A series of
movies available on Amazon Prime Video includes New Testament textual criticism
among the subjects it covers – but not in a good way. Rather than introduce viewers to valid
aspects of the field, Christian Pinto and Adullam Films promote the conspiracy
theory that Codex Sinaiticus was created in 1840 by Constantine Simonides,
particularly in the segment of the movie Tares
Among the Wheat that is introduced (about an hour and 50
minutes after the movie starts) by the heading “The
Simonides Affair.”
Those who
want proof that Codex Sinaiticus is indeed an ancient document are welcome to consult
four earlier posts on the subject:
● Sinaiticus
is Not a Forgery: Setting the Stage
– in which I provide some background about Constantine Simonides and his career as a criminal forger,
and explain why no one should believe James White’s account of how Tischendorf first encountered pages from Codex Sinaiticus.
● Ten
Reasons Why Sinaiticus Was Not Made by Simonides – in which I summarize 10
observations which weight in against Simonides’ claim to have written the text
in Codex Sinaiticus – including the observations that different copyists (with
different handwriting and different standards of spelling) produced the
manuscript, and that the manuscript includes in its margin an Arabic note that
alludes to an Arab invasion.
● Ten
More Reasons Why Sinaiticus Was Not Made by Simonides – in which I
summarize 10 more reasons why Simonides’ claim should be rejected – including some
details of Simonides’ earlier attempt to use a forgery to defraud the Academy
of Berlin. Constantine Tischendorf
played a key role in exposing Simonides’ forgery, after which Simonides was
arrested.
● What
Darkened Sinaiticus? – in which an explanation is provided, with input from
Jacob Peterson, of the differing tints of different sets of photographs of
pages of Codex Sinaiticus.
Chris
Pinto’s movie Tares Among the Wheat
(the second in the trilogy) strangely avoids sharing the details about how
Constantine Simonides tried to defraud the Academy
of Berlin , and does not go into detail about his other attempts to
sell forgeries to various individuals and institutions in Europe . The movie avoids giving a detailed account of
Tischendorf’s role in the events in 1856 that led to the
arrest of Simonides, and thus viewers are not shown that Simonides had a
strong motive to attempt to cause trouble for Tischendorf.
Tares Among the Wheat also does viewers
a disservice via its minimal description of items in the collection
of Joseph Mayer, who was an antiquities-collector in Liverpool , England . Mayer had obtained a variety of ancient
materials from Egypt ,
including some papyrus scrolls which were so tightly rolled up that he was
reluctant to open them himself, and so he had Simonides inspect them. Along with examining some of Mayer’s genuinely
ancient materials (which included a
very ancient Egyptian papyrus), and claiming to have discovered a fragment of
Hegesippus’ Ecclesiastical History,
Simonides spent some time studying the papyrus scrolls, and when he was done preparing them, he declared that they contained ancient
New Testament texts, including
Some of the forgeries made by Simonides still exist, at the World Museum in Liverpool, England. |
(1)
Five fragments with text from the Gospel of Matthew, including one which
included, after the end of chapter 28, a note stating that it had been written
by the hand of Nicolaus the Deacon, at the dictation of Matthew, the apostle of
Jesus Christ, in the fifteenth year after the ascension of our Lord, and
distributed to the believing Jews and Greeks in Palestine,” and
(2) two fragments of the Epistle of
James, and
(3) a fragment of the Epistle of Jude.
Furthermore,
Simonides claimed that the text in all three fragments deviated from the normal
text. For instance, he claimed that in
the newly discovered text of Matthew 27:19, Pilate’s wife’s message is much
longer; in the newly discovered text of Matthew 27:20, the word αυτων is
present (so as to convey “their
multitudes”); in the newly discovered
text of Matthew 28:6, the angel describes Jesus as the Lord of death; in James 1:2, the twelve
tribes are called the twelve tribes of
Israel; in verse 19 of Jude in the newly discovered text, the word
“actually” (ολως) is present (so as to convey that the false teachers “do not
actually have the Spirit”), and verse 22 is phrased so as to say, “On some have
compassion in the fear of the Lord.”
If anyone
involved in the production of Tares Among
the Wheat thinks that Constantine Simonides was not a swindler and a con artist who wrote forged texts on the blank reverse-pages of ancient papyri, then they should be clamoring for the items described by
Simonides in Mayer’s personal museum (now part of the World Museum in Liverpool) to
be brought to public attention and scrutinized. But if, instead, they think (as members of the
Royal Society of Literature concluded in 1863) that Simonides was an educated huckster who tried to
defraud German academics by doctoring ancient manuscripts, so as to make them
appear to be palimpsests that contained yet more ancient writing, then they
should realize that Simonides had a strong motive to try to impugn
Tischendorf’s reputation – for it was Tischendorf who had stepped in and
prevented the Academy of Berlin from purchasing such a forgery from Simonides.
Christian J. Pinto |
It should
be noted that McKendrick’s statement is contestable; the exact point at which
those book-titles were spruced up is not known; it makes sense to reckon that the
letter-reinforcement throughout the manuscript, and the title-enhancements,
were undertaken to make the codex look more presentable just prior to being
placed in the Vatican Library, but that theory is, well, theoretical.
McKendrick
may also be subject to mild criticism because of his claim that Codex
Sinaiticus is “The ancestor of all the Bibles that everybody else has in the
world.” For those who use the King James
Version or some other version based on the Textus
Receptus, or based on the Byzantine Text, such a claim is entirely false.
Tares Among the Wheat is three hours of
anti-Jesuit propaganda, blended with KJV-Onlyist versions of selective details in the history of New Testament textual criticism. Even if the producers of this movie possessed the purest theology on earth, the fact remains that no theology is well-served by
obscuring evidence and making stuff up. We should not serve it that way; we should not want to serve it that way.
This movie’s conspiracy theory about Codex Sinaiticus should not be
taken seriously.
Those who
want to see the kind of texts that Simonides produced, and which he vigorously
defended as ancient documents, should consult the following links. (Needless to say, the handwriting of
Simonides is very different from the handwriting in Codex Sinaiticus):
Simonides’ forgery of Matthew 28:6ff. (Fragment M111690.5 at the World Museum, in Liverpool).
Simonides’ forgery of Matthew 28:6ff. (Fragment M111690.5 at the World Museum, in Liverpool).
Simonides’
forgery of the “Voyage of Hanno” (Fragment M11169G at the World Museum, in
Liverpool).
Readers are invited to double-check the data in this post.
Readers are invited to double-check the data in this post.
3 comments:
Thank you for taking the time to write this review.
Looking at "Codex Mayerianus," I'm struck by how tightfisted the scribe was, and how regular are the boundaries of he fragment. Neither of these are typical of genuine manuscripts, whose scribes were downright prodigal with their margins--a good thing too, as most of them are gone by now. But no, this fragment has hardly any margins at all, but still 100% of the right and left margins are preserved, with room to spare--one doesn't have to know paleography, or even be able to read Greek, to judge this fragement a forgery on codicological grounds alone.
This link http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/wml/collections/antiquities/ancient-egypt/item-466820.aspx?fbclid=IwAR1EIpgeLVXlvlY9APDb9tKQ56XPu3uYAMP7tp4r2vp9gXbZwy-kvQARD-0 is to a different Simonides forgery of Matthew. Note, first of all, the stingy margins, and then the incredible column length of about 60 letters. And that's only in one of the columns! People didn't have eyeglasses back then. I have trifocals, and I can barely make out any of the letters.
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