rakovsky wrote:How different are sinaicitus verses from other Bible versions?
What is the motive? Fame and cash?
Great questions.
The difference is fairly large, in terms of doctrine. This was hashed out in the 1860s when Porfiry Uspensky accused the text of being heretical, on issues like the virgin birth. That could be another discussion.
However, the signficance is not so much the Sinaiticus oddball variants, which are often rejected, especially singulars. The big signfiicance is how it became a Robin to the Vaticanus Batman in creating the Westcott-Hort recension (which is the foundation of all Critical Text editions since 1881). Without Sinaiticus it is safe to say that the recension would never have been accepted. (For this, you go into the turgid Hortian explanations and the scholarship reactions in the following years.)
Another significance is the abject corruption of the text. The thousands of errors and obvious corruptions, that are generally just ignored and passed over. It is scribally a disaster.
> Fame and cash?
In terms of the vain-glorious Tischendorf, these were clearly key motives.
The question of a hidden hand behind the Critical Text is another element to be considered. Tischendorf's passport was found right outside the monastery in pristine condition.
The last line was edgy humor. However, there are a lot of strange circumstances, such as when Tischendorf had the ms. in his private hands with two unnamed Germans for months in Cairo in 1859. And the obvious colouring of the part that went to St. Petersburg. Rarely do you ever see such a clear smoking gun, since we have both BEFORE & AFTER of the colouring by lemon-juice available to us today.
Also, looking at what happenned before the ms. suddenly appeared at St. Catherine's is a fascinating project, however a lot of study there has to be conjectural, looking at things like Tischendorf's visits to the papacy, his later comment that he had Vaticanus available at the time, the comment of Hort about "rich materials", stuff like that.
Steven
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