stephan huller

Here is a better link to

Literary Forgeries (1907) by J. A. Farrer (archive.org)

The section on the 1st-2nd cent. papyri is the most important:


The Mayer Papyri.

But it was not till 1860 that Simonides again
came prominently before the world. When he did
so, he as usual caused a stir.

It was on 13th February that he called on Mr.
Joseph Mayer of Liverpool with a request to inspect his celebrated museum of antiquities.

On 22nd February he dedicated to Mr. Mayer,
"as a small mark of his personal attachment," his
Brief Dissertation on Hieroglyphic Letters, in explanation of five Egyptian antiquities in the Museum.
It was published in Greek and English by Mr.
David Nutt, abounds with ingenious interpretations
of the hieroglyphic characters, and frequently quotes
the authority of Uranius.

But the great discovery was to follow, Mr.Mayer had acquired, partly by purchase from a
dealer called Sams and partly from the Rev. H.
Stobart, a number of papyri which he had never
examined and which had remained in a state of
neglect.

The difficult work of unrolling these papyri,
of fixing them on canvas, and of deciphering them,
was conducted by Simonides in the Museum, in the
presence, more or less constant, of Mr. Mayer himself,
of the Curator of the Museum, and of Mr. John
Eliot Hodgkin. It was. not till August that some
of these papyri were removed to Simonides' own
house for purposes of further examination. The
discovery therefore on 1st May of certain fragments
of St. Matthew's Gospel on one of these papyri
would seem to have been made under conditions
which rendered fraud impossible or unlikely.

Yet the information appended at the end to the effect
that the Gospel had been written at the dictation of
St Matthew by Nicolaus the Deacon in the fifteenth
year after the Ascension savoured of the highest
improbability. And if the papyrus was genuine,
it was the oldest known Christian document in
existence.

No wonder the literary world was excited. And
the excitement grew as the finds grew in number.
Within a few months Simonides had discovered
fragments from the Epistles of St. James and of St
Jude; portions of eight chapters of the Book of
Genesis ; the Ten Commandments ; the Periplus of
Hanno ; the first page of a work by Aristaeus ; some
fragments of Zoroaster ; seven epistles of Hermippus ;
and a fragment of Androsthenes, an admiral of
Alexander the Great.

In this case there was no question of making
profit out of MSS., forged or genuine; the MSS.
were the property of Mr. Mayer, and Simonides'
only concern with them was their decipherment. But
the name of Simonides excited suspicion, though
the motive as well as the opportunity of forgery
were not discernible.

The Mayer papyri were exhibited and examined
at a meeting of the Royal Society of Literature on
the evenings of 9th and loth January, 1863, Sir F.
Madden, Sir H. Rawlinson, Simonides and others
being present. The Report of the Council was read
on 11th February, and was strongly condemnatory
of the genuineness of the documents.

The condemnation was founded on such facts as the
similarity in the handwriting of the MSS., albeit they
purported to be of different ages ; the juxtaposition of
different dates and characters on the same papyrus ;
the unusual length of the lines of the writing ; the
difference in the colour of most of the papyri from
that of genuine papyri.

And one papyrus was denounced as "a rank forgery" by reason of certain
little flecks of red blotting-paper which Mr. C. W.
Goodwin discovered, and which he maintained had
been used to erase the Hieratic writing in order to
make place for the subsequent Greek writing.
But it is questionable whether this blotting-paper had
not been legitimately used in the difficult work of
unrolling and mounting the papyri previous to deciphering them.

And the admission that Simonides
exhibited two rolls of Hieratic writing, " the genuine-
ness of which was not doubtful," sets one wondering
whether the conclusions of the majority of the Council
were correct, or would stand the test of the great
advance that has since been made in the science of
palaeography.

Simonides published excellent facsimiles in 1861
and 1864 of most of these papyri. But it is best to
inspect the originals as he mounted them himself in
the Museum of the Free Public Library at Liverpool,
where they may still be seen, together with tracings
taken by him for his lithographed facsimiles.

It is almost impossible to believe in his manufacture of
these papyri. They correspond in writing and appearance
with numberless other papyri which have
of recent years been discovered and published. And
there are in the collection three papyri, still unrolled,
time-worn and brittle, looking like huge cigars, and
containing no one knows what precious secrets of
antiquity. If these are forgeries, they can hardly
be forgeries by Simonides ; and if he was guiltless
in respect of these, he was presumably guiltless in
respect of the others.

One of the chief objections urged in 1863 against
these papyri was the similarity of the handwriting
in documents belonging to widely different periods.
But this similarity is the last thing that can be fairly
predicated of them. Let any one compare the two
volumes of the facsimiles, and it is rather the
diversity than the similarity of the handwriting
which will strike his attention.

As little force can now be attached to another
argument urged at the time against the papyri by
Mr. Vaux, secretary to the Literary Society, in an
AthetuEum review of Simonides' facsimiles (7th
December, 1861). Mr. Vaux laid it down dogmatically
as "an undoubted fact that no MSS. of any kind,
if we except the Hieratic papyri, are known
to ascend to the first or second century, and that of
those of the fourth or fifth there are not more than
five or six throughout all the libraries of Europe".
Therefore, it was argued, these papyri, for many of
which Simonides claimed the first century, could not
be genuine. But since recent discoveries in Egypt
have carried many Greek papyri manuscripts as far
back even as the third and fourth century B.C., this
argument has ceased to exist.

In short, if these Mayer papyri are to continue
to be regarded as spurious, it ought to be only after
an impartial re-study of them, and a clear statement
of the palaeographical reasons for differentiating them
from others which are accepted as genuine."

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

Such revelations border on astounding.
If the Matthew fragments are not forgeries,
but rather are ancient documents from the 3rd or 2nd century,
they are invaluable.

But even more important, the fragments of the letters of
1st John are equally valuable, and need close re-examination.

Vorkosigan

No, that was the person who did the Moabite stone.

mountainman

Thanks stephan - its all fascinating stuff.

Has anyone suggested C14 dating fragments of Sinaiticus?

Solo

I don't get this, Stephan. Are you not convinced that separate fragments of another copy of the codex, found in the same locale a hundred years later, is a sufficient cause to set aside the hypothesis of modern forgery ? Surely, this is a different scenario than, say, want of proof for a document purportedly written in the 3rd century, whose only known extant copy is in the back page of a seventeen century book whose subject is Ignatian forgeries, and which becomes unavailable for ink examination when the going gets tough.

Best,
Jiri

Vorkosigan

Logically, as noted several posts above, it only shows that if Sinaiticus is a forgery, it is not by Simonides. But even that is not entirely impossible, especially if Simonides had left or planted the fragments and they were carried into the lower part of the tower by the quake.

Forgers often claim or ensure a second find, because the second authenticates the first (as the second alleged find of Piltdown did, for example). The Tel Dan stele exhibits the same phenomenon -- finds a year later helped authenticate the initial 1993 find and (WHAT A COINCIDENCE) rebut specific forgery charges.

If Sinaiticus is Simonides' forgery it would not surprise me if he as an experienced forger had stashed a section away to authenticate his first find at a later date. Especially since if Codex S really is his, then it is the apex of his forgery career, like the Jesus Ossuary, Piltdown, the Ching Shan Diary, etc.

The point made above that Sinaiticus has many readings of Vaticanus brings up another issue: a forger typically uses an exemplar to create the forgery.

I would sure like to know more about the discovery of the manuscripts in an area that was conveniently buried under a quake (what quake, when?) so that it could be indisputably authenticated.

Vorkosigan

aa5874

The author of this thread asked the question "Is Codex Sinaiticus a Forgery After All"? Now, who does he expect to answer such a question on BC&H?

If he is NOT prepared to answer his own question then I don't know who can.

We on BC&H have NOTHING to examine and have no ability to examine the Codex Sinaiticus in its original form on this forum.

The question simply cannot be answered. It is BEYOND the scope of this forum.

We can say what is found in the Codex Sinaiticus as presented but we have NO means of resolving the question of authenticity of the Codex.

Solo

This does not make a hell of a lot sense to me, Vork. Especially not in light of Simonides' claim he forged the codex himself . He said that the ancient-looking manuscript was cimmissioned at Mount Athos as a present to the Czar but that the idea was abandoned and he later gave it to the patriarch Constatinus. Apparently, the patriarch turned it over to the monastery in Mount Sinai where Simonides said he had found it some time later.

In a sober estimate, the account given by Simonides makes the probability close to nil that he created one or more copies at the Sinai monastery as a poison pill for the eventuality that his plot against Tischendorf should backfire.

That's great, Vork, except for one small, piddly detail. In none of the examples that you give the find advertized itself as fraud with a known con artist stepping boldly forward to claim it as his own work.

There is no issue here. As I pointed out to Carlson on 'forger's tremor': this type of argument is a demonstrably false syllogism which borrows a parallel to some superficially similar facet of a proven case as a way of proving an unknown motive or circumstance in an unrelated case.

Best,
Jiri

stephan huller

My only observation is that if there was ever a need for some sort of forensic testing of a document - this is it. Yes, Simonides confessed to the 'forgery' (if it was one) but only after being exposed as forger. The association between Tisch and Simonides is particularly compelling. Much more compelling than other forgery arguments

Solo

Take a look at a piece of work by T.C. Skeat to see if it helps (pp 109-117). I find the evidence that the text was taken down from dictation very interesting. The author says on the subject of the error in copying Mt 13:54 'to his own country' as 'to Antipatris' that if we found in Shakespeare's Mark Anthony the line I came to Banbury Caesar, not to praise him we would conclude that it was probably the work of Oxford printers. Witty.

Best,
Jiri

stephan huller

Apparently Kirsopp Lake argued for authenticity but discovered some interesting (and unexplained) properties associated with the ink: http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/projec...ation_ink.aspx

In 1862 Constantine Tischendorf published the first facsimile[9] of Codex Sinaiticus.

In the introduction (Prolegomena), he presents the results of his studies on the manuscript through which he was able to identify four different scribes in charge for writing the portion of Codex Sinaiticus that survived until today.

Kirsopp Lake also had the chance to study the manuscript in depth and took pictures of the Codex leaves.

He produced two facsimiles[10] (one of the New Testament in 1911 and one of the Old Testament in 1922), this time including the fragments from Sinai brought back to Russia in the 1850s by the Archimandrite Porfiri Uspenski.

While developing the glass plate negatives of the leaves, Kirsopp Lake noticed a difference in the way the inks were reacting. Some of them would take longer to appear, suggesting differences between the media.[11] However, he does not provide any further explanation, but the difference of “behaviour” and “reaction” of the writing media may indicate a variation in composition (or proportions) of ingredients used to manufacture the inks. Kirsopp Lake therefore already had some understanding of the various scribes involved in writing the Codex Sinaiticus and, with further studies, he agreed with Tischendorf’s results.

Milne and Skeat’s analysis[12] of Codex Sinaiticus in the early 1930s confirmed Tischendorf’s identification of three scribes, but not the fourth.

They identified Scribe A, Scribe B and Scribe D, assigning to D the Poetical Books in the Old Testament, previously assigned to C by Tischendorf.