And that takes care of that!
okay so here is the bullet points that james white did not get answers for, and allegedly won the debate:
1) Constantine Simonides claimed that he wrote the document based on collating pre-existing manuscripts, and that his uncle corrected the document.
Both sides agree that he so claimed. Dr. White demonstrated that these claims are essentially impossible, as explained below.
we will see if that is a false statement as we read on
2) The most sympathetic source for Simonides says that Simonides was not a truthful person.
Dr. White raised this point, and Pinto did not dispute it except to say that this source was not the only supportive source and that the source himself says Simonides did not always lie.
there is an eye witness that actually saw simonides forging the sinaiticus. In
Oct 15, 1862, Kallinikos Hieromachos, wrote a letter, were it stated that
...I do myself declare to all men by this letter, that the Codex of the Old and New Testaments, together with the Epistle of Barnabas and of the Shepherd Hermas, which was abstracted by Dr. Tischendorf from the Greek monastery of Mount Sinai
, is a work of the hands of the unwearied Simonides himself.Inasmuch as I myself saw him in 1843 ... in the month of February writing it in Athos...Dr. Tischendorf, coming to the Greek monastery of Sinai in 1844, in the month of May (if my memory does not deceive me), and remaining there several days, and getting into his hands, by permission of the librarian, the codex we are speaking of, and perusing and re-perusing it frequently, abstracted secretly a small portion of it, but left the largest portion in the place where it was, and departed undisturbed...And I know yet further, that the codex also was cleaned with lemon-juice, professedly for the purpose of cleaning its parchments, but in reality in order to weaken the freshness of the letters, as was actually the case."
this adds validity to the fact that 10% of the manuscript is whiter than the rest of it. It would naturally follow that that was the part that was cleaned with lemon juice.
3) There are no known examplars that could have been the source for Codex Sinaiticus.
Dr. White raised this point, Pinto’s response was to point out that the source(s) could be as-yet-unknown manuscripts on Mt. Athos.
what about the majority text, or the textus receptus? They existed at the time.
4) Codex Sinaiticus was written by several different, distinguishable scribes (as evidenced by different handwriting, different style of abbreviations, and different accuracy of work).
Dr. White raised this point, Pinto did not respond to it.
again the textus receptus probably retained those distinguishable scribal differentiations, and they were probably just copied over to the sinaiticus.
5) Codex Sinaiticus has corrections by multiple different correctors.
Dr. White raised this point, Pinto did not respond to it except to say that two other men (a monk and a scribe) may have been involved in the corrections.
I would have to see the evidence for this. I can see saying there was different scribes, but proving that there were also additional correctors is very hard to do. I would love to see a scholarly essay on this, and none have been provided by white or anyone else that I know of at least.
6) The amount of time necessary for collating multiple manuscripts of the entire Bible (plus some apocrypha) would have been prohibitive in the timeline proposed by Simonides.
Dr. White raised this point, and Pinto responded that possibly his uncle started on the project years before Simonides began.
not if you are copying it, as I suggested.
Additional notes:
1. Regarding the Mt. Athos manuscripts, there is an on-going digitization project (
link). At one point, Mr. Pinto alleges that the one way to resolve the mystery was to explore the Mt. Athos library for manuscripts corresponding to Simonides’ claims. He won’t be able to stand behind that argument from ignorance forever.
that is not an argument of ignorance. An argument from ignorance is saying this "because you can't prove me wrong, I am right." And that is a fallacy because just because you don't have the resources to prove it wrong at that point, does not mean the resources don't exist.
2. Simonides himself states that the collation began after Simonides himself joined the project, as demonstrated by Dr. White. So, although the uncle allegedly had corrected the other manuscripts in advance, the collation project had not been done in advance, according to the primary source for Mr. Pinto’s theory.
I would need to see the primary source that is being talked about here. I am not sure the primary souce they are saying is primary is in fact the number one source. My number one source is the eye witness. And other discrepancies such as:
the manuscript was put online in 2009 by the Codex Sinaiticus Project. It became possible to see that the 1844 Leipzig 43 leaves, about 10% of the parchment, was still a very unusual white parchment, it never yellowed with age. While the 90% of the parchment in London, which had been brought to St. Petersburg in 1859, had a more stained yellow appearance. When this disparity was connected to the specific allegations published in 1863 that Tischendorf (or his allies) had stained the manuscript in the intervening period from 1844 to 1859, you had a rather incredible before and after confirmation of tampering.
This was one of numerous elements that have arisen that has led to the questioning of Sinaiticus "authenticity". Meaning, it may not have been written in the 4th century, there is strong evidence that its production was actually around 1840.
Steven Avery
and someone else pointed out:
I am not a Greek scholar, but I've read that the date of this codex cannot be as ancient as claimed since it contains modern Greek writing (Epistle of Barnabas) and the state of the book itself has not aged as other manuscripts of any significant age. These factors seem to put more weight on it being the writing of Simonides.
that means that the part that is whiter, was the epistle to barnabas. So it was clearly added on to existing manuscripts, and then sold as an entirely new manuscript.