Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote:Unbelievable but true: it was permitted to touch all sheets of the Codex.

Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote:Alexander Schick, Tischendorf und die älteste Bibel der Welt, 2015, page 180-182
The Brits paid 100.000 £ (in goods) for the Sinaiticus. But the government gave only the half. The rest was collected in the British Museum in a box next to the Codex. It was permitted to touch the Codex so that the people should give a lot of cash.

No indication of "all sheets" though, which would require willy-nilly flilpping and massive handling.

Alexander Schick is the leading pro-Tischendorf aficionado going. Our research team does communicate with him and use his material, when appropriate. We do tend to disagree with him on the history involving Tischendorf.

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Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote:I think it's a good question whether a MS is a forgery. The Sinaiticus should not be an exception.

Agreed. However, there is some very staunch opposition to any consideration of its history being late within the textual establishment, led by Thomas Wasserman. There is a lot on the line, and a lot of "deeply entrenched scholarship."

Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote: But I must confess that imho I think that the way you are discrediting Tischendorf is unworthy for this forum.

Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus

A page of Codex Ephraemi disappeared as well, and the circumstantial evidence points to Tischendorf. ... Read between the lines. Especially know, knowing how Tischendorf mangled even the Archimedes palimpsest. Here is the same information summarized in a review.

Theological Observer (1960)
John Theodore Mueller
http://www.ctsfw.net/media/pdfs/CTMT...server31-1.pdf

Quote:
... Dr. Lyon shows that the codex contains only 208 leaves and not 209 as is commonly stated. The manuscript had 209 leaves when Tischendorf used it, but since then folio 138, the one used for a facsimile by Tischendorf, has disappeared...

You seem to assume that Tischendorf made some kind of a facsimile of the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (a palimpsest !?). But that was not the case. Tischendorf deciphered the Bible text and made a handwritten copy of the Codex. Day by day for two years in the library in Paris under the eyes of the librarians. This handwritten copy was the base for his printed edition.

Nothing is assumed. If you read the quotes carefully above, this is said by Robert William Lyon (1929-2004) the fellow who worked on Codex Ephraemi in the late 1950s. And he says quite specifically that the leaf that was used by Tischendorf for a facsimile is the one that disappeared.

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As for upsetting people a little bit by speaking bluntly about Tischendorf, not much I can do about that. I am simply following many evidences.

The research by Natalie Tchemetska, is also helpful in this regard. The mutilation and theft of a leaf from the Archimedes Palimpsest by Tischendorf was one of the more brazen manuscript crimes, discovered when he was long deceased. In fact, the Sinaiticus shenanigans were mostly covered up and papered over while he was alive.

Steven

Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote:

Ulan wrote:Anyway, I still think the easiest explanation for the differences is the horrible London climate. I don't think it was a good idea to bring parchment that is that old into the humid air of Britain. Cold and dry winter air in Eastern Europe was much easier on the material.

Ulan wrote:Well, I was told that this is actually a good thing. Unlike papyrus, which you are only supposed to touch with gloves, parchment gets preserved by the oils from fingers. Which means that even experts today touch them with with their bare hands.

Interesting. Thanks. It seems that you have researched the problem

In part. I guess I should not make generalizations about the relative humidity (RH) in London and Eastern European cities. At least on average, the differences seem not to be that pronounced. What is important is the actual RH the parchment is subjected to at any point in time, as parchment is extremely susceptible to structural changes due to changes in humidity.

I don't know about your personal experiences, but I moved to a desert at one point and could watch my books and furniture fall apart in the dry air. When I moved back, I didn't bother with furniture anymore, and only some books changed their form due to rehydration. Parchment is also a very hygroscopic material. Studies with parchments scraps from different time spans have shown that there is, unfortunately, no recommendation for an optimal RH that suits all kinds of parchment. A conclusion from an article about humidity and parchment:

There are two common elements of the studies discussed. Firstly, the data shows that there is substantial disparity between samples, thus indicating that consideration needs to be given to the variability of parchments within collections before appropriate storage conditions can be recommended. Secondly, they show that the largest disparity is between new parchments and historic parchments, and in this respect, they provide evidence that the respective quantities of collagen and gelatine in a parchment will be the deciding factor for the most appropriate storage RH.

Anyway, I read several articles about the behavior of old parchments, and rapid changes of RH are definitely a major problem. Especially older parchment usually has already undergone some major restructuring in its collagen structure, which is often not readily visible by a superficial look, but which can then lead to cases of very rapid aging when conditions are not optimal, like when you get exposure to sulphur dioxide or nitrogen dioxide in presence of high humidity in a city (a combination known from pea soup fog). For me they provided a sufficient explanation to dismiss any claims of the nature that it would be impossible for major changes to occur in just a few years. Proofs of tampering have to take different avenues, which would be providing just that: proofs of tampering.

You have most of the elements to explain the condition of Sinaiticus already on the codexsinaiticus.org site. 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. Without any direct experiments with the codex material itself, any claims of tampering stay at the level of speculation, no matter how many videos are made about this.

Hi Ulan,

Greetings.
Let me ask you one question for now.

Ulan wrote:You have most of the elements to explain the condition of Sinaiticus already on the codexsinaiticus.org site. 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.

Please show me any of this "lot of gelitinisation and distortion" on any (ie.one is sufficient) of the Leipzig pages. They are LUL, and I would be happy to point you to the 43 leaves if necessary. 43 leaves = 86 pages, you can take the one that you believe is the best exemplar, or the most advanced, any one you want.

Thanks!

And I could ask about gelitinisation of the BL pages, but lets stick with Leipzig for now.

And I would also be interested if you can point me to what you might consider a standard from any other ancient manuscript.

Steven

Just as an aside, the other night I was wondering about the fact that Uspensky originally said this ms. could not be earlier than about 500 AD, because it had some sections from Euthalia. And I was thinking about the nuance of David Trobisch, where he allows dates from the 500s to the 700s.

So how was this kept out of scholarship? (Other than Stephan Huller reporting anecdotally from David Trobisch.) By a funny little circularity. From day one, Tischendorf was pushing for the ms. as no later than 4th century, and writing weirdly and at times viciously against anybody who questioned his date. (This is itself an interesting and little-known history.)

So what they did was simple. They simply assumed that the production date was 4th century and said the Euthalian notations were put in at a later time and place, hundreds of years later, even with the ms. traveling from Alexandria (although Hort saw the Latinisms as showing a western origin) to Caesarea.

The accepted history was created by the presuppositions.

This is a common phenomenon that we run into, and it ends up with "deeply entrenched scholarship". Trobisch actually returns us to Uspensky in that regard, he does note automatically accept the un-Ockham proposed history, so he says it is very possible that it is a 500 to 700 AD ms.

Presuppositions also force the convoluted travel and handling theories in other situations on Sinaiticus, like the Arabic notes. When those notes were simply put in at Catherine's c. 1845. All the parchment and ink "science" is predicated on the presuppositions as well, so they often ending up just throwing up their hands and saying it is a mystery, since the "facts on the ground" clash with the accepted story line.

Now, back to the fact that Sinatiicus really was created in the 1800s.

Steven

Steven Avery wrote:Nothing is assumed. If you read the quotes carefully above, this is said by Robert William Lyon (1929-2004) the fellow who worked on Codex Ephraemi in the late 1950s. And he says quite specifically that the leaf that was used by Tischendorf for a facsimile is the one that disappeared.

Lyon is correct. You can see the facsimile here (a few verses from Ecclesiastes 5).

We have discussed before that there was only one guy who was able to make a facsimile at that time, Johann Immanuel Uckermann from Erfurt, Germany. Here (right page, fourth line from above) I have found that at a congress in autumn 1845 a scholar presented a facsimile of a “greek-coptic palimpsest”, which was given to him by Tischendorf and made by Uckermann. The description may be not entirely correct, but I assume that the author spoke about folio 138 of Codex Ephraemi.

“Viertens legte Prof. Fleischer vor: a) ein von Prof. Dr. Tischendorf für die Bibliothek der Gesellschaft erhaltenes Exemplar des Anzeige-Blattes der Wiener Jahrbücher der Literatur, No. CX, enthaltend eine von Prof. Tischendorf gegebene Rechenschaft über seine handschriftlichen Studien auf seiner Reise von 1840 bis 1844; ferner das von demselben mitgetheilte, von Uckermann in Erfurt gefertigte Facsimile eines Blattes aus einem neutestamentlichen griechisch-coptischen Palimpsest.“

The OT-texts of Codex Ephraemi were published in 1845 in Leipzig. It could be that Tischendorf made a request in Paris and folio 138 was send to him to make the facsimile by Uckermann in Erfurt. On that journey the folio may had been lost.

A book by Abbe Martin (1840-1890)

"Description technique des manuscrits grecs relatifs au Nouveau Testament, conservés dans les bibliothèques des Paris" (Paris 1883)
Jean-Pierre-Hippolyte Martin
https://books.google.com/books?id=mBOvXrCyVF4C
https://play.google.com/store/books/det ... OvXrCyVF4C

Seems to be the first public notice of the missing leaf. His wording could be checked in that edition.

Church Quarterly Review
https://books.google.com/books?id=ieUWAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA255

The Abbé Martin’s Description Technique (Paris : Maissonneuve) is eulogized by Nestle as a very full account of 369 MSS. of the N. T. preserved in the libraries of Paris, seventy-five being therein described for the first time : from it we learn that folio 138 of C (Ephraemi), of which Tischendorf gave a facsimile, is now missing.

Eberhard Nestle wrote:

Introduction to the textual criticism of the Greek New Testament (1901)
Eberhard Nestle
https://books.google.com/books?id=RRdVAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA63

The page of the O. T. which Tischendorf issued in facsimile has most unfortunately disappeared, as Martin points out in his Description technique ...

This is interesting in its own right, but is really only tangential to the main points of the thread. If you really need confirmation that Tischendorf could simply hack off a leaf from a manuscript as theft, simply read up on the Archimedes palimpsest. It is also rather clear that the 43 leaves of 1844 were a heist, even if you give Tischendorf some slack on 1859. There are others, too, the only reason there is surprise is the long-term textual criticism propaganda campaign. The only real attempted excuse is that others did this too, but taking a leaf out of a manuscript like the Archimedes Palimpsest is getting way out of bounds for even the most jaded of manuscript ethical standards.

Steven

Steven Avery wrote:Hi Ulan,

Greetings.
Let me ask you one question for now.

Ulan wrote:You have most of the elements to explain the condition of Sinaiticus already on the codexsinaiticus.org site. 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.

Please show me any of this "lot of gelitinisation and distortion" on any (ie.one is sufficient) of the Leipzig pages. They are LUL, and I would be happy to point you to the 43 leaves if necessary. 43 leaves = 172 pages, you can take the one that you believe is the best exemplar, or the most advanced, any one you want.

How would you do this without access to the actual manuscript and a microscope? I was basically quoting a finding by the British Museum, which explained why you cannot distinguish the different species from which the parchment was made anymore without the use of a microscope, with which you have to find a spot where the gelatinisation and distortion still allows for doing this.

This still doesn't mean much, but on the other hand your point that a document that is 1600 years old cannot look that good is also garbage. Think of papyri, which are even much more fragile and go bad much more quickly. This text here, which is probably the source for part of the Joseph story in Genesis, is more than 3200 years old and looks good:



It's all about the conditions how manuscripts were stored, and in a dry environment, chances for preservation are much better.

Ulan wrote:your point that a document that is 1600 years old cannot look that good is also garbage. Think of papyri, which are even much more fragile and go bad much more quickly. This text here, which is probably the source for part of the Joseph story in Genesis, is more than 3200 years old and looks good: ... It's all about the conditions how manuscripts were stored, and in a dry environment, chances for preservation are much better.

My point always emphasizes the theorized heavy use by travel, correction and handling that Sinaiticus is subject to in the standard circular fantasy analysis. And this was also emphasized by Morozov in rejecting Sinaticus as an antiquity document. The Sinaiticus antiquity crew have the ms. being corrected and changed over many centuries again and again, not being stored like many DSS and papyri documents. And that is after various travel theorized in the early centuries like Alexandria to Caesarea for correction. There is a big difference between jar storage or underground burial than heavy use.

So please do not misquote me to accuse. Thanks.

If you include a pic of a document, please give a more exact identification, urls are helpful too. The authenticity and dating of many claimed antiquity documents is questioned and I always like to check the provenance of any ms. for which we have a picture.

1) Notice that one of the key issues is the pristine white parchment, which is really a challenge to find anything remotely comparable. Surely not the pic above, but also not parchment.

2) And nothing has anything like the BEFORE and AFTER colouring tampering of Sinaiticus.
(The closest would be some supposed AFTER forgery, but with no BEFORE in another section of the same manuscript.)

3) Another one is the suppleness of Sinaticus, the pages turn much like the Bible on my desk printed in England a few years back.

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

Beyond that, while the ink on the papyrus above is in good shape, there are may ink questions with Sinaiticus, such as the super-ink discussion here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/sinaiti ... V0cmFjaW5n

There is another interesting area involving thinness of parchment and the ink bleed-through, however, I have not yet gotten around to the comparisons.

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I'll plan to return to gelatinisation later, if you could find the actual quote it would help, from the British Library. I can look too in a bit.

Steven

Ulan wrote:I guess I should not make generalizations about the relative humidity (RH) in London and Eastern European cities. At least on average, the differences seem not to be that pronounced. What is important is the actual RH the parchment is subjected to at any point in time, as parchment is extremely susceptible to structural changes due to changes in humidity.

I don't know about your personal experiences, but I moved to a desert at one point and could watch my books and furniture fall apart in the dry air. When I moved back, I didn't bother with furniture anymore, and only some books changed their form due to rehydration. Parchment is also a very hygroscopic material. Studies with parchments scraps from different time spans have shown that there is, unfortunately, no recommendation for an optimal RH that suits all kinds of parchment. A conclusion from an article about humidity and parchment:

There are two common elements of the studies discussed. Firstly, the data shows that there is substantial disparity between samples, thus indicating that consideration needs to be given to the variability of parchments within collections before appropriate storage conditions can be recommended. Secondly, they show that the largest disparity is between new parchments and historic parchments, and in this respect, they provide evidence that the respective quantities of collagen and gelatine in a parchment will be the deciding factor for the most appropriate storage RH.

Anyway, I read several articles about the behavior of old parchments, and rapid changes of RH are definitely a major problem. Especially older parchment usually has already undergone some major restructuring in its collagen structure, which is often not readily visible by a superficial look, but which can then lead to cases of very rapid aging when conditions are not optimal, like when you get exposure to sulphur dioxide or nitrogen dioxide in presence of high humidity in a city (a combination known from pea soup fog). For me they provided a sufficient explanation to dismiss any claims of the nature that it would be impossible for major changes to occur in just a few years. Proofs of tampering have to take different avenues, which would be providing just that: proofs of tampering.

You have most of the elements to explain the condition of Sinaiticus already on the codexsinaiticus.org site. 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. Without any direct experiments with the codex material itself, any claims of tampering stay at the level of speculation, no matter how many videos are made about this.

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.

Steven Avery wrote:

Ulan wrote:your point that a document that is 1600 years old cannot look that good is also garbage.

.... So please do not misquote me to accuse. Thanks.
...
1) Notice that one of the key issues is the pristine white parchment, which is really a challenge to find anything remotely comparable.

Yeah, you surely never implied anything like that

Steven Avery wrote:If you include a pic of a document, please give a more exact identification, urls are helpful too. The authenticity and dating of many claimed antiquity documents is questioned and I always like to check the provenance of any ms. for which we have a picture.

The name is in the image name. But here you go: Tale of Two Brothers

Steven Avery wrote:I'll plan to return to gelatinisation later, if you could find the actual quote it would help, from the British Library. I can look too in a bit.

I meant the codexsinaiticus.org website. 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. However microscopic analysis by René Larsen[27] has determined two types of animal origin;..."