Codex Sinaiticus - the white parchment Friderico-Augustanus

[Steven Avery]

I felt the Skeat and Milne quote is the most important, as they were handling the two manuscripts:

Alexandrinus ... the vellum itself now has a:
"limp, dead appearance in marked contrast to the vellum of the Codex Sinaiticus"

We can see pictures of the pages of Codex Sinaiticus being turned easily and lightly. They are in "phenomenally good" condition.
So far, we have seen and heard of nothing like that with antiquity vellum.

As for the Alexandrinus colour I agree that the ultra-yellow picture above is likely irrelevant. The issue is generally cream-ish or tan-ish (actually I am missing the colour word, let me get out my 64 crayons.) Cream would be only modestly darker than the CFA, tan is a good way traveled to the often seen yellowing. The CFA is 43 leaves in pristine condition, Dobschutz called them "snow-white".

One consideration, what cleaning has been done on Alexandrinus? Leaf through the pages, and I get the sense that middle columns were cleaned, and also other areas like margins. William Andrew Smith might have some insight into that question. Clearly, that would change the comparison. The patterns are quite unusual, and it looks to me that all-natural explanations are very unlikely.

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When we talk about the absolute colour of mss, without the internal considerations like the BEFORE and AFTER part of Sinaiticus, or the related suppleness and condition aspects, we are only covering one of the major Sinaticius physical anomalies. However, that is all right, to hash that one out in a more exacting fashion. Just don't do it to the exclusion of the other major elements, the big picture.

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One thing I found that the "deeply entrenched" acceptance of Sinaiticus as 300 AD has had a negative impact on manuscript and ink science. I was on an ink forum, and Sinaiticus was the example to show that ink can last fine and dandy for 1500 years without significant negative effect on ink or parchment. (Some of Sinatiicus can be considered super-ink.) Similarly people can "know" about the amazing ability for parchment to remain supple, in wonderful shape .. why, just look at Sinaticus.

Circularities abound. Then those pseudo-revelations, that come from Sinaiticus, can be used to defend Sinaiticus. It is very hard to get people out of presuppositional circularities.

Steven

[Ulan]

If you look at old color images that show both together, you can see that Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus look more or less the same regarding their base color:



Alexandrinus is just not equally well preserved, which can have a lot of different reasons, one of which may be the obvious water damage on Alexandrinus. The brittleness could also easily be caused by a well-meant drying attempt.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

.
In our discussion about the colour may be a further point. It is assumed that the sheets are digitalized under the same light conditions. But it seems to me that there are a few differences. On the left side or right side of every picture of a sheet is a colour scale. The comparison of these scales show that there are significant differences, especially between the Leipzig leaves and the London leaves. The yellow, green and dark blue may be good examples. You can make your own comparison and you will see that it’s not a trick.

imho we do not know whether there are different colour scales or different light conditions. It does not mean that the Leipzig leaves are not whiter than the London leaves. But the base for our discussion could be not the best. I think that further differences can be seen while using the function “Raking Light” (only available for the Leipzig leaves and the London leaves). The shadows of the Leipzig leaves are always sharper and the pictures show more contrast.

From left to right in this picture are snippets from a Leipzig leave, a London leave, a Saint Petersburg leave and a leave from St Catherine's Monastery (the last three seemingly with the the same colour scale and the same ruler).

[Ulan]

@KK: Thanks for that. The British Library images seem to have much more color saturation than the other three, at least to my eye. The yellow really pops. The Leipzig image looks most desaturated of all, but also with higher contrast: The darks look darker already in the medium grey range, the lights on the white end look lighter. Although you should never trust your eyes in question like this but take a good image processing program and read out the values. The human eye misjudges things like that, depending on the environment, as unfortunately our own eyes already make automatic color corrections to enhance the image.

@DCH: I'm not sure whether the originals would be of any help. The idea of those color and grey scales seems to be that you can adjust the color and lighting settings on individual images until the scales have the same values, regardless of the conditions under which the images were taken.

By the way, I have now finally read the whole story as presented on the page of A.V.Zahkharova (http://www.nlr.ru/eng/exib/CodexSinaiti ... index.html). One thing that seems decisive for me in acquitting Tischendorf of the accusation of theft is his willingness to do the negotiations in Sinai about the finalization of the donation/purchase by Russia himself. I don't think he would have offered this if he had taken the manuscript against the wishes of the brethren. That would have been too dangerous, either for him or the negotiations. It was not his decision that someone else finalized this. This Archbishop Cyril of Sinai seemed to have been a real kleptomaniac thug though.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

@KK: Thanks for that. The British Library images seem to have much more color saturation than the other three, at least to my eye. The yellow really pops. The Leipzig image looks most desaturated of all, but also with higher contrast: The darks look darker already in the medium grey range, the lights on the white end look lighter.

That's exactly also my impression.

btw a possible argument against Steven's theory could be the following

1844 - Tischendorf discovers 129 sheets, takes 43 sheets
1845/1850 - Bishop Porphyrius sees the remaining 86 sheets and discovers 260 more sheets, he takes 4 further fragments
1853 - Tischendorf discovers and takes one more fragment
1859 - Tischendorf takes the 346 sheets (86 + 260) described by Bishop Porphyrius
end of the 19th century - the Society of Lovers of Ancient Literature in Saint Petersburg (OLDP) acquired a further fragment
1975 - 12 unknown leaves and 24 fragments are discovered at St Catherine's Monastery

2009 - Nikolas Sarris discovers one more fragment in a book binding at St Catherine's Monastery

Fragment from world's oldest Bible found hidden in Egyptian monastery

A British-based academic has uncovered a fragment of the world's oldest Bible hiding underneath the binding of an 18th-century book.

Nikolas Sarris spotted a previously unseen section of the Codex Sinaiticus, which dates from about AD350, as he was trawling through photographs of manuscripts in the library of St Catherine's Monastery in Egypt.

Mr Sarris, 30, chanced upon the fragment as he inspected photographs of a series of book bindings that had been compiled by two monks at the monastery during the 18th century.

Mr Sarris later emailed Father Justin, the monastery's librarian, to suggest he take a closer look at the book binding. "Even if there is a one-in-a-million possibility that it could be a Sinaiticus fragment that has escaped our attention, I thought it would be best to say it rather than dismiss it."

Only a quarter of the fragment is visible through the book binding but after closer inspection, Father Justin was able to confirm that a previously unseen section of the Codex had indeed been found. The fragment is believed to be the beginning of Joshua, Chapter 1, Verse 10, in which Joshua admonishes the children of Israel as they enter the promised land.

[Ulan]

Interesting. This also confirms Tischendorf's claim that the manuscript was obviously treated as garbage that could be re-used for other purposes.

[Steven Avery]

If you look at old color images that show both together, you can see that Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus look more or less the same regarding their base color:



Alexandrinus is just not equally well preserved, which can have a lot of different reasons, one of which may be the obvious water damage on Alexandrinus. The brittleness could also easily be caused by a well-meant drying attempt.

The picture is appreciated, and we will plan to see if it can be of use.

You seem to forget that in terms of colour Sinaiticus is two different manuscripts. Leipzig is white parchment, and British Library is "yellow with age" or, more accurately, yellow with lemon juice. Thus any comment that looks about "Sinaiticus", singular, in a colour comparison with another manuscript is not really relevant. You seem to have forgotten the basic issue here. The Sinaiticus page you are looking at above, at the British Library, is quite yellow in comparison the the Leipzig 1844 pages. May I suggest you check out www.sinaiticus.net carefully, slowly, at the very least.

Steven

[DCHindley]

I think that Tisch. considered the monks at St Catherines to be too stupid and ignorant to even know what they had in front of them. I do think he "stole" the leaves he found in the basket, perhaps even fearing the worst, that they were destined to be burned in the stove like straw, but he may have just as likely used that story, probably wholly made up, to justify the theft because the shame he felt, and I'm sure he felt some, was not enough to overcome the fame that he knew would come his way from the discovery of such a rare manuscript. He got some traction with the Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church because he (the prelate) was an educated man, or at least sophisticated. I mean, the Russian royal court spoke French as their "insider" official language (blame Napoleon) and German influence was not unknown since the time of Catherine the Great. A cosmopolitan like Tisch. would feel at home with a guy who hung in such circles.

Now, if Sinaiticus is a modern fake, the most likely suspect would not be Tisch., but Simonides. This is not because Sim. makes such a claim, one that he may have just made up to try to pop Tisch.'s balloon of fame in a fit of jealously, but because if anyone was capable of doing such a thing, it would be Simonides, a somewhat shadier but much more practiced version of Tisch. himself. Similarly, Simonides name was on the library card in the pocket attached to the remaining binding at the front of the Voss edition of the Ignatian corpus in which Morton Smith found that beautifully written fragment of Theodore at Mar Saba. That fact is, in fact, a little known fact.

DCH

[Steven Avery]

.In our discussion about the colour may be a further point. It is assumed that the sheets are digitalized under the same light conditions. But it seems to me that there are a few differences. On the left side or right side of every picture of a sheet is a colour scale. The comparison of these scales show that there are significant differences, especially between the Leipzig leaves and the London leaves. The yellow, green and dark blue may be good examples. You can make your own comparison and you will see that it’s not a trick. imho we do not know whether there are different colour scales or different light conditions. It does not mean that the Leipzig leaves are not whiter than the London leaves. But the base for our discussion could be not the best. I think that further differences can be seen while using the function “Raking Light” (only available for the Leipzig leaves and the London leaves). The shadows of the Leipzig leaves are always sharper and the pictures show more contrast.]

These are valid points. They already have been gone over in depth in conversations and analysis, when some gentlemen raised similar questions on Facebook. Mark Michie handles our end, in that he is the most familiar with the numbers, the methods, the digital and lighting issues, etc. And had the 2016 conversations with the British Library. We have also conversed with one photographer who was involved in the project, and others who have been helpful.

The bottom line is that the colour was done to excellent standards and is extremely reliable (albeit not perfect). With flexibility regarding the small number of leaves at Saint Catherine's, where the conditions for photography were more difficult.

Now, I don't expect you to accept this on my sharing. I can point you to the discussons last year if you like, mostly on a Facebook forum. For the next day or three, I plan to be emphasize a rather amazing textual issue. So while I would be happy to point you to the previous conversations, and ask Mark if he would like to re-engage in colour bar and related discussions, I have to limit my energy on that area for now.

Steven

[Steven Avery]

By the way, I have now finally read the whole story as presented on the page of A.V.Zahkharova (http://www.nlr.ru/eng/exib/CodexSinaiti ... index.html).

A very limited and sketchy discussion, of very little value, especially about the critical period leading up to the 1860s. (The 1860s maneuvering, when Tischendorf was accused of theft and helped to swing an agreement so that he could retain his position, is far less important.) Let's take the first sentence.

"In 1844, Tischendorf discovered a part of the Bible at Mt Sinai Monastery, and obtained it for Frederick Augustus II King of Saxony."

Is "obtained" a new euphenims for stole? There is not a single verification in any way shape or form that this was a legitmate acquisition. The Uspensky account shows that the whole manuscript was together in those years. This is making the major blunder of quoting Tischendorf's later cover stories as if they are history. Those cover stories even included the laughable canard (for which we still have dupes today) that he had saved the leaves from burning. Kallinikos even wrote that Tischendorf would never return the supposed loan of 1859. (That should be in the Sinaiticus Coincidences? video.)

(Btw, an interesting study is what really happened in Sinai and Cairo that even led to the non-loan.)

When there is some funny business, do you go to the con man's explanation as to what happenned? When Tischendorf stole those leafs out of the full manuscript in 1844, he wrote to his wife and only said that they had come into his possession: "ich bin in den Besitzgelangt von".

Tishendorf even hid the connection of those 1844 Leipig leaves to the 1859 "loan" heist. The connection had to be pieced together by textual analysts. There are two reasons for hiding the connection that are possible.

a) Tischendorf had no receipt for 1844 and did not want to expose the earlier theft, where he had hid the source, while 1859 was still in negotiation

b) viewing the two sections as one manuscript could expose the colouring of the 1859 St. Petersburg section.

Tishendorf was very crafty. He kept the sections inaccessible (especially St. Petersburg) and pointed everyone to his rigged facsimile, that hid the salient information. In fact, even a publication of Sinaiticus a few years back doctored the pics.

Steven