Hi Digital Medievalist list,

   Greetings!

   Today, I would like to share some questions about a famous manuscript, one where the superb digitization project of 2009 (the year it was placed online), the Codex Sinaiticus Project, helped reveal some amazing elements. In a sense this very set of questions is a thank you to the digital contribution to manuscript study.

    First, allow me to explain that the Codex Sinaiticus has a:

highly problematical provenance with no substance before the 1840s

allegations in the 1860s that Sinaiticus was a modern manuscript

allegations in the 1860s that there had been colouring of the ms in the 1850s to make it look older

creative and suspicious fabrications surround its discovery and procurement. 

   And Sinaiticus has an unusual palaeographic dating history. The 4th-century date was pushed very aggressively, with minimal science, by its "discoverer" Constantine Tischendorf. This dating was quickly set in stone in textual circles by 1870-1880 despite various objections, minor and major.  The palaeographic dating was based almost entirely on the pictures and descriptions in facsimile book editions, editions by Tischendorf that omitted salient facts about the manuscript's condition.  Tischendorf also included lots of theorizing on soft evidences, the script (a standard easy-to-emulate script) and the textual components.  Hardly anybody was actually viewing and handling the manuscript.  This situation is still true today, except that the Codex Sinaiticus Project allowed for viewing the ms. online and included solid numerical representations about items like colour and thickness and numerous other features.  

   The digitization revealed the fact that the two sections of the manuscript were different, in ways that are major anomalies.

1844 -  43 leaves -  Leipzig - Codex Friderico-Augustanus - pristine white parchment - all leaves the same colour

1859 - 347 leaves - St. Petersburg-->England-1933 -          "yellow with age"            - unusual colour variance in the leaves

       A gentleman named David R. Smith has been studying Codex Fuldensis (it might be a couple of hundreds years later than commonly accepted) and made a salient comment:


    Palaeography is a non-symmetrical discipline, in terms of time chronology. Some professional palaeographers, especially Brent Nongbri, have been making this point on the common early papyri dating, that the range of years is often far too restrictive (in that case the issue is usually a couple of hundred years of range.) And all the researchers involved in identifying forgeries and replicas are very aware of this basic fact.  However, in Bible textual manuscript dating, it is often left out of view.

    Here is one basic concern, parchment manuscripts yellow with age and use:

Gavin Moorhead:

The colour of parchment varies with animal type, making process and condition or state of decline. New parchment can be near white but as it ages or is exposed to detrimental factors it will start to yellow and go brown-black if left to degrade completely. The colour change can also be influenced by the type of degradation and degree of gelatinization 

    Now  we get to a key point. Leipzig is white parchment, it "forgot" to yellow.  Overturning the known chemical processes that we can see on manuscript after manuscript.  This was hidden from view publicly until after 2009, it was never mentioned in the Sinaiticus literature. (Porfiry Uspensky references this about the 1845 full manuscript before it was separated to two major sections, and Ernst von Dobschütz mentioned the Leipzig section as snow-white parchment in one publication in 1910.)   And this was never mentioned in the context of all the literature about palaeographic dating, from Tischendorf to Lake to Skeat & Milne to Parker and others today.

   This white parchment anomaly alone should ring loud alarm bells, and should cause a full reappraisal of the dating of Sinaiticus.   Then you add the flexible and supple condition, and then you add the colouring discussed below.

  Note that there had been tests planned on these Leipzig pages for April 2015 by BAM,  Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfungin in Berlin, a group which studied carefully the parchment and ink of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  The Leipzig University Library cancelled those plans. Today, Leipzig does not want to discuss anything at all about the manuscript condition and history of conservation.  (The British Library, to their credit, has engaged in open discussion, with various theories and conjectures about the unusual elements of the manuscript. Although for them the possibility of non-antiquity is an elephant in the living room.)

   So where does this leave us today? 
   Here you can see the wonderful condition of Sinaiticus.  Flexible, supple, not at all brittles.  

The Codex Sinaiticus: The Oldest Surviving Christian New Testament - The Beauty of Books - BBC Four

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4Xkv2gjzZw

  Sinaiticus in some cases used as the exemplar for parchment and ink longevity.  If Sinaiticus is actually a modern production, the discipline and integrity of parchment conservation science is compromised. Thus, even if textual critics, a somewhat cloistered group with their own peculiar areas of emphasis, are slow to consider the implications, the professionals in manuscript conservation and the related chemical sciences that are applied to manuscripts should have real concern.

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    Another major point.  I have barely referenced the compelling evidence that the British pages taken from Sinai in 1859 were coloured by hand, perhaps using lemon-juice, matching the 1860s accusation. That was actually the first point that glared out at us as researchers.  Why was there such a marked difference between Leipzig and the British Library pages?  If you look at these two sites, you can learn a lot about the colouring.

Codex Sinaiticus Authenticity Research

http://www.sinaiticus.net/

Sinaiticus - authentic antiquity or modern?

http://purebibleforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65

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   One of the difficulties here is that the evidences are so simple, clear and compelling.
   We find the very simplicity is difficult for those in the scholarly and academic realms!

    All feedback from the manuscript experts, and all forum readers, welcome!

   Thanks! 

Steven Avery
Dutchess County, NY
SART - Sinaiticus Authenticity Research Team
sinaiticus.net@gmail.com