stephan huller

This is a thread that I picked up at the textual criticism Yahoo group I belong to where everyone is highly religious. Steve Avery made mention of these links and I thought they might be of interest:

It was recently discussed by Dr. E. K. Best (PhD) that the claim of forgery surrounding codex Sinaiticus was never properly settled or made clear. Her blog-piece was quite informative, but unfortunately left the matter incomplete.I would like to bring our members' attention to more evidence useful for evaluating the claim that Constantine Simonides forged codex Aleph.

,,,, But what is even more remarkable, is that the case of the forgery of other documents by Constantine Simonides is also discussed in some detail, as a result of a misunderstanding by one of the investigators regarding a vague reference to that scandal. Mr. Collier had misunderstood a reference to same as the name of the microscope to be used, "Simonides' Uranius". The author comments:

"It was not Mr. Collier's ignorance of science that provoked the smile, but his ignorance of an incident in letters which is as widely known as his Perkins ..."

The context here can be read, it is the microscope usage to detect a different SImonides forgery.

A complete view of the Shakspere controversy:
concerning the authenticity and genuineness of manuscript matter affecting the works and biography of Shakspere (1861)
Clement Mansfield Ingleby
http://books.google.com/books?id=hkFlAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA102

I think the implication is that such techiw methods were not used on SInaiticus ?

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

Working our way uphill.

Sinaiticus may really be a forgery after all...
The following has been excerpted from Dr. E. K. Best's blog,
The Jews, The Shoah, & Modern Bible Translations
http://kjvonly2.blogspot.com/2011/09...ery-after.html

Constantine Simonides: KJV Fact of the Day
by Elizabeth Kirkley Best, PhD
http://wherearethejews.blogspot.com/...31590485826960

The Farrar quote:

"Tischendorf was only the senior of Simonides by 5 years, and in the science of Paleography had neither his knowledge nor his experience."--

points to:

Literary forgeries (1907)
James Anson Farrer
http://books.google.com/books?id=4lgLAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA50
With the Sinaiticus section beginning on p. 59

One basic question is this.
What is the current understanding of the number of original scribes and correctors of Sinaiticus ?

A plain introduction to the criticism of the New Testament for the use of Biblical students (1874)
Scrivener
http://books.google.com/books?id=1MMtAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA86

Codex Sinaiticus and the Simonides affair: - NOVIEW
an examination of the nineteenth century claim that Codex Sinaiticus was not an ancient manuscript (1982)
James Keith Elliott
http://books.google.com/books?id=2hAXAAAAIAAJ

Journal of sacred literature (1863)- p. 478 - 498
The Codex SInaiticus and Simonides
http://books.google.com/books?id=kR82AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA478

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Roger Pearse

Long ago I happened upon copies of the 19th century "Journal of Sacred Literature". This reprinted from the Manchester Guardian much of the correspondence at the time, between Simonides on one side and various scholars on the other. Simonides was unmasked by this process.

Simonides was a forger. He created "ancient" manuscripts of the gospels etc which he tried to sell for serious money in the west. His activity was unmasked by Tischendorff, who showed that the manuscripts were fakes. Simonides, in revenge, claimed that the Sinaiticus -- then newly discovered and making the discoverer Tischendorff famous -- was in fact written by Simonides, as a young man, working as a monastic copyist. In fact Simonides claimed that this was the only manuscript he (Simonides) had written.

If you can get hold of the correspondence, it's worth reading. The scholars -- including Syriacist William Wright -- try to pin down the wily Greek, and the latter evades and patronises and does all the things we associate with dodgy internet posters.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

stephan huller

The moderator of the group has just posted some of the correspondences. When I get a chance I will post them herer

andrewcriddle

With the discovery in 1975 of long lost fragments of Sinaticus at St Catherine's Monastery I think a 19th century forgery can be ruled out.

See New Finds

Andrew Criddle

stephan huller

I see this:

The most important documents were twelve pages and twenty-four fragments of the fourth century Codex Sinaiticus, and leaves from a psalter written in 862/3, the rest of which had been taken by Porphiry Uspenski in the nineteenth century.

The fragments might prove that the document is genuine. Why not put the standards that everyone else seems to use for questionable documents? Why don't test the ink and determine conclusive proof for the dating? I don't know that Sinaiticus is a forgery and I was not aware of this information. It is useful. Thank you

Roger Pearse

Good thought, Andrew.

It would be good to see the Simonides correspondence more accessible online, all the same.

stephan huller

Here is what the moderator of the discussion group said to this new evidence from Andrew (remember everyone on this forum is the furthest thing from an atheist so these arguments are not developed to 'disprove Christianity' in any way):

stephan huller

I thought I would post the rest of his material. For people who might want to join this group: TC Alternate Yahoo Group

stephan huller

http://www.oldandsold.com/articles11...cripts-9.shtml


Constantine Simonides

The greatest forger of the last century was undoubtedly Constantine Simonides, a Greek, who was born in 1824. To meet the requirements of modern critics, who know styles of writing, the colours of the ink and paints of different times, and the very kinds of parchment used, there is need of such a combination of intellect with versatility, industry with ingenuity, as is rarely found. Yet, as even Juvenal could instance the audacity of the Graeculus esuriens, so in modern times that mixed race has shown many of the qualities which, when perverted to a base use, produce the skilled forger. Simonides started by becoming a citizen of the world. From 1843 on, we find him successively on the shores of the Euxine, in Asia Minor, Thrace, Athos (where he wrote a hagiography), the Aegean, Cyprus, Alexandria, Cairo, Sinai (1844), Syria, Babylon, Persia, Russia, and Constantinople (in 1846). His next journeys were from Greece to Constantinople again, Odessa, St. Petersburg, and Germany ; then again to Egypt, the Aegean coasts, and finally to Liverpool (in 1853) and London. His stock-in-trade was a large number both of genuine MSS., obtained largely from Mount Athos, and of forged ones written by himself ; and his custom was to present first some genuine ones, and when his customer was off his guard, some of the second sort ; while he paid England and Germany the dubious compliment of selecting them as the field of his operations, as possessing either the largest amount of hard cash, or the greatest number of probable dupes. Even in 1846 he is stated to have been in possession of 5000 MSS., which he exhibited to savants at Athens.

In 1854 and 1855, Simonides was well known at the British Museum and the Bodleian ; but Sir Frederick Madden extracted a considerable number of genuine MSS. from him at the former place, while Mr. Coxe, when asked his opinion of the date of some presented to him in Oxford, assigned them to the latter half of the nineteenth century. In Sir Thomas Phillipps, however, Simonides found a less critical purchaser, and in the great Phillipps Library at Cheltenham are to be found some of the finest specimens of his powers in a Phocylides, an Anacreon, and a boustrophedon Hesiod.

In 1855 he visited Berlin and Leipzig ; and when in July he met Wilhelm Dindorf, he informed him that he owned a Greek palimpsest, containing three books of records of the Egyptian kings, by Uranius of Alexandria, son of Anaximenes. Dindorf offered a large price for it, but Simonides loftily replied that he intended to publish it first himself, and then to give the original to the library at Athens. By persistence, however, Dindorf obtained temporary possession of the precious palimpsest, and sent it to Berlin, where it deceived all the members of the Academy except Humboldt ; and the King of Prussia offered $700 for the seventy-one leaves. Further, Dindorf's representations induced the Clarendon Press at Oxford to take up the treatise, and, indeed, it could hardly have done otherwise, and actual specimens were printed, with a preface by Dindorf, and early in 1856 published. Only 7 copies were sold, besides the 11 sent to the delegates of the Press, when the news came that Uranius was a most uncelestial forgery. It was found -
(1) that the ancient writing of Uranius was on the top of the later twelfth century writing, as could clearly be seen by the help of a microscope ;
(2) that the Greek was far from correct 1 ; and
(3) that the coincidence between the most recent views of Lepsius and other Berlin Egyptologists and the new-found treatise was a little too striking.
After this, Uranius was very little heard of ; but Simonides continued to be in evidence, for he was put on his trial at Leipzig to answer two distinct charges; that he had stolen the MS. from the Turkish Royal Library ; and that he had forged it himself. To the first he triumphantly replied that, if it was stolen, it was at least not a forgery ; that they were bound to show in what library and in what catalogue it was marked as missing ; and, finally, that the Turks had no libraries, and did not know what they were. To represented ` in my opinion,' and so on.

The second plea he replied by a threat, which must have carried conviction to the dullest of his judges, to the effect that, if they would prove it was a forgery, he would forthwith print, under his own name, the other works of Uranius which he possessed, and achieve fame as the cleverest of authors, by exhibiting a knowledge of details which reached far beyond existing evidence ! In the end he was banished from Saxony, a kingdom which he was probably, on other grounds, not unwilling to quit.

After this Simonides appeared only once with any prominence before the public, when in 1861 he boldly asserted that he himself had written the whole of the Codex Sinaiticus, which Tischendorf had brought in 1856 from the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. The statement was, of course, received with the utmost incredulity ; but Simonides asserted, not only that he had written it, but that, in view of the probable scepticism of scholars, he had placed certain private signs on particular leaves of the codex. When pressed to specify these marks, he gave a list of the leaves on which were to be found his initials or other monogram. The test was a fair one, and the AIS., which was at St. Petersburg, was carefully inspected. Every leaf designated by Simonides was found to be imperfect at the part where the mark was to have been found. Deliberate mutilation by an enemy, said his friends. But many thought that the wily Greek had acquired through private friends a note of some imperfect leaves in the MS., and had made unscrupulous use of the information.

Certainly Simonides' work, as evidenced by the MSS. at Cheltenham, was careful and laborious to a very high degree ; but the absolute breakdown of his pretensions, and of those of his only successor in audacity, Shapira, who in the year 1883 demanded 1,000,000 for an ancient fragment of the Hebrew Pentateuch containing an eleventh commandment, ` Thou shalt not hate thy brother,' seem to show that it is now almost impossible to deceive permanently the trained scholars and paleographers who are to be found in Germany, France, and England. "



At once the reader should be tipped off to some glaring incongruencies at least:

(1) No forger could forge 5,000 manuscripts, even of low quality.

(2) Was there enough time for Simonides to even forge ONE MS, namely the Uranius MS? How would he have been able to compose it based on the recent work of a German professor?

(3) Why TWO contradictory charges? Unless the Germans wanted to avoid payment regardless of whether the MS was authentic or not.

(4) How could Simonides have access to intimate knowledge of Codex Sinaiticus without seeing it? Why were the proofs and counter-proofs regarding the claim of forgery so ambiguous?

(5) If Coxe was able to easily date his MSS as 19th century, why are they now described as "some of the finest specimins of his powers"??!? What is the real case for any one of his alleged 'forgeries'?

(6) Where did Simonides find all the time to forge such a vast array of MSS, while travelling all over Europe and buying and selling MSS? Isn't there a much simpler explanation? i.e., he simply bought both genuine and some forged MSS?

(7) Are we really to believe that 'scholars' have uncanny scientific powers to detect forgeries? Consider the ridiculous history of the last century of recent forgeries which have gone undetected, sometimes for aeons.

stephan huller

LEARNED SOCIETIES.

ABSTRACTS OF PROCEEDINGS. [1863]

Royal Socibty Of Literature, February 11th. â€" Sir Henry U. Rawlinson, K.C.B., in the Chair.

The report of the Council on the exhibition of the MSS. from Mr. layer's museum at Liverpool, which had been unrolled and deciphered by M. Simonides, was read, condemning in the strongest terms the whole of them, and pointing out many reasons why it was impossible that they could belong to the period to which M. Simonides assigned them.

It was considered that there was a similarity between the handwriting of MSS. professing to be of very different dates, such as could not be the result of accidentâ€"that letters, centuries apart in age, were found blended in the same MS., occasionally even in the same word;â€"that forms of Greek letters occasionally occurred which such palaeographers as Sir F. Madden, Mr. Birch and Mr. Bond had never noticed in any other Greek MS.;

and that, in some instances, the colour of the papyrus was altogether different from that invariably met with in the case of those which bear Greek inscriptions. It was further remarked that papyri differing in date of more than one thousand years, had, in some cases, been joined together to make one piece, and that they were, with one exception, fastened down in such a manner as to render it impossible to ascertain what the back of the papyrus was like; and whether it had borne writing or not.

One papyrus only was subjected to minute examination, the glass case, which surmounted it, having been removed, and this one Mr. Goodwin, with the consent of all the Egyptian scholars who had had the opportunity of looking at it, pronounced to be a forgery of the most palpable character. Mr. Goodwin showed that the papyrus in question had once 'homo a hieratic inscription, such as are often found in mummies, and containing a formula resembling in many respects the fragments of the " Book of the Dead," published by Lepsius, Brugach, and others.

The upper portion of the writing on this papyrus had then been obliteratedâ€"as Mr. Goodwin suspected, by the application of dump blotting-paper, some little pieces of which still adhered to the surface of the papyrusâ€"and then in the place of the hieratic original, a Greek Uncial inscription had been inserted, and declared that the hieratic inscription below the Uncial Greek had been engraved on the pylon of a temple.

The report states that with regard to tho "Uranius" no definite opinion was formed, as there had been no microscope at hand for its examination, but it was stated that the Uranius had been condemned as a forgery so long ago as 1856, by Khrenlierg, Dove, and Magnus.

After the reading of the report Mr. Hodgkin said that he had examined the manuscripts with great care, and could find nothing which should impugn their genuineness. He had been asked by Mr. \ aux if Mr. Mayer could trace the identity of these manuscripts, and since then he had seen the curator of Mr. Mayer's museum, who assisted at the unrolling of the manuscripts, which, he added, it was important to state had not been removed from the museum until after the meeting of Mr. Mayer's friends there on 1st May, lSttO, when the passages which were now subjected to dispute had already been brought under public attention.

He stated further that the curator could identify the portion of St. Matthew, and the letter of Hennipiws, the "Pcriplus" of Hanno, and the "Dynasties of Cartilage," as belonging to the series unrolled by Dr. Simonides and himself in the Mayer Museum, although he could not read the writing. The large letter the curator remembered distinctly as belonging to Mr. Stobart's collection. As to the adherence of portions of blotting-paper, it would have been important if the fragmentary matter had been under the writing; but as that was not the case, the imputation of Mr. Goodwin had evidently no value whatever. Mr. Thomas Wright confirmed Mr. Hodgkin's statement of the publication of the papyri before Mr. Mayor's soiree, which took place before the papyri had left Mr. Mayer's possession. Mr. Yates said he had examined the "Hanno** and the "Uranius" most minutely, and could detect no flaw.

Mr. Deane, to whom the MSS. had been submitted, alluded to the well-known fact, that when a writing is superposed on another there was a tendency at the junction of the two of the ink in the upper one to run into tho line of the lower one, stated that this had a strong bearing on the question of tho genuineness of the "Uranius," for his examination showed that the uncial writing' must have been written before the ecclesiastical, an inference confirmed by the fact that the fine cracks in the dark writing had not been filled up with any writing fluid, as would have been the case if the pale writing had been carried over them.

He had used a binocular microscope, and he was satisfied also by this means that the pale writing ran under the dark writing; and lastly, this could be proved by mechanical meansâ€"such as scraping off the upper or dark writing with a penknife. If, therefore, the Uranius" was a forgery, the uncial writing was forged first, and before the ecclesiastical writing was put over it. His assistant had also examined this work, and had come to the same conclusions.

In the part of the Epistle of St. John it had been said there was a number of minute white spots which had been supposed to be fungi. He had looked at them with a lens, and, if they were fungi, they were above the letters. They may be chemical compounds or chalky matter; and inorganic materials will travel, it was well known, a long way in damp substances. These specks must, however, tend towards the genuineness of the document, at least as far as Simonides is concerned, because if he had put any writing on the papyri he must have obliterated the spots.

Sir F. Madden objected that letters of unusual form occasionally occurred, and Mr. Birch, who considered that there were two ways in which tho genuineness could be proved or disprovedâ€"palaeographically and philologicallyâ€"stated nevertheless that it was his opinion that these MSS. could not be genuine. Dr. Dracachis then addressed the Meeting on behalf of Dr. Simonides, and pointed out that with regard to Mr. Goodwin's assertion that he could wash the writing out in a few minutes, he (Dr. Dracachis) had tried for forty eight hours and failed, the traces of it still remaining visible.

After the report had been read, Mr. W. Aldis Wright read a paper On the Codex Alexandrinus, [sic!] in which he traced its history so far as it was known, and stated by what means Professor Tischendorf had been able to procure it from the Monks of Mount Sinai. He rejected the claim set up by Simonides, to the effect that he had written the Codex, and laid before the meeting a letter addressed from Alexandria by a person calling himself Callinicus Hieromonachus to the Guardian newspaper, in which Callinicus stated that he had been present when Simonides was employed upon the Codex. This letter, on being .compared with several others from Simonides, which were also exhibited, appeared to be in the same handwriting as the other lettersâ€"the inference from these facts being that Simonides had written the letter in Englandâ€"and then sent it to some friend in Alexandria, who posted it to the Guardian.

----------------

Again the biggest problem with these investigations is their self-contradictory nature and inconclusiveness.

The Reader, Vol. 1 pages 217-221 (1863)