That Sinaiticus Show

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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gmx
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That Sinaiticus Show

Post by gmx »

Primarily to Ben, DCH, andrew, PeterK, Stephan (not to preclude anyone else)

Do any of you learned brethren place any credence in Stephen Avery's notion that Aleph is a forgery? Is it completely bogus?
I saw a Naked girl ,Slowly emerge in front of me,Greek hairstyle,Very beautiful,She has a beautiful [fine] profile.; She is fine in profile. the view of profile,hard to tell.
Secret Alias
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Re: That Sinaiticus Show

Post by Secret Alias »

Nonsense. Beware of people with agendas.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: That Sinaiticus Show

Post by Ben C. Smith »

No, I do not.
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Steven Avery
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Re: That Sinaiticus Show

Post by Steven Avery »

Secret Alias wrote: Wed Apr 11, 2018 5:53 am Nonsense.
Not to interrupt .. (I am very curious as to the responses)

Am I right that you accept the idea from David Trobisch, that you said was spoken to you privately, that Sinaiticus is likely, or very possibly. 200-300 years later than the Tischendorf date?

Steven
Maestroh
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Re: That Sinaiticus Show

Post by Maestroh »

Not only is it utter nonsense, a perusal of his arguments makes it clear that Steven Avery Spenser cherry picks his data.

He ACCUSES Tischendorf of coloring it to make it look older. He dates this (deceitfully) to "the 1850s"

1850 - Uspensky sees it as white
1852 - Simonides claims he sees it as aged

Since Tischendorf was never at Sinai between those dates, even if it WAS colored (it wasn't), it couldn't have been Tischendorf. If he wishes to say that Simonides lied about the date then he better come up with some actual EVIDENCE that Simonides was ever at Sinai.

In short: if his position were so defensible, he wouldn't be so carefully cherry picking only the parts that support his prejudice, plain and simple.

Note also that he cannot even read Sinaiticus himself and has never seen it. Only if you believe that believing someone who has contributed nothing to the debate besides an active imagination and cherry picked data should this be given any credence.
Ulan
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Re: That Sinaiticus Show

Post by Ulan »

I was looking at the claims made in the "white parchment" thread, and I came to the conclusion that these claims are simply baseless for the time being. This includes claims about the color differences between manuscript parts, depending on the location where they are kept. Particularly since KK brought a comparison of the color bars that accompany some of the online manuscript pages (see here), it is clear that any color comparison of online images is beyond useless. The Leipzig images have been color-corrected with high contrast and low color saturation, to make the background (the parchment) look whiter and the text darker, which increases the readability of even faint letters. The London images were taken with high color saturation and lower contrast, which shows the colors of the parchment and that of the written letters in all their glory, but makes reading much more difficult. Any side-by-side comparison of images, therefore, is an apples to oranges comparison and makes that whole thread kind of pointless.

Furthermore, the use of a leaf of Sinaiticus to repair the binding of a different book makes it abundantly clear that the monks at Mt. Sinai didn't have the slightest clue of the value of this manuscript. It also corroborates Tischendorf's claim that he found part of the manuscript in a discard bin. His fear of the pages being used for burning may have been some flourish to make the tale sound more interesting, but the point remains that at least parts of the manuscript had been marked for recycling. If he stole this part of the manuscript, he obviously stole what they considered to be trash. I can imagine (as much as that is worth) that he wasn't exactly forcing the monks to acknowledge what importance his discovery had.

There isn't really much of a smoking gun here.
Maestroh
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Re: That Sinaiticus Show

Post by Maestroh »

Ulan wrote: Thu Apr 12, 2018 7:27 am I was looking at the claims made in the "white parchment" thread, and I came to the conclusion that these claims are simply baseless for the time being. This includes claims about the color differences between manuscript parts, depending on the location where they are kept. Particularly since KK brought a comparison of the color bars that accompany some of the online manuscript pages (see here), it is clear that any color comparison of online images is beyond useless. The Leipzig images have been color-corrected with high contrast and low color saturation, to make the background (the parchment) look whiter and the text darker, which increases the readability of even faint letters. The London images were taken with high color saturation and lower contrast, which shows the colors of the parchment and that of the written letters in all their glory, but makes reading much more difficult. Any side-by-side comparison of images, therefore, is an apples to oranges comparison and makes that whole thread kind of pointless.
Which is precisely what David C. Parker said in the 2010 book "Codex Sinaiticus."

page 176: "We looked at the British Library leaves only by artificial light, while the differing storage conditions and environment in Leipzig, St Petersburg, and Sinai give it a different appearance in each place."

Keep in mind that not one person from the past century who has actually SEEN the manuscript argues this 19th century gobbledygook. And if he wasn't a KJVOist, Steven Avery Spenser wouldn't, either.
Ulan wrote: Thu Apr 12, 2018 7:27 am Furthermore, the use of a leaf of Sinaiticus to repair the binding of a different book makes it abundantly clear that the monks at Mt. Sinai didn't have the slightest clue of the value of this manuscript. It also corroborates Tischendorf's claim that he found part of the manuscript in a discard bin. His fear of the pages being used for burning may have been some flourish to make the tale sound more interesting, but the point remains that at least parts of the manuscript had been marked for recycling. If he stole this part of the manuscript, he obviously stole what they considered to be trash. I can imagine (as much as that is worth) that he wasn't exactly forcing the monks to acknowledge what importance his discovery had.

There isn't really much of a smoking gun here.

Here's the problem: Tischendorf's claims literally have nothing to do with age of the manuscript. The age of the MS neither rises nor falls with his claims. Of course, to a point the same can be said to be true of Simonides but to a lesser extent. In and of itself his claims being wrong don't prove the manuscript is NOT young, they only prove that he lied.

The problem is that ALL theories of late dating rely to some extent on Simonides's claims. Drop "because Simonides said so" and the argument vanishes. "Oh but it was colored....LIKE Simonides said!!!" (he also said he saw this in 1852 when he saw the ENTIRE manuscript....which he couldn't have since part of it was gone).
Steven Avery
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Re: That Sinaiticus Show

Post by Steven Avery »

Ulan wrote: Thu Apr 12, 2018 7:27 amI was looking at the claims made in the "white parchment" thread, and I came to the conclusion that these claims are simply baseless for the time being. This includes claims about the color differences between manuscript parts, depending on the location where they are kept. Particularly since KK brought a comparison of the color bars that accompany some of the online manuscript pages (see here), it is clear that any color comparison of online images is beyond useless. The Leipzig images have been color-corrected with high contrast and low color saturation, to make the background (the parchment) look whiter and the text darker, which increases the readability of even faint letters. The London images were taken with high color saturation and lower contrast, which shows the colors of the parchment and that of the written letters in all their glory, but makes reading much more difficult. Any side-by-side comparison of images, therefore, is an apples to oranges comparison and makes that whole thread kind of pointless.
And I see this as a rather absurd conclusion based on the minor differences on the colour bar.

The Codex Sinaiticus Project folks had a special committee for photography accuracy and standardization and oversight, and there is ZERO indication that anything was "color-corrected...to make the parchment look whiter".

Gavin Moorhead of the British Library shared to us, through the correspondence with Cillian O'Hogan (who is now at Waterloo in Toronto):

""the Leipzig folios are notable for their whiteness."

And the British Library even sent us an example of the major difference between Leipzig and the British Libary pages.

We can easily see this "notable ... whiteness" on the CSP, yet so many want to deny the obvious.

Similarly we communicated with the Leipzig photographer, and there was an affirming of the accuracy, and NO indication of any color-correcting to make them more white.

Testing? The Leipzig University Library tests scheduled for 2015 were .. cancelled. And they are very uncommunicative. The Brits, to their credit, were quite forthright in acknowledging the colour anomaly.

Those who use the minor colour bar variance as an excuse for the major colour (and staining and streaking) disparity between Leipzig 1844 and British Library 1859 should, at least, try to explain why the British Library and Leipzig are involved in this massive tampering and cover-up to make it look like an artificially stained manuscript!

Similarly, James Snapp does not blame color-correction, he simply blames the lighting, and when confronted with the British Library perspective, and the professional photography standards .. simply goes silent, changing the topic, or blocking or dropping the conversation.

The David Parker approach is actually totally different. Some unknown combination of factors turned the Leipzig pages white. Or turned the Brit pages yellow, stained and streaky. With no evidence at all to support either idea. It is at least worthy of consideration (unlike the other two approaches which are basically absurd.)

Parker doe uses the throway of seeing the British Library pages in "artificial light". Did Leipzig take the ms. outside for him? Or use some super-full-spectrum lighting? The CSP got confused? If you can unravel that, share away :) .

And the white pages have major problems as supposed 1650 year folia. You have to overhaul parchment science to fit the new paradigm of parchment that does not yellow and age and lose flexibility.

Ironically, the 2011-2012 printed Sinaiticus edition from Hendrickson has zero distinction between the colour of Leipzig and the British Library. And hints at what happened, in the Preface, where they talk of "sensitive adjustments". Here you do have "color-correction". I tried to track down who was involved in these adjustments, and everything was mist and vapours.

Remember, the colouring of the manuscript in the 1850s was specifically reported in the 1862-1864 controversies. Thus, historical forensics comes to play. The report was combined with other super-accurate reports, like the quiet theft by Tischendorf in 1844 and the bogus loan in 1859, which was said would never be returned. However, our textual folks are generally clueless on the history. If you know the historical details, it is trivially obvious that the 1844 heist of the five quires and a bit more was a brazen theft. And was so reported by Simonides and Kallinikos.

Why would someone (who supposedly had never even seen the ms.) make a seemingly absurd claim that the ms. was coloured that could be easily refuted? The answer. He actually observed the colouring crime.

The timing was the 1850s, the person was Tischendorf (and that could include some of his allies in Sinai and Cairo), the means was stated to be lemon juice and herbs.

You can SEE the BEFORE and AFTER today, both in the colour and the streaking.

And all the Lepizig and BL sections are in "phenomenally good condition", with nice easy-peasy page turning, and sans the grime and dirt from monk and scribal corrector handling, as is supposed.

Steven
Ulan
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Re: That Sinaiticus Show

Post by Ulan »

Steven Avery wrote: Thu Apr 12, 2018 8:35 pm And I see this as a rather absurd conclusion based on the minor differences on the colour bar.

The Codex Sinaiticus Project folks had a special committee for photography accuracy and standardization and oversight, and there is ZERO indication that anything was "color-corrected...to make the parchment look whiter".
This, according to you, means "minor differences" (Leipzig color bar on the left, British Library color bar on the right; repeating KK's image from the other thread):

Image

You have to be willfully blind to not see that the differences are indeed massive.

1. Look at the yellow color. The yellow of Leipzig is desaturated and bleached out. The yellow on BL photos is garishly oversaturated. This means that the parchment of Leipzig images will look much whiter even if they are yellow, while the yellow of the BL parchment will be vastly exaggerated on photographs.

2. Look at the greyscale. The "dark part" of the Leipzig greyscale reaches roughly half way up, while the dark part of the BL images reaches only a quarter up. On the white end of the greyscale, you see that the Leipzig color bar is lighter (look at the third and fourth bars from the top). This shows us that Leipzig images have much higher contrast than BL images. Higher contrast means that dark parts, which on these pages consist of the letters, will look darker than they are in reality, while the background, in this case the parchment, will look lighter. On the other hand, the BL images show a rather even greyscale, which means they use a flat color correction and not a curved one, like the Leipzig images do.

Which, in the end, means that all those quotes you make become meaningless. Everyone with eyes in their head can look at those color bars and knows that you cannot make image comparisons without processing the images in a way to make those color bars look exactly the same. Those simple image comparisons regarding parchment color are completely worthless.

And that's basically the gist of it. Unless someone makes an image with both parts of the Codex on the same image, in the same room, under the same light, you won't have anything to talk about. Even the human eye alone cannot really judge colors in different environments correctly.

Of course, that's just the beginning of all the issues with your proposal. There's no need to repeat the whole other thread though.
Maestroh
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Re: That Sinaiticus Show

Post by Maestroh »

Ulan wrote: Thu Apr 12, 2018 11:47 pm
Steven Avery wrote: Thu Apr 12, 2018 8:35 pm And I see this as a rather absurd conclusion based on the minor differences on the colour bar.

The Codex Sinaiticus Project folks had a special committee for photography accuracy and standardization and oversight, and there is ZERO indication that anything was "color-corrected...to make the parchment look whiter".
This, according to you, means "minor differences" (Leipzig color bar on the left, British Library color bar on the right; repeating KK's image from the other thread):

Image

You have to be willfully blind to not see that the differences are indeed massive.

1. Look at the yellow color. The yellow of Leipzig is desaturated and bleached out. The yellow on BL photos is garishly oversaturated. This means that the parchment of Leipzig images will look much whiter even if they are yellow, while the yellow of the BL parchment will be vastly exaggerated on photographs.

2. Look at the greyscale. The "dark part" of the Leipzig greyscale reaches roughly half way up, while the dark part of the BL images reaches only a quarter up. On the white end of the greyscale, you see that the Leipzig color bar is lighter (look at the third and fourth bars from the top). This shows us that Leipzig images have much higher contrast than BL images. Higher contrast means that dark parts, which on these pages consist of the letters, will look darker than they are in reality, while the background, in this case the parchment, will look lighter. On the other hand, the BL images show a rather even greyscale, which means they use a flat color correction and not a curved one, like the Leipzig images do.

Which, in the end, means that all those quotes you make become meaningless. Everyone with eyes in their head can look at those color bars and knows that you cannot make image comparisons without processing the images in a way to make those color bars look exactly the same. Those simple image comparisons regarding parchment color are completely worthless.

And that's basically the gist of it. Unless someone makes an image with both parts of the Codex on the same image, in the same room, under the same light, you won't have anything to talk about. Even the human eye alone cannot really judge colors in different environments correctly.

Of course, that's just the beginning of all the issues with your proposal. There's no need to repeat the whole other thread though.
He doesn't CARE about the truth.

I don't really mind that except he pretends to do so.

He tries to pretend here that he's found these instances of homoioteleuton and doesn't even understand what he's writing (but boy is he arrogant and obtuse about it).

He tries to pretend he understands Greek grammar and yet couldn't even present the lexical form or find the genitive absolute if it was demanded.

He tries to pretend there's a problem with the color of Sinaiticus based upon what he sees on his computer screen and when people point it out he attacks them.

He tries to pretend his bibliology is in line with the Reformers but he hides his anti-Trinitarian views because those same Reformers would have burned him at the stake for his heresy (look, I have an educated enough mind that I can appreciate the contributions to scholarship of people with whom I disagree, but this pretentiousness of his is universal and revolting). Have the manhood to come right out and SAY what you mean.

He tries to pretend he's being transparent by posting under his "real name" but he doesn't....

But for some reason.....he never enters the arena of places like SBL or ETS (he couldn't sign the doctrinal statement) where he'd have to actually defend something in a room full of people who are wise to his ruse. The reason is simple cowardice. It's why every time someone hits him with a well-aimed question, he goes back to preaching mode. All anyone has to do is observe his tactics on any board where he posts. (He came running back here after I exposed his fraudulent timeline on CARM and he couldn't get something removed that he desperately wanted off the board because it exposes his fraud).

Here's a fact: a century from now, Sinaiticus will still be a fourth century document and nobody will even remember that Steven Avery Spenser was here.

He has hitched his KJVO fundy bandwagon to a mythical tale of nonsense. If he'd stayed in his church and done this, who cares? But once he insisted on littering the Internet with these mindless musings, reality has to take hold.
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