Coloring the Truth: Sinaiticus

[RandyHelzerman]

Are Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus and Vaticanus actually inviolable "holy relics"?

Depends on what sense of "holy" you are talking about. Let me illustrate what I mean here.

Until recently, the "kilogram" was defined to be the mass of a platinum-iridium cylinder held in Paris, France. I was curious once, and read up on the regulations and procedures they had for storing, washing, protecting, weighing, it, etc etc. It read way more like a handbook on sacred rituals than it did a scientific paper.

When the Nazi's conquered France, they did all kinds of heinous acts. The sent people to concentration camps and gassed them or worked them to death.

But what they *didn't* do is destroy that platinum-iridium cylinder. Destroying that cylinder, or hiding it somewhere in Germany where only Germans could use it, would have been very harmful to Hitler's enemies.

But it was respected, because it indeed *is* a sacred object. Like a statue of a deity of old, it was left in its temple, attended to by its priests.

There are all kinds of things we are curious about which could be solved by tampering with or destroying museum pieces. One wing nut, for example, claimed that we could recover lost books if we would rip apart the coverings on mummies (they were covered with a kind of paper-mache' made out of worn-out papyrus). Turns out he was a complete fraud. If they would have just let him tear apart mummies indiscriminately before they found out he was a fraud, he would have done all kinds of irreparable damage for nothing.

Its ok if they don't carbon date Sinacticus in our generation. Surely as technology advances, we will find out ways of non-destructively determining the age of parchment, just like we are now nondestructively reading the burnt Herculaneum scrolls. Its really nice that previous generations preserved those for us, in as pristine of condition as they could, waiting for the technology to arrive to read them.

[Steven Avery]

Quite the opposite. It's you and your friends who ignore the existing standards of the images on codexsinaiticus.org and fabricate the coloring issue. I haven't seen any recognition by you that you understand the meaning of these standards. The only thing you manage is some attempt to hand-wave the evidence away.

I guess the scholars at academic institutions overestimate the capability of the general public to read scholarly exhibits. Anyway, you will probably never stop with your preaching until the day you die. Academics will ignore it, and whoever takes a good look at the issue, will ignore it, too.

We quoted their standards verbatim, you are lying (again) when you say we ignored them.

Gavin Moorhead clearly acknowledged the the whiteness of the 1844 Leipzig pages compared to the 1859 British pages.

Your claims, in contrast, to the extent you have any, are based on random pictures without any standards at all.

Most academics are driven by the "deeply entrenched scholarship" of Sinaiticus, and its faux "consensus" dating, which came in from a Tischendorf-manipulated ignorance and invisibility, and never address the basic issues.

However, the "we don't care" ignorance (so there has been essentially no parchment and ink scientific examination, who cares, Leipzig cancelled the planned 2015 tests) accepting Tischendorf's faux date was destroyed by the 2009 CSP, which highlights the phenomenally good condition, the colouring and other factors.

And makes it easier to highlight many textual issues that show a later date, such as the Zurich Psalter being used for Sinaiticus corrections, textual conflations using later variants, Eusebian canon corruptions and conflations that must be much later than AD 350, the Andreas commentary corrections and much more. Textual connections that do have no analogy in the truly old manuscripts.

To be fair, though Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov (1854-1946) had blown the whistle on the fake dating, which likely helped the Russians to make the decision to dump the clump to the English marks.

And to be fair, there were a few who realized the 4th-century dating story was fishy and false before the 2009 CSP, mostly overseas.

[Leucius Charinus]

Are Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus and Vaticanus actually inviolable "holy relics"?

Depends on what sense of "holy" you are talking about.

In religion, a relic is an object or article of religious significance from the past.[1] It usually consists of the physical remains or personal effects of a saint or other person preserved for the purpose of veneration as a tangible memorial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relic

An example: Jesus' foreskin (paaeputium [praeputium]) kept by Mary after circumcision. 12 in France, 1 in Belgium, 1 in Germany, 1 in Rome. The one best attested at Charroux (Poitiers) said to have been given as betrothal gift by Empress Helena to Charles the Great, who had Charroux built to house it in 788. A bulla of Clement VII in 1379 grants indulgences to sightseers. Henry V sent it to London to help in the birth of Henry VI from Catherine of France. Confirmed by royal ordnance of 1447. Louis XI worshipped it in 1464.

There are all kinds of things we are curious about which could be solved by tampering with or destroying museum pieces.

Removing a postage-stamp sized of blank material from a leaf of Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus or Vaticanus is hardly destroying the museum piece. If the BL is skeptical let them photograph the postage-stamp sized blank material in order to prove to future generations that it was indeed blank.

Its ok if they don't carbon date Sinacticus in our generation. Surely as technology advances, we will find out ways of non-destructively determining the age of parchment, just like we are now nondestructively reading the burnt Herculaneum scrolls. Its really nice that previous generations preserved those for us, in as pristine of condition as they could, waiting for the technology to arrive to read them.

As if the removal of a postage-stamp sized of blank material is going to harm future generations. I view it as kicking down the road the question of the scientific dating of these so-called earliest NT bible codices. This inaction is IMO far more harmful since the end result is another generation inculcated in accordance to church dogma rather than to objective scientific knowledge

[RandyHelzerman]

Removing a postage-stamp sized of blank material from a leaf of Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus or Vaticanus is hardly destroying the museum piece.

Yeah but it wouldn't give you what you wanted anyways. A postage stamp from one page wouldn't remove all doubt that all the other pages were forged. What we really need is a non-destructive way of comprehensively dating every part of it, and eventually we'll have something like that.

[Ulan]

We quoted their standards verbatim, you are lying (again) when you say we ignored them.

Gavin Moorhead clearly acknowledged the the whiteness of the 1844 Leipzig pages compared to the 1859 British pages.

Your claims, in contrast, to the extent you have any, are based on random pictures without any standards at all.

Steven, I'm not sure how to put this in any charitable way, but the only person lying here is you.
Every single image of every single page of Codex Sinaiticus, both from the British Library and Leipzig University Library, on the official codexsinaiticus.org page comes with internal standards for size, color and contrast, standards that were photographed together with the manuscript pages.

The only possible conclusion from your erroneous statement is that you never even looked at the originals. And, of course, I posted an image containing both, a Leipzig and a London page, both with standards, both taken from the official site of the document, in this very same thread on page 8. I've posted that one before, and you already commented on it (you tried to hand-wave the issue away).

Not sure why you always have to resort to lying, but I guess that happens if you don't have anything tangible at hand. I give you one thing: I haven't seen any indication of you even knowing what you are looking at when you see those standards. Which doesn't help your case.

[Steven Avery]

We went over their description of the standards and also lots of page-by-page details (e.g. the numbers assigned) in our discussions.

I will charitably just call you ignorant and worthless in conversation, like when you repeated your fabrication of "terrible yellow" as if it was a quote. When you doubled down on that absurdity, rather than a retraction with a simple apology, I knew you were worthless for discussion.

And I could point you (or, better, a sincere poster trying to learn) to lots of the detailed colour discussions, I believe most of them are still up, sometimes on Facebook forums, although Jacob Peterson deleted some of his material.

You give us lots of polemic, your one skill.

[Ulan]

Steven, you have made that many false statements regarding stains and color on these forums alone, it doesn't really matter anymore. I'll leave you to your bluster. I guess it's time to ignore this whole charade, like everyone else in the field does.

[Steven Avery]

You never quote me.

I challenge you to find a false statement, uncorrected, from me anywhere.
Without one, you are simply lying again.

(Any time I say something factually wrong, I am very happy to have it corrected, on any topic.)

We know you are arrogant and simply make up quotes, like "terrible yellow", so you can accuse me falsely.
Classic straw man argumentation.

[Leucius Charinus]

The BL refused to test it , regardless of the tiny sample size (~50 mg.)

Yes I am aware of that email from Peter Toth --- it was a response to my email question.

I also attempted to canvas a petition years back which did not attract much response:
http://mountainman.com.au/essenes/c14%20the%20bible.htm

[Leucius Charinus]

Removing a postage-stamp sized of blank material from a leaf of Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus or Vaticanus is hardly destroying the museum piece.

Yeah but it wouldn't give you what you wanted anyways.

Yes it would. What I want is the same scientific standards which were applied to Codex Tchacos (containing the Gospel of Judas) to be applied to the three "Great Codices". Particularly the codex which was the most recently "discovered" in the church archives. And that is Sinaiticus.

A postage stamp from one page wouldn't remove all doubt that all the other pages were forged.

I would reject that argument completely. Such arguments against the C14 dating of the "Shroud" were not made by scientists but by the devout dogma of the church traditions.

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. Especially the monks of the middle ages. A postage-stamp sized of blank material from a leaf of any of these pivotal church manuscripts would provide us with a reasonably secure scientific estimate of the actual date of all the leaves.

"Everything which has come down to us
from heathendom is wrapped in a thick fog;
it belongs to a space of time we cannot measure.
We know that it is older than Christendom, but
whether by a couple of years
or a couple of centuries,
or even by more than a millenium,
we can do no more than guess."

[Rasmus Nyerup, (Danish antiquarian), 1802 CE
(in Trigger, 1989:71) - from www.C14dating.com]

What we really need is a non-destructive way of comprehensively dating every part of it, and eventually we'll have something like that.

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