frauds in all centuries ...

The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography
Arnaldo Momigliano
Sather Classical Lectures (1961-62)
Volume Fifty-Four
University of California Press, 1990

BUYER BEWARE.

My general opinion is the same as that for Sinaiticus. Find a postage-stamp sized fragment of blank leaf from somewhere in the manuscript that will never be worth to be on display and send it off to the radio-carbon C14 labs for a scientific dating.

[Leucius Charinus]

Until then church dogma rules over scientific facts.

Oh geez, don't we already have enough conspiracy theories?

Some conspiracy theories are legit. We know for a fact that there was a Latin forgery mill now called "pseudo-isidore) operating in central northern France in the mid 9th century. Or are you maintaining with a straight face that the church did not indulge in forgery and pious fraud?

[RandyHelzerman]

Or are you maintaining with a straight face that the church did not indulge in forgery and pious fraud?

Its either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists, eh? This is dogmatic thinking man.

Sinacticus is split over 4 different institutions, sacred and secular, in 4 different countries, with 4 different religious traditions (orthodox, latin, protestant, and islamic).

ALL FOUR agree that we should wait until we have non-destructive dating methods before compromising the integrity of the artifact. At what point do we stop saying "URMYguRd a huge international cornSpiracy" and start trusting the conservators--the folks who preserved it long enough for us to even look at it--and conclude maybe they know what they are doing?

This exchange just reinforces my impression that even if they carbon dated it you *still* wouldn't be satisfied. Suppose St Catherines carbon-dated one of their fragments. You'd just say it must not really be a fragment of Sinacticus. Say they cut off a postage-stamp sized piece from every one of their remaining fragments. You'd just say that Tischendorf didn't leave any of Sinacticus at St Catherines. Even if all four conservators sent samples, they'd all date slightly differently with different margins of error, and you'd pounce on that.

[RandyHelzerman]

With Sinaiticus there was very little effort involved.

There was no effort at all put in to forging it

The parchment is largely like new and thr ink is often super-ink.

Have you seen the parchment? Did the guy in the original video see the parchment?

No, what we got in the video was some guy taking pictures of pictures---and then DIGITALLY CHANGING THEIR COLORS right on camera, purportedly to show us it was all fake. Come on.

Really sorry man, but you can't take anything at face value anymore. Everybody's phone has digital editing software, there's AI which will create any image for you. And guess what? Jack Chick publications actually has a financial interest in you believing they are telling the truth.

I don't like it any more than you do, but we just aren't living in a world where seeing is believing anymore.

[ebion]

Some conspiracy theories are legit. We know for a fact that there was a Latin forgery mill now called "pseudo-isidore) operating in central northern France in the mid 9th century. Or are you maintaining with a straight face that the church did not indulge in forgery and pious fraud?

That's almost woth a thread of it's own: Pious Frauds and Forgeries. We count vote for our favorites...

Codex Simonides would go to the top of the list because of all the frauds they built on it when they said it required all of the bibles in the world needed rewriting, like the NIV.

[Leucius Charinus]

Or are you maintaining with a straight face that the church did not indulge in forgery and pious fraud?

Its either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists, eh? This is dogmatic thinking man.

It is skeptical thinking man. I have always advocated for skepticism to the extent of asking for physical evidence in support of any claims since this evidence falls into the class of primary sources. Radiocarbon C14 dating provides us with scientific data on the date of many physical artefacts including manuscripts.

Sinacticus is split over 4 different institutions, sacred and secular, in 4 different countries, with 4 different religious traditions (orthodox, latin, protestant, and islamic).

ALL FOUR agree that we should wait until we have non-destructive dating methods before compromising the integrity of the artifact.

I disagree with the proposition that the removal of a postage-stamp sized bit of material from a velum leaf would actually compromise the integrity of any manuscript. All leaves of hundreds of leaves in these manuscripts have a great deal of blank spaces around the borders of each leaf and upon which there is no writing whatsoever. What information could possibly be lost by excising such a small amount of material?

I'd like an answer to that question.

At what point do we stop saying "URMYguRd a huge international cornSpiracy" and start trusting the conservators--the folks who preserved it long enough for us to even look at it--and conclude maybe they know what they are doing?

All conclusions must be revised when new evidence is available. This principle is part of both the scientific and historical method. The conservators of these codices do not really know the date of these codices outside of traditional estimates.

The original provenance of Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus is unknown. The latter was donated to Britain from the archives of the Church of Constantinople in the 17th century; the former was "discovered in a rubbish bin" in a church monastery in the 19th century.

Included among the aims and objectives of the Project Codex Sinaiticus Online was a provision:

To undertake research into the history of the Codex . . . , to commission an objective historical narrative based on the results of the research which places the documents in their historical context ...."

-- www.codexsinaiticus.org (March 2005)

Paramount in "the results of the research which places the documents in their historical context" are the results of scientific radiocarbon C14 testing.

This exchange just reinforces my impression that even if they carbon dated it you *still* wouldn't be satisfied. Suppose St Catherines carbon-dated one of their fragments. You'd just say it must not really be a fragment of Sinacticus. Say they cut off a postage-stamp sized piece from every one of their remaining fragments. You'd just say that Tischendorf didn't leave any of Sinacticus at St Catherines. Even if all four conservators sent samples, they'd all date slightly differently with different margins of error, and you'd pounce on that.

This exchange reminds me about the arguments over the C14 dating of the "Shroud of Turin". None of the scientists asserted the C14 dating of the Shroud was problematic. The traditionalists came out with all sorts of defence arguments against the C14 date like those above. Stuff like the sample of C14 test was actually part of a 13th/14th repair job on the shroud.

The Shroud of Turin, a linen cloth that tradition associates with the crucifixion and burial of Jesus, has undergone numerous scientific tests, the most notable of which is radiocarbon dating, in an attempt to determine the relic's authenticity. In 1988, scientists at three separate laboratories dated samples from the Shroud to a range of 1260–1390 AD, which coincides with the first certain appearance of the shroud in the 1350s and is much later than the burial of Jesus in 30 or 33 AD.[1] Aspects of the 1988 test continue to be debated.[2][3][4] Despite some technical concerns that have been raised about radiocarbon dating of the Shroud,[5][6] no radiocarbon-dating expert has asserted that the dating is substantially unreliable.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarb ... d_of_Turin

I am not arguing for the notion that these codices may contain leaves from different centuries. I have plainly stated as a skeptical thinker that I am happy to allow the scientific C14 date to arbitrate on the date. I have plainly stated that nobody pprior to the 20th century would have contemplated these manuscripts to be able to be scientifically dated. The C14 dates obviously have error margins. The current error margin estimates for postage-stamp sized samples from Codex Tchacos (containing the Gospel of Judas) sit over the 4th century. Ditto for the C14 results for the NHL.

You are completely wrong to assert that I ..... " *still* wouldn't be satisfied.". This is completely false. I have never stated this and I never will. We must certainly differentiate between the C14 dating of codex leaves as compared to codex covers and bindings (which can be substantilly older).

My position is one by which I must remain skeptical of the received age of these manuscripts until we get some scientific dating to independently provide chronological estimates. I respect the scientists far more than the church dogma.

One of the foremost ancient historians of the 20th century (Arnaldo Momigliano) wrote that "Priests are notoriously inclined to pious frauds in all centuries." He did not write stuff like "Its either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists". Instead he wrote stuff like this:

ON PAGANS, JEWS, and CHRISTIANS
--- Arnaldo Momigliano, 1987

Chapter 1:
Biblical Studies and Classical Studies
Simple Reflections upon Historical Method


p.3

Principles of Historical research need not be different from criteria of common sense. And common sense teaches us that outsiders must not tell insiders what they should do. I shall therefore not discuss directly what biblical scholars are doing. They are the insiders.

[Steven Avery]

Have you seen the parchment? Did the guy in the original video see the parchment?
No, what we got in the video was some guy taking pictures of pictures---and then DIGITALLY CHANGING THEIR COLORS right on camera, purportedly to show us it was all fake. Come on.

You seem to be mixing up

1) my reference to the BBC video that shows the phenomenally good condition (and you can see confirmation in the CSP, including lots of super-ink) with

2) the David W. Daniels video discussing the colour distinction between 1844 and 1859 pages, and my noting that Gavin Moorhead acknowledged the "whiteness" of the Leipzig pages.

What colours were digitally changed on camera in what video?
There seems to be a habit of false accusations, but maybe you can unpack this one.