Have you ever thought about the sheer implausibility of Tschendorf's story? He was a thief, and his removal of a national treasure from a foreign country was scandalous and inexcusable.
And where is the manuscript now? It has been photographed and x-rayed to death.
Surely the new thieves can finally return it. It is no longer needed for purposes of scholarship...
When it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, its a criminal.
Excuse me, but now it's starting to sound like you're grasping at ad hominem straws. Because you happen to deem something implausible is hardly evidence...and you've ignored a rather large amount of text from Metzger above.
As far as Tirschendorf's story -- what is so fantastic about it? Nothing in it is implausible. A synopsis of the story:
The discovery of this manuscript, now nearly a century ago, was the supreme triumph of the great Biblical scholar Constantine Tischendorf. In the year 1844 he was travelling in the East in search of manuscripts, and in the course of his travels he visited the monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai. While working in the library he noticed a basket containing a large number of stray pages of manuscripts, among which he was astounded to behold several leaves of the oldest Greek writing he had ever set eyes on, and, as a short inspection proved, containing parts of the Greek Bible. No less than forty-three such leaves did he extract, and the librarian casually observed that two basket loads of similar waste paper had already been consumed in the furnace of the monastery. It is therefore not surprising that he easily obtained permission to keep the leaves which he had picked up; but when he discovered that some eighty more leaves of the Old Testament from the same manuscript were also in existence, difficulties were made about letting him see them; and he had to content himself with informing the monks of their value, and entreating them to stoke their fires with something less precious. He then returned to Europe, and having presented his treasure to his sovereign, King Frederick Augustus of Saxony, published its contents under the name of the Codex Friderico-Augustanus. These forty-three leaves belonged, like all that Tischendorf had yet seen or heard of, to the Old Testament, containing portions of 1 Chronicles, 2 Esdras, Tobit, and Jeremiah, with Esther complete; they are now, as we have seen (Ch.V, p.67), at Leipzig, separated from the rest of the volume to which they once belonged. In 1853 he returned to Sinai; but his former warning, and perhaps the interest aroused in Europe by the discovery, had made the monks cautious, and he could hear nothing more concerning the manuscript. In 1859 he visited the monastery once again, this time under the patronage of the Tsar Alexander II, the patron of the Greek Church; but still his inquiries were met with blank negation, until one evening, only a few days before he was to depart, in the course of conversation with the steward of the monastery, he showed him a copy of his recently published edition of the Septuagint. Thereupon the steward remarked that he too had a copy of the Septuagint, which he would like to show to his visitor. Accordingly he took him to his room, and produced a heap of loose leaves wrapped in a cloth; and there before the astonished scholar's eyes lay the identical manuscript for which he had been longing. Not only was part of the Old Testament there, but the New Testament, complete from beginning to end. Concealing his feelings, he asked to be allowed to keep it in his room that evening to examine it; leave was given, "and that night it seemed sacrilege to sleep." He tried to buy the manuscript, without success. Then he asked to be allowed to take it to Cairo to study; but since the monk in charge of the library objected, he had to leave it behind. The Superior of the monastery, however, was at Cairo; and he, at Tischendorf's request, sent for the manuscript, and placed it in his hands, a few sheets at a time, for copying. Then Tischendorf suggested that it would be a graceful act to present it to the Tsar of Russia, as the protector of the Greek Church; and since the monks desired the influence of the Tsar in connection with the election of a new Archbishop, they consented to this, and after dilatory negotiations, Tischendorf was allowed to take the precious manuscript to Russia for presentation to the Tsar. In view of stories put about subsequently by later generations of monks at St. Catherine's, it should be emphasised that Tischendorf's behaviour was quite correct throughout. He acted all through in agreement with the monks, and when there was some delay in the arrival of the counter-gift which, in accordance with Oriental usage, was expected from the Tsar, he intervened and secured the transmission of a sum of 9000 roubles and some decorations. To the end of his life he remained on good terms with the Sinai community, as contemporary documents show. [The full story may be found in a pamphlet issued by the Trustees of the British Museum in 1934 (The Mount Sinai Manuscript of the Bible).]
The romance of the Codex Sinaiticus was not yet over, however. Since the year 1856 an ingenious Greek, named Constantine Simonides, had been creating a considerable sensation by producing quantities of Greek manuscripts professing to be of fabulous antiquity—such as a Homer in an almost prehistoric style of writing, a lost Egyptian historian, a copy of St. Matthew's Gospel on papyrus, written fifteen years after the Ascension (!), and other portions of the New Testament dating from the first century. These productions enjoyed a short period of notoriety, and were then exposed as forgeries. Among the scholars concerned in the exposure was Tischendorf; and the revenge taken by Simonides was distinctly humorous. While stoutly maintaining the genuineness of his own wares, he admitted that he had written one manuscript which passed as being very ancient, and that was the Codex Sinaiticus, the discovery of which had been so triumphantly proclaimed by Tischendorf! The idea was ingenious, but it would not bear investigation. Apart from the internal evidence of the text itself, the variations in which no forger, however clever, could have invented, it was shown that Simonides could not have completed the task in the time which he professed to have taken, and that there was no such edition of the Greek Bible as that from which he professed to have copied it. This little cloud on the credit of the newly-discovered manuscript therefore rapidly passed away, and the manuscript reposed, still unbound and in the cloth which had wrapped it at Sinai, in what was presumed to be its final home. It had, however, one more transmigration to undergo. In 1933 it became known that the Soviet Government was not unwilling to sell it, having little use for Bibles and much for money. Indeed, negotiations had previously been opened with an American syndicate; but the financial crisis supervened, and America's difficulty gave England an unhoped-for opportunity. After prolonged negotiations a bargain was concluded by which it passed into the possession of the Trustees of the British Museum for the sum of £100,000 (much less than the sum contemplated in the American negotiations), of which half was guaranteed by the British Government. Accordingly, just before Christmas, 1933, the great Bible entered the British Museum, amid scenes of much popular excitement. There were, of course, those who criticised the purchase. Some used the argument of Judas Iscariot in John xii.5, but found that its parentage made it unpopular; some revived the legends of Tischendorf's misconduct and the claim of Simonides, but these also had little success. Others, more plausibly, argued that since an excellent photographic facsimile had been published by the Oxford University Press (New Testament, 1911; Old Testament, 1922) from photographs taken by Professor Kirsopp Lake, the original was of no further importance; but even this (which never commended itself to those who had experience of MSS. and photographs) has been disproved by a study of the scribes and correctors of the MS. by Messrs. H. J. M. Milne and T. G. Skeat of the British Museum (published 1938), which never could have been carried through without access to the MS. itself. The manuscript has now been beautifully and securely bound by Mr. Douglas Cockerell, and one may hope that it has now reached its final resting-place.
Excuse me, but now it's starting to sound like you're grasping at ad hominem straws. Because you happen to deem something implausible is hardly evidence...and you've ignored a rather large amount of text from Metzger above.
Again you sidestep the evidence that doesn't suit you, and offer a red herring.
The Sinai manuscript is a national treasure of another country.
Why hasn't it been returned?
It is hardly the rightful property of the British museum, or Tischendorf.
When are you going to own up to the large scale international theft of other people's cultures and property?
Granted it began when I suppose you could say 'we didn't know any better' ( )
But that defense is bogus now.
Everybody knows Napoleon, the British Empire and most of Europe simply went in and raped all these other countries and cultures, and carried off everything of value or interest, from art to gold.
It wasn't in the name of 'science' or anything else but greed.
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
It wasn't in the name of 'science' or anything else but greed.
How is it evidence? And who are you to assign motivation? The manuscript was given up willingly. Perhaps it should have been returned, but this has no bearing on the textual history of Mark! Por Dios!
Others, more plausibly, argued that since an excellent photographic facsimile had been published by the Oxford University Press (New Testament, 1911; Old Testament, 1922) from photographs taken by Professor Kirsopp Lake, the original was of no further importance; but even this (which never commended itself to those who had experience of MSS. and photographs) has been disproved by a study of the scribes and correctors of the MS. by Messrs. H. J. M. Milne and T. G. Skeat of the British Museum (published 1938), which never could have been carried through without access to the MS. itself.
And I am so glad you brought this up, because it exposes the rampant ongoing fraud surrounding access to these two ancient manuscripts (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus).
FAKE MANUSCRIPT FASCIMILES:
The ordinary student can be forgiven for not understanding the actual scale of the deceit here:
For after every major library in the world, and most museums, have purchased expensive (average $6,000 a pop) 'fascimiles' of these 'important' manuscripts with your tax dollars, the fact remains these extravagant productions are WORTHLESS for textual critical purposes, because as much as they LOOK like photographic reproductions of the pages, in fact they are NOT PHOTOS at all, but TYPESET 'fakes', made with a special typsetter's font that MIMICs the hand of professional scribe of the4th century.
That's right. Those $5,000 copies haven't a single real photo of the manuscript in them. In the case of Sinaiticus, the typical folio is a printing, lovingly hand typeset by Tschendorf himself, with marginal markings hand-added to the plates. There is no way of telling what hand made what reading, what color the ink was, or EVEN IF Tschendorf wrote down all the important variants! Likely not, since that would be an impossible feat to accomplish by one man in a lifetime via a typesetter's tools.
I have included a sample page of a typical copy of 'Codex Sinaiticus' showing that what is available to most scholars is not a real photograph, but a very nice looking, but 'cleaned up' copy of the manuscript. ANOTHER LAYER between the public and the truth about Codex Sinaiticus!
Again, use "any" "any" for username and password if necessary.
I am uploading a sample page here.
The 'photos' referred to above taken by Lake remain in the British Museum, and although someone might acquire access to them for periods of time for study, will not likely be reproduced freely. The cost of travel alone, if a researcher had to see and handle each manuscript himself would be astronomical, and is in fact the hobby of rich men. Others must rely upon the 'hopefully' accurate collations and observations of a priviledged few.
Among the scholars concerned in the exposure was Tischendorf; and the revenge taken by Simonides was distinctly humorous.
I confess I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this remark. Many scholars, and especially Christians concerned with the bible text, don't find it humorous at all that scholars are engaging in 'negotiations' with criminal antiquity dealers who steal and smuggle national treasures out of foreign countries.
Criminal Activities
This is obviously a most unethical practice completely incompatible with a Christian walk. The quality of the material is dubious, the source in the end can never be properly verified, and the archeaological 'Sitz em Leben' is inevitably ruined.
The continuing purchase of these objects just perpetuates the wholesale destruction of critical historical data, and encourages more fraud. This can be likened almost perfectly to the virtual extinction of the modern elephant and rhino for its tusks, by the continual provision of a black market.
The actual business arrangements can be likened to a hostage negotiation, in which the objects under view are given a ridiculously exaggerated importance, resulting in large quantities of money falling into the hands of criminals (again).
Worthless Manuscripts
But Christians should realise that no single manuscript is worth "$100,000" or even ten cents for the purposes of reconconstructing the New Testament. We already have overwhelming amounts of material from a multitude of independant sources from all ages, and the text of the bible as used by previous Christian brothers and sisters is well known and trivially available.
If as textual critics would like us to believe, that somehow Christians have been the victims of a 'hoax', and have martyred themselves throughout history for an inferior 'conflated' text conjured up by wicked scribes in the 3rd century, then we are to be pitied greatly.
But if in fact the fantasy that somehow there was no Providential protection of the scriptures were true: If Christians were deceived for a thousand years, only to be rescued from their corrupt bibles by some criminals and a handful of Cambridge scholars who long ago abandoned all the fundamental doctrines of Christianity...
If the God we believe in would 'raise up great textual critics' in the last days, who rather than sacrificing their lives as martyrs for Christ, devoted their lives to promoting their pet theories of 'secret rescensions' and conspiracies of the clergy, then the Christian owes these heretical criminals a great debt of gratitude.
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
Last edited by Nazaroo; 24th May 2006 at 04:32 PM.
Oh, right. so it has nothing to do with the textual history of Mark. Thank you for clearing that up.
That's a fair assessment. The sporadic mutilation of the text by wealthy patrons for themselves, and the shenanegans of a couple of Cambridge professors from the Oxford Movement era have very little to do with the widespread and normal reproduction of the text of Mark.
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
Naz, are we done discussing the short ending of Mark? Just answer the question. If you are attempting to tire me of this discussion, you are succeeding.
Naz, are we done discussing the short ending of Mark? Just answer the question. If you are attempting to tire me of this discussion, you are succeeding.
Its a labour of love, Justified.
Why else would I do this?
One of my personal goals in this thread is to provide other Christians with simple historical facts and technical information normally hidden from them, or presented in a very biased manner.
I believe Christian men and women can think for themselves, when presented with the actual evidence in a clear and open manner. There is no need to put textual critics and university professors on a pedestal. They are quite capable of mistakes, bias, and hidden political agendas that fellow Christians have a right to be aware of.
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
Some Recently Published NT Papyri from Oxyrhynchus:
An Overview and Preliminary Assessment
Published in Tyndale Bulletin 51 (2000), pp. 1-16 (reprinted with minor alterations) from Peter M. Head:
II. The Papyrii
All of the manuscripts under consideration here come from a single, known location in Egypt, Oxyrhynchus, capital of the local region or nome (modern Behnasa, around 120 miles south of Cairo). They were recovered by Bernard P. Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt in a series of expeditions from 1896/97 and 1903 through to 1907. These two young Oxford men formed, in the words of Eric Turner, ‘a partnership more lasting and at least as productive as that of Gilbert and Sullivan’.[7] At times they were recovering up to thirty baskets of manuscripts each day from the rubbish pits into which old and no longer useful manuscripts had been thrown. They excavated at times to a depth of 8 metres and at the end of the first season sent 280 boxes of manuscripts back to Oxford. Alongside a wealth of documentary and classical literary texts, these excavations (which were followed by a series of Italian excavations in 1910-1913, under E. Pistelli and G. Farina and later in 1927-34 under E. Breccia) recovered a wide range of early Christian literature (including other early Christian material from the Apostolic Fathers, non-canonical gospels, etc.). Indeed, Grenfell recorded that it was Oxyrhynchus’ renown as an important Christian site, with a number of churches and thousands of monks in the fourth and fifth centuries, that in part at least, motivated the original search.[8] The manuscripts themselves provide evidence of a growing number of churches (from two in the third century, up to around forty in the sixth centuries) and, in a later period, thousands of monks.[9]
As regards the New Testament we should note that Oxyrhynchus is the principal supplier of NT papyri. If we limit ourselves to those manuscripts definitely from Oxyrhynchus (that is, all those published in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri volumes and a number published in the Italian series, Papiri greci e latini, whose provenance is specifically identified),[10] we note, in addition to those listed above, that the following would be included:
To these manuscripts we can now add the following:
Gregory /Aland #/P. Oxy NT Passage Date (acc. to editor)
P77 (new portion)4405 Mt. 23:30-34; 35-39 II/III
P100 4449 Jas. 3:13-4:4; 4:9-5:1 III/IV
P101 4401 Mt. 3:10-12; 3:16-4:3 III
P102 4402 Mt. 4:11-12, 22-23 III/IV
P103 4403 Mt. 13:55-56; 14:3-5 II/III
P104 4404 Mt. 21:34-37; 43 & 45 (?) II (late)
P105 4405 Mt. 27:62-64; 28:1-5 V/VI
P106 4445 Jn. 1:29-35, 40-46 III
P107 4446 Jn. 17:1-2, 11 III
P108 4447 Jn. 17:23-24; 18:1-5 III
P109 4448 Jn. 21:18-20, 23-25 III
P110 4494 Mt. 10:13f., 25-27 IV
P111 4495 Lk. 17:11-13, 22f. III
P112 4496 Acts 26:31f.; 27:6f V
P113 4497 Rom. 2:12f., 29 III
P114 4498 Heb. 1:7-12 III
P115 4499 Rev. 2-15 III/IV
The total number of NT manuscripts on papyrus found at Oxyrhynchus is therefore forty-seven. This is a significant proportion of the total of perhaps 111 separate manuscripts, most of which are completely without provenance. The proportion is even more telling for those manuscripts dated to the early part of the fourth century or earlier (i.e. those given as III/IV or earlier in our list), in which Oxyrhynchus accounts for 34 out of a total of 58. The down-side is that all the material from Oxyrhynchus is very fragmentary. Only a few provide substantial material (e.g. P13 covers several chapters of Hebrews in a fairly well preserved state; P115 covers a lot of the Apocalypse in a fragmentary state). Epp refers to only three others which provide more than two dozen verses (P5, P15, P27) and the longest of the new fragments is P100 (James), which attests around 20 verses.[12]
Doubtless this explains the relative lack of attention given to Oxyrhynchus in particular among textual critics. Nevertheless the breadth of material, our growing knowledge of the town itself, and its church life, make this material a vital resource. As regards scope we simply note that the Oxyrhynchus collection comprises portions of Matthew (13 copies), Luke (2 copies), John (10 copies), Acts (3 copies), Romans (4 copies), 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1-2 Thessalonians, Hebrews (3 copies), James (3 copies), 1 John, Jude, and Revelation (3 copies).
Regarding my previous point in post #6 and the response in post #7,
I would like to note here that not only are the papyrii from a narrow geographical area and time, but it is actually more extreme than that!
Over half the papyrii are from a single garbage dump in Egypt. The 'rest' are of unknown origin and later or unknown date. And finally, you will notice that the number of papyrii useful to establishing actual readings and texts is less than the number of UNCIALs!
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
One of my personal goals in this thread is to provide other Christians with simple historical facts and technical information normally hidden from them, or presented in a very biased manner.
I believe Christian men and women can think for themselves, when presented with the actual evidence in a clear and open manner. There is no need to put textual critics and university professors on a pedestal. They are quite capable of mistakes, bias, and hidden political agendas that fellow Christians have a right to be aware of.
I do as well. But you are not providing anywhere near unbiased evidence. Half of what I have read is misleading and false or relies on heavy inferences which can't be anywhere near substantiated. You are doing exactly what you think us critics do.
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