Codex Sinaiticus - the white parchment Friderico-Augustanus

[Ulan]

It sounds really interesting. But there could be a good case against this theory. There are two fragments of one leave of the Codex. The greater fragment is in London and the smaller fragment in Saint Petersburg. One parchment, one scribe and one ink and they were digitalized together. Interestingly, there are in fact differences of the parchment, but the colour is more or less the same. A snippet of the Saint Petersburg fragment is here on the left side, a snippet of the London fragment on the right side.

Those are from two separate "deliveries", right?

Anyway, I didn't want to make any specific claims about when exactly color changes occurred to the documents, as that would need a much more frequent assessment of the exact state the manuscript was in at certain points, and we don't have that. I mostly wanted to point to known mechanisms how parchment can age and change color quickly under certain conditions. It's just one of the parameters to keep in mind. Sudden color changes are no slam dunk arguments for forgery. For example, experiments into preservation methods done by the British Museum were the direct result of devastating changes to much of their collection due to wrong storage during WW I.

[Steven Avery]

It sounds really interesting. But there could be a good case against this theory. There are two fragments of one leave of the Codex. The greater fragment is in London and the smaller fragment in Saint Petersburg. One parchment, one scribe and one ink and they were digitalized together. Interestingly, there are in fact differences of the parchment, but the colour is more or less the same. A snippet of the Saint Petersburg fragment is here on the left side, a snippet of the London fragment on the right side....

Thanks Kunigunde

The two big stashes that are totally different are:

LUL = Leipzig = 43 leave heist by Tischendorf in 1844
BL = British Library - 347 leaves taken to St.Petersburg in 1859. -

What comes from St. Petersburg (NLR-National Library of Russia) and St Catherines (SC) are fragments with their own history, generally not full leaves. They are important to study but you would expect the NLR fragments are going to be post-1844 and in the same category a the BL. Each fragment will have its own history, the SC will generally be the New Finds fragments.

Steven

[Charles Wilson]

Anecdotal:

Some Newsie once asked Ravi Shankar about the age of his Sitar, expecting an answer of "Hundreds of years...", etc.
Ravi's answer? "Oh, less than 50 years certainly!" He explained that with the Monsoon Season, degradation of things like sitars was a Constant that people just had to live with.

We keep looking and hoping but...

CW

PS: That's what makes the finding of Archimedes' Book so astonishing: https://www.amazon.com/Archimedes-Codex ... archimedes

[Steven Avery]

While the codex looks good for its age, it sports quite a lot of gelatinisation and distortion on the surface level, which is to be expected from its age.

See here. Scroll down to "Follicles".
"Unfortunately, much of the remaining follicle evidence has been gelatinised and distorted making it difficult to determine animal origin with the naked eye.

They seem to be implying that with young parchment they could easily determine animal origin with the naked eye. This simply is not true.

But except with magnification and a good knowledge of dermatology it is practically impossible to tell the prepared skin of one animal from another.
http://web.ceu.hu/medstud/manual/MMM/parchment.html

When you get to descriptions of the parchment, you get a number of differing explanations. Sometimes it helps to read carefully and between the lines.

The conservation team discovered that, despite being over 1600 years old, the pages of Codex Sinaiticus held at the British Library consisted of a supple, high quality parchment in relatively good condition. This is difficult to put into context as the only other similar surviving 4th/5th Century parchment codices, Codex Alexandrinus[19] and Codex Vaticanus[20] are at this stage unable to be physically compared with Codex Sinaiticus. Certainly the Codex Alexandrinus is also affected by ink corrosion but all have had different histories and conditions affecting their parchment folios and ultimately the data collected by this condition assessment will enable comparisons to be made in future.
http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/project/c ... hment.aspx

The idea of such comparisons seems to have been dropped.

You will find a lot of "exceptionals".

Exceptionally uniform in thinness....
The parchment condition is:
Exceptional for its age.
Low in levels of significant degradation.

Many of the quotes are on the PureBibleForum:

British Library - and other - modern comments on research and condition and colour
more from Gavin Moorhead - CSP
http://www.purebibleforum.com/showpost. ... ostcount=5

This one was a bit less guarded.

"the parchment ... is in phenomenally good condition" - Helen Shenton
http://www.purebibleforum.com/showthread.php?t=272

It helps to look at the pages being turned at the British Library video.

The Codex Sinaiticus: The Oldest Surviving Christian New Testament - The Beauty of Books - BBC Four -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4Xkv2gjzZw

More on the youtube here.
viewtopic.php?p=49310#p49310

[Ulan]

They seem to be implying that with young parchment they could easily determine animal origin with the naked eye. This simply is not true.

The interpretation you put into their words is not true? That's correct. You forgot about the good old magnifying glass. Having to use a microscope is a completely different kind of hassle.

When you get to descriptions of the parchment, you get a number of differing explanations. Sometimes it helps to read carefully and between the lines.

Reading between the lines is nice and all, but it won't give you any definite answers.

[Steven Avery]

Returning to gelatinisation. There is no rating assigned, so there is no actual measurement to show that it is something that is more than would be expected in 175 years of handling. The reference there was simply that it was difficult to determine the animal type. And that difficulty is always the case, unless you are an expert in that animal dermatology field using a microscope.

Here are situations where gelatinisation was really examined on a damaged ms.

The Great Parchment Book
Previous conservation treatments: learning from the past
http://www.greatparchmentbook.org/2012/ ... -the-past/

Rachael Smither Conservation
The Great Parchment Book
https://rachaelsmitherconservation.com/ ... ment-book/

The bulk of the Sinaiticus leaves are in "phenomonally good condition" (Helen Shenton), and we don't have any measurements of gelatinisation, so the indication would be mild gelatinisation deterioration on the bulk of the leaves (there are fragments that had special situations, like various torn fragments). In the thread and by observations of videos and reading descriptions, it is clear that Sinaiticus has a suppleness that is unique among the manuscripts that are supposed to be ancient manuscripts. Even despite the fact that it is given a history of heavy use over 1500 years.

========================================

Reading between the lines is nice and all, but it won't give you any definite answers.

The definite answers are not difficult to come by, they simply require using a wide variety of historical and manuscript information. A respect for the historical forensics is helpful. As an example, the huge colour anomaly between Leipzig pristine white parchment and the British Library's uneven colouring received no notice whatsoever until we pointed it out. (Both manuscripts beingin "phenomenally good condition". The British Library, to their credit, acknowledged the situation, in correspondence. These types of elements are discussed up thread. When you add in the fact that this colouring was pointed out by Kallinikos in Sinai (and was not available in any way from the Tischendorf writing) you have one of many evidences that are probative to an 1800s production.

Steven

[Ulan]

The definite answers are not difficult to come by, they simply require using a wide variety of historical and manuscript information. A respect for the historical forensics is helpful.

I read this as a "No" then.

Anyway, has anyone ever calculated how much it would cost to forge such a manuscript? You would have to produce all that top notch, selected parchment which is obviously handcrafted with utmost care. Then someone would have to devise the unique text with its specific variants, forge a correction history on top of that and then write the whole bible in this specific uncial style.

We are not talking about forging some short piece of papyrus here, where empty papyrus from ancient times is readily available and where you just have to write a few paragraphs. Even in Tischendorf's time, this would have been costly and lots of work.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

A snippet of the Saint Petersburg fragment is here on the left side, a snippet of the London fragment on the right side.

Those are from two separate "deliveries", right?

Yes, the "Saint Petersburg fragment" is one of the fragments discovered by Bishop Porphyrius (Constantin Alexandrovich Uspensky) and brought to Russia before Tischendorf got the "London fragment".

If I have not overlooked something the official chronological order of discoverings is

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

[Steven Avery]

I read this as a "No" then..

To what specific question?

Anyway, has anyone ever calculated how much it would cost to forge such a manuscript? You would have to produce all that top notch, selected parchment which is obviously handcrafted with utmost care. Then someone would have to devise the unique text with its specific variants, forge a correction history on top of that and then write the whole bible in this specific uncial style.We are not talking about forging some short piece of papyrus here, where empty papyrus from ancient times is readily available and where you just have to write a few paragraphs. Even in Tischendorf's time, this would have been costly and lots of work.

True, these are very valid considerations. The ms. would probably have to be done at a locale where there could be blank parchment available, like Mount Athos c. 1840s, which we can call Manuscript City, and Parchment Town. (Apparently at times, Simonides had one or more full chests of parchment and manuscripts.) And low-cost monk-style calligraphy scribal activity as well, like Mount Athos c. 1840. Simonides said that his uncle Benedict hoped or expected to get a printing press in return, which would also be quite valuable item at that time. (It is possible that they did plan to pawn it off as authentic antiquity, rather than a replica, at this time I consider both as possible.)

I don't think the parchment used was old,at all. Simonides said it came from a blank parchment stash, perhaps in a large book. The thinness and bleed-through elements are something I would like to study more, but they are auxiliary to the basic issue of super-supple, obvious colouring, minimal smudging from handling, ink questions, etc, which support -- recent ms.

It is true that some forgeries and replicas are small, others, like ms 2427 (Archaic Mark) take much more effort. This was a unique time and place. If you consider the ms. authentic, you have an incredible "too good to be true" element as well, something that Stephan Huller emphasized even back in 2011, before we found all the smoking guns like the BEFORE and AFTER colouring, and before the white parchment reference of Uspensky caused us to follow up on the whole question.

Steven

[Steven Avery]

If I have not overlooked something the official chronological order of discoverings is

1844 - Tischendorf reports that he discovers 129 leaves, takes 43 leaves
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

Allow me to offer some important corrections.

1844 - Tischendorf discovers 129 sheets, takes 43 sheets

Tischendorf would have seen the same thing as Uspensky, one full manuscript, presumably nicely bound. The 129 (or 130) sheets is a transparent cover story, as was the 1860s idea that he had saved the leaves from burning. The evidence simply points to Tischendorf having simply heisted the 43 sheets from the bound ms.

Remember, the actual Uspensky material was only made available in English the last few years, by our group.

Even without that, the recent article by Nicholas Fyssas in the 2015 “Codex Sinaiticus: New Perspectives on the Ancient Biblical Manuscript” book said:
“These observations may also urge us to take with some reservation Tischendorf’s claim that be was allowed to take the forty-three folios.”

And in 1874, the top Scottish scholar James Donaldson wrote:
“There are many circumstances in this narrative calculated to awaken suspicion”

1845/1850 - Bishop Porphyrius sees the remaining 86 sheets and discovers 260 more sheets, he takes 4 further fragments

This is changing the Uspensky story to try to match the Tischendorf fabrications. Uspensky described one manuscript with all the books that are in our current Sinaiticus.

These are key differences. You can not change the actual history to match the 1860s Tischendorf explanations of convenience. And we have additional history, like Kallinikos describing the colouring of the manuscript, that fit exceedingly well with the actual history.

1844 saved from burning myth - "ich bin in den Besitzgelangt von"
http://www.purebibleforum.com/showthread.php?t=85

And I do understand the reluctance to accept the situation about Tischendorf. He has been painted as a romantic textual hero, and especially some of the German Christian folk hold him in high honour.

Steven