Ulan wrote: ↑Fri Feb 17, 2023 10:31 pm
Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Fri Feb 17, 2023 8:47 pm
C14 of Sinaiticus is the sure way forward. There is a stack of papyri for C14 testing out of sight alongside the bindings. But the British Library seems determined to treat this codex as an inviolable "holy relic". This attitude is ideological and not logical.
With such a statement you just ignore the reasoning put forward by the BL.
I don't think I have. Here is my recent email exchange. I have footnoted the paragraphs. Apologies if I have posted this before.
BRITISH LIBRARY REQUEST:
From: "peter B"
Sent: 1/11/21 11:28 PM
To: peter T (BL)
Subject:
Future C14 dating of Codex Sinaiticus?
Dear Peter,
I am wondering whether the British Library perhaps will, at some time in the future, consider C14 dating Codex Sinaiticus in order - to obtain through an independent scientific method, information concerning the correct century of this ancient manuscript, and whether the date from radiocarbon will agree with or call for modification of existing date estimates based on other methods such as paleographic dating.
I obtained your email address from Codex Sinaiticus - Contact
Kind regards
Peter B
***************************************
RESPONSE FROM BL:
Following is the response recently received from the BL re: C14 plans
2/9/21 11:25 PM
From
:
Peter T. (BL)
To: prfbrown
Dear Mr Brown,
Thank you very much for your message and interest in this manuscript and please accept my apologies for replying with such a delay.
We are all aware of the ongoing doubts and concerns about the dating of this extraordinary manuscript. However, the British Library does currently have no plans to undertake C14 dating of the Codex Sinaiticus, nor has it to my knowledge or as recorded undertaken this in the past. The main reason behind this decision is that C14 is a destructive form of technical analysis:
it requires a sample to be physically separated and destroyed from an artefact which is why it is not undertaken on BL collection items. [1]
(The BL – as you probably know – has no detached/unwritten fragments of the MS similar to the ones currently kept at the Monastery of St Catherine on Sinai – so it would indeed require an actual intervention and damage to be made on the brilliantly preserved parchment folios of this MS). [2]
Moreover, these methods sometimes lead to inconclusive and unhelpful results in dating manuscripts, so in our present view (and, also in the view of several of our predecessors) the scholarly benefits of undertaking this do not outweigh or justify the losses that would occur to this
critically significant artefact if C14 was undertaken. [3]
Contextual and imaging analysis can, in our opinion, prove as reliable and much less harmful way to interpret artefacts like this and were widely and successfully applied in various other manuscripts. There is broad scholarly consensus on the dating of this manuscript based on these well-established criteria for judging the date of a manuscript. More productive than C14 was the non-destructive analysis and identification of the type of skins and the animal type origins of the pages of Codex Sinaiticus, undertaken within and disseminated through the Codex Project. See, for example,
http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/proje ... hment.aspx
as well as the thorough examination of the various inks used throughout the manuscript [4]
http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/project/c ... n_ink.aspx.
I hope this helps to clarify the background of the BL’s policies and decisions as to the date of this remarkable manuscript.
Best wishes
Peter T. (BL)
****************************************************
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The problem the BL faces is that C14 dating
requires an extremely small sample to be physically separated and destroyed from an artefact which is why it is not undertaken on BL collection. Scientific dating meets an inviolable "holy relic". This is ideological. Who is really going to miss a few extremely small samples from a blank area on ay given page? We can take a picture of these small blank samples just to prove they were blank and thus contain absolutely nothing relevant to the scheme of things. Scientific dating is a tool which can provide very reasonable and entirely independent estimates for the century of the codex. Historians would be able to be guided by these results.
[2] The BL doesn't own detached/unwritten fragments of the MS similar to the ones currently kept at the Monastery of St Catherine on Sinai. But the author repeats the doctrine of inviolability of artefacts. Or rather some very small bits of BLANK. I honestly think its a no brainer. Give some blank bits to the C14 lab.
[3] The argument here is that C14 can be unreliable / inconclusive. The C14 results have their own error bounds. Nothing's perfect. But we are talking about an extremely small amount of material lifted from a blank space. C14 can also be reliable within its error bounds and the calibration curve has been improved. The C14 labs are better equipped that they used to be. But the BL says again that the codex is quote --
a critically significant artefact -- unquote.
[4] Nothing is wrong in using a range of dating methodologies.
As you said, there's much papyrus material available for testing outside of the bound parts of the book. That's the material tests will most likely be done on, but it's nothing the BL has any say over, as they don't own those parts of the manuscript.
Yes. [2] above. Also we're dealing with vellum.
The manuscript is a codex (the forerunner to the modern book) made from vellum parchment, originally in double sheets, which may have measured about 40 by 70 cm. The whole codex consists of quires of eight leaves (with a few exceptions),
a format which came to be popular throughout the Middle Ages (this being eight parchment pages laid on top of each other, and folded in half to make a full block (also known as a folio); several of these were then stitched together to create a book).[6] The folios were made primarily from calf skins, secondarily from sheep skins.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Sinaiticus
The reasons why a 19th century date for the manuscript is out of the question, anyway, have been stated often enough, so there's no reason to repeat those.
What if it's from (say for example) the 14th century? C14 can provide the approximate century. Confirming and knowing when the codex was produced would be important.
Or in other words: I see the "ideological attitude" somewhere else than on the BL's side.
You are entitled to your opinion(s). My position is described above. We are talking about removing a seriously small amount of vellum from the edge of a blank page.
Surely we can spare a very small amount of blank page in order to get a scientific dating for the codex? My motivation is to be guided by scientific and historical truth.
IDK when the codex was made. Neither do you or Steven or the British Library or anyone else.