Codex Alexandrinus: An Index

 Codex Alexandrinus is one of the most important manuscripts of the Greek New Testament.  Produced in the first half of the 400s, its readings have been known to European researchers ever since 1627, when it was entrusted to the king of England by Cyril Lucar.  

Digital images of the New Testament portion of Codex A (Volume 4) have been placed online at the website of the British Library. Site-visitors can use the search-bar to search from page to page.  Here is an index of the beginnings of each book, and other often-consulted passages:

List of Contents – 1v

Matthew 1:1-25:6 is all gone.

Mt. 25:7 – 2r –

Mt. 26:47 – 3v

Chapter-list for Mark – 5v

Mk.1:1 – 6r

Mk 6:1 – 9r (“6” written in inner margin)

Mk. 9:1 – 11v (“9” written in inner margin)

Mk 12:1 – 14v (“12” written in outer margin)

Mk 14:1 – 16r

Mk 16:9 – 18r

Chapter-list for Luke – 19r

Lk. 1:1 – 20r (Notice book-title in upper margin)

Lk. 4:1 – 22v (“4” written in inner margin)

Lk. 6:1 – 24v (“6” written in outer margin)

Lk. 8:1 – 26v (“8” written in outer margin)

Lk. 11:1 – 30r (“11” written in outer margin)

Lk. 15:1 – 33v (“15” in margin)

Lk.20:1 – 37r (“20” in margin)

Lk. 22:40 – 39r (SE portion)

Lk.24:1 – 40v (“24”in margin)

Chapter-list for John – 42r

Jn. 1:1 – 42r
Jn. 3:1 – 43v (“3” in margin)

Jn. 5:1 – 45r (“5” in margin)

[Missing:  6:50 katabainwn – 8:52 [leg]eis]

Jn. 9:1 – 47r

Jn. 11:1 – 48v

Jn. 11:55 – 49r (SE section)

Jn. 14:1 – 51r (“14” in margin)

Jn. 18:1 – 53r (“18” in margin)

Jn. 20:1 – 54v (“20” in margin)

Acts 1:1 – 56r

Acts 6:1 – “6” in margin)

Acts 9:1 – 61v (“9” in margin)

Acts 12:1 – 63v (“12” in margin)

Acts 15:1 – 65v (“15” in margin)

Acts 20:1 – 69v (“20” in margin) 

Acts 24:1 –  72v (“24” in margin)

Acts 27:1 – 74r (“27” in margin)

James 1 – 76r

First Peter 1 – 78r 

Second Peter 1 – 80r

First John 1 – 81v

Second John – 83v

Third John – 84r

Jude – 84r

Romans 1 – 85r

Romans 3 – 86r (“3” in margin)

Romans 8 – 88r (“8” in margin)

Romans 10 – 89r (“10” in margin)

Romans 12 – 90r (“12” in margin)

Romans 15 – 91r (“15” in margin)

First Corinthians 1 – 92v

First Corinthians 6 – 94r

First Corinthians 9 – 95r

First Corinthians 10 – 95v (“10” in margin)

First Corinthians 13 – 97r (“13” in margin)

First Corinthians 15 – 98r (“15” in margin)

Second Corinthians 1 – 99v

[Missing:  2 Cor. 4:13b gegramme[non] – 12:7 uperbolh]

Galatians 1 – 101v

Galatians 4 – 103r (“4” in margin)

Ephesians 1 – 104r

Philippians 1 – 107r

Colossians 1 – 108v

First Thessalonians 1 – 110v

Second Thessalonians 1 – 112r

Hebrews 1 – 113r

Hebrews 5 – 114v

Hebrews 10 – 116v

Hebrews 12 – 118r

First Timothy 1 – 119r

Second Timothy 1 – 121r

Titus 1 – 123r

Philemon – 124r

Revelation 1 – 125r

Revelation 4 – 126r

Revelation 8 – 127v

Revelation 13 – 129r

Revelation 18 – 131r

Revelation 21 – 132v

First Clement 1 – 134r

First Clement 20 – 136r

First Clement 51 – 140r (This is why we don’t use chemical reagents!)

First  Clement 63 – 141v (This, too, is why we never use chemical reagents!)

Second Clement 1- 143r

Conflations (Part 2)

            Today we continue our consideration of conflations.

            Without Hort’s use of conflations as evidence that the Byzantine Text is derivative of the Alexandrian and Western text-types in his 1881 Introduction, he would have had a much harder time making a case for the overthrow of the Textus Receptus.  As we saw in Part 1, three of the eight examples of conflation presented by Hort are not necessarily actual conflations; the longer reading in Mark 6:33, Luke 9:10, and Luke 24:53 is capable of plausibly accounting for the origin of its shorter rivals.  

            What about the remaining five – found in Mark 8:26, Mark 9:38, Mark 9:49, Luke 11:54, and Luke 12:18?  As an exercise, let’s consider Luke 12:18: 

            B:  τὸν σειτον καὶ τὰ ἀγαθά μου

            P75*:  τὸν σιτον μου καὶ τὰ ἀγαθά μου

            P75^c À^c L f¹ 157:  τὸν σιτον καὶ τὰ ἀγαθά μου 

            579:  τὸν σιτον καὶ τὰ ἀγαθά μου

            À* D 435 Old Latin:  τὰ γενήματά μου

            39 and other Old Latin:  τοὺς καρπούς μου

            346:  τὸν σιτον μου καὶ τὰ γενήματα μου

            Byz:  τὰ γενήματα μου καὶ τὰ ἀγαθά μου

 

            It should be immediately obvious the first Western reading (read by À* D) is accounted for by the Byzantine Reading: from τὰ γενήματα μου καὶ τὰ ἀγαθά μου, the route to τὰ γενήματά μου is simple:  a parableptic drift from the first τὰ to the second τὰ.  The Alexandrian reading as attested in B P75^c À^c L f¹ 157 and 579 is accounted for in another way:  as a slight stylistic refinement, replacing τὰ γενήματα μου with τὸν σιτον μου (as in P75*) or τὸν σιτον.  It should be noticed that the copyist of P75 first wrote τὸν σιτον μου before the μου was removed.

            As for the reading in minuscule 39, supported by some Old Latin copies, this is a typical Western simplification-via-harmonization, using verbiage from the preceding verse. 

            Thus once again, while Hort’s theory that the Byzantine reading is the result of the creativity of a scribe who had two exemplar with two rival readings – one Alexandrian, one Western – cannot be refuted, neither can the theory that the Alexandrian and Western readings emerged from the Byzantine reading.

            But while Hort’s theory cannot be refuted, is it as plausible as the alternative scenario in which the Byzantine reading is original?  If a scribe had one manuscript that read τὰ γενήματά μου (my produce) and another manuscript that read τὸν σιτον μου καὶ τὰ ἀγαθά μου (my wheat and my goods), and the scribe wanted to combine them so as to preserve them both readings, the resultant collision would mention (1) wheat, (2) produce, and (3) goods.  But somewhere along the line, Hort’s scribe must have forgotten that he was attempting to preserve both readings; he could have simply written two sentences or clauses – “I will store there all my wheat; I will store  there all my produce and goods” – but he did not.  Hort’s proposal seems more complicated, and less plausible, than the explanation that the Byzantine reading here is original, and its Western rival is the result of an accidental omission, and its Alexandrian rival, the result of a stylistic introduction of τὸν σιτον in place of τὰ γενήματα.    

             Suppose, however, that Hort’s theory is true in all eight examples of conflation that he provided.  (Suppose, too, that the Byzantine readings in Matthew 26:70, John 10:31 and John 18:40 are added to the list.)

            This would not imply that the Byzantine Text is derivative of the Alexandrian and Western Text.  If we were to picture a conflation as the collision of two cars that became intertwined in the wreck, then it need not imply anything more than that one car was a short reading that agreed with either the Alexandrian or Western Text before it collided with its rival reading (in either an Alexandrian, or Western, exemplar) and, thus combined, became a longer reading.    

            To rephrase this as a question:  as Hort presents the rival shorter readings, why should either reading be considered exclusively Alexandrian, or exclusively Western?  If it is an early Byzantine reading, then the longer reading that supplants it is merely an example of mixture, and instead of looking at the effects of a deliberate revision or recension when we look at conflations, we are looking at sporadic accidents – the incidental effects of one form of the text driving into a locale where another form is dominant. 

            There is thus nothing about conflations that moves forward Hort’s theory of a Lucianic recension.  Plausible alternative explanations of the evidence exist, in which the Byzantine reading accounts for its truncated rivals; in addition, there is no reason to assume, if any of Hort’s eight conflations are indeed conflations of earlier readings, that neither component-reading already existed in an early form of the Byzantine Text.

           

            But if Hort’s argument from conflations does not imply that the Byzantine Text is posterior to the Alexandrian and Western text-types, what about his next point, specifically, that the non-use of distinctly Byzantine readings by patristic writers before the 300s implies that the Byzantine Text did not exist until then?  We shall, God willing, look into that claim soon.

            First, however, let’s briefly test Hort’s claim that conflations are a special characteristic of the Byzantine Text:  “We do not know of any places,” Hort wrote, “where the α group of documents [i.e., Codex B and its allies] supports readings apparently conflate from the readings of the β and δ groups [i.e., Western and Byzantine] respectively, or where the β group of documents [Western representatives] supports readings apparently conflate from the readings of the α and δ groups respectively.” 

            While this might seem to mean that representatives of the Alexandrian and Western text-types do not have conflations, that is not what it means.  It only means that conflations of Western and Byzantine readings are not detectable in the Alexandrian Text, and that conflations of Alexandrian and Byzantine readings are not detectable in the Western Text.  But consider the following:

● Matthew 3:12

            Byz:  και συνάξει τον σιτὸν αυτου εις την αποθήκην

            L 157:  και συνάξει τον σιτὸν εις την αποθήκην αυτου

            B:  και συνάξει τον σειτὸν αυτου εις την αποθήκην αυτου

            Here the reading in Vaticanus (B) looks like a combination of the Byzantine reading (with αυτου after σιτὸν) and the reading in L (with αυτου after αποθήκην) – as if a copyist had one exemplar which read “and shall gather his wheat into the barn,” and another exemplar read “and shall gather the wheat into his barn,” and the scribe combined them so as to read, “and shall gather his wheat into his barn.”

● Matthew 24:38

            Byz:   εν ταις ημέραις ταις προ του κατακλυσμου

            D:  εν ταις ημέραις εκείναις προ του κατακλυσμου

            B:  εν ταις ημέραις εκείναις ταις προ του κατακλυσμου

            Here the reading in B looks like a combination of the Byzantine reading (without εκείναις) and the reading in D (without ταις) – as if a copyist had one exemplar which read “in the days which were before the flood,” and another exemplar read “in those days before the flood,” and the scribe combined them so as to read, “in those days which were before the flood.”

● Matthew 26:22

            Byz:  εκαστος αυτων

            B À L:  εις εκαστος

            D Θ:  εις εκαστος αυτων

            Here the reading in D looks like a combination of the Byzantine reading (without εις) and the reading in B (without αυτων) – as if a copyist had one exemplar which read “each of them,” and another examplar which read “each one,” and the scribe combined them so as to read, “each one of them.”    

● Mark 1:28

            Byz:  ευθυς    

            W 579:  πανταχου      

            B C:  ευθυς πανταχου

            Here the reading in B looks like a combination of the Byzantine reading and the reading in Codex W – as if a copyist had one exemplar which read “immediately,” and another exemplar which read “everywhere,” and the scribe combined them so as to read “immediately everywhere.”  [Codex W was not discovered until after Hort wrote.]

● John 13:24

            Byz:  Σίμων Πέτρος πύθεσθαι τίς αν ειη περι ου λέγει.

            D:   Σίμων Πέτρους πύθεσθαι τίς αν ειη ουτος περι ου λέγει.

            B C L 33:  Σίμων Πέτρος και λέγει αυτω Ειπε τίς εστιν περι ου λέγει.

            À:  Σίμων Πέτρος πύθεσθαι τίς αν ειη περι ου ελεγεν και λέγει αυτω Ειπε τίς εστιν περι ου λέγει.

            Here the reading in À looks like a combination of the Byzantine reading (not, it should be observed, the Western reading in D, for D’s ουτος is nowhere to be found in À here) and the reading in Codex B – as if a copyist had one exemplar which said that Simon Peter gestured to the beloved disciple to ask who it might be of whom He was speaking, and another exemplar which said that Simon Peter gestured to the beloved disciple and told him to say who it was of whom He was speaking, and the scribe combined both readings, so as to write that Simon Peter gestured to the beloved disciple to ask who it might be of whom He was speaking, and told him to say who it was of whom He was speaking.

● John 16:4

            Byz:  ινα οταν ελθη η ωρα μνημονεύητε αυτων

            L:   ινα εαν ελθη η ωρα αυτων μνημονεύητε

            B 157:  ινα οταν ελθη η ωρα αυτων μνημονεύητε αυτων

            Here the reading in B looks like a combination of the Byzantine reading and the reading in Codex L – as if a copyist had one exemplar which read “that when the hour may come you shall remember them,” and another exemplar which read “that when their hour may come you shall remember,” and the scribe combined them so as to read, “that when their hour may come you shall remember them.”

● Ephesians 2:5

            Byz:  και οντας ημας νεκρους τοις παραπτωμασιν

            D:  και οντας ημας νεκρους ταις αμαρτιαις

            B:  και οντας ημας νεκρους εν τοις παραπτωμασιν και ταις αμαρτιαις

            Here the reading in B looks like a combination of the Byzantine reading and the reading in D – as if a copyist had one exemplar which read, “and we who were dead in trespasses,” and another exemplar which read, “and we who were dead in sins,” and the scribe combined them so as to read, “and we who were dead in trespasses and sins.”

● Colossians 1:12

            Byz:  ικανώσαντι  
            D:  καλεσαντι  

            B:  καλεσαντι και ικανώσαντι  

            Here the reading in B looks like a combination of the Byzantine reading and the reading in D – as if a copyist had one exemplar which read, “qualified” and one exemplar which read, “summoned,” and the scribe combined them so as to read, “qualified and summoned.”

● Second Thessalonians 3:4

            Byz:  και ποιειτε και ποιησετε

            F G:  και εποιησατε και ποιειτε

            B Sah:  και εποιησατε και ποιειτε και ποιησετε

            Here the reading in B (supported by the Sahidic version) looks like a combination of the Byzantine reading and the reading in F and G – as if a copyist had one exemplar which read, “and you are doing and will do,” and another exemplar which read, “and you did and are doing,” and the scribe combined them so as to read, “and you did and are doing and will do.”    

● Jude v. 3

            Byz:  της κοινης σωτηρίας

            B P72 1739:  της κοινης ημων σωτηρίας

            6 1881:  της κοινης υμων σωτηρίας

            1611 2138:  της κοινης ημων ζωης

            1505:  της κοινης υμων ζωης

            À 044:  της κοινης ημων σωτηρίας και ζωης

            Here the reading of À looks like a combination of the reading of B (and most non-Byzantine MSS, with ημων) and the reading of the Harklean Group – as if a copyist had one exemplar which read, “pertaining to our common salvation,” and another examplar which read, “pertaining to our common life,” and the scribe combined them so as to read, “pertaining to our common salvation and life.”

            So:  do apparent conflations mean that the text-type in which they are embedded is late?  No.  They do not, for three reasons:
(1)  Some apparent conflations may be cases where an original longer reading has been shortened by scribes in two different ways. 

(2)  In other cases, they may be merely combinations of a reading found in an established local text, and a reading from a manuscript representing a different, or invasive, text-type; no impetus is created for the idea that either text-type is late – only that the conflation is. 
(3)  Whatever conflations imply via their presence in the representatives of the Byzantine Text, they also imply via their presence in representatives of other text-types.  The picture is one of competing local texts existing in the second and third centuries, occasionally crashing, with the wreck-reading tending to be pushed into the Byzantine text – naturally more frequently, if its area of dominance was larger and growing – but sometimes into the Alexandrian and Western domains. 

Readers are invited to double-check the data in this post. 

Wilbur Pickering’s book The Identity of the Text of the New Testament was especially helpful when researching this post.

Lectionary 5 in Matthew 24:20-26

            Today, let’s look at the text on one page of a medieval lectionary and see how well it compares to the same passage in Codex Vaticanus (the flagship manuscript of the Alexandrian text of the Gospels) and Codex Bezae (the flagship manuscript of the Western text of the Gospels).  The passage is Matthew 24:20-26, and the lectionary is Lectionary 5, also known as Barocci MS 202, at the Bodleian Library. It was written in uncial lettering in the early 1000’s.   (I have not received a response from the Bodleian’s permissions-department, so no image of the manuscript is posted here – but you can see the zoomable, full-color page with Matthew 24:20-26 – page-view 301 out of 316, marked as fol. 147 at the top of the page – at the Digital Bodleian website.) 

            In the following comparison, the Tyndale House edition of the Greek New Testament was used as the standard of comparison.  Differences in the format of sacred names, contractions for και, and differing forms of letters are not counted as textual differences.  The total number of differences between the THEGNT-text and each witness will be given, as well as the number of differences without minor vowel-exchanges (itacisms) in the picture. 

LECTIONARY 5

20 – χειμονος instead of χειμωνος (+1, -1)

21 – omits τοτε (-4)

21 – ουδε instead of ουδ’ ου (+1, -2)

22 – η instead of ει (+1, -2)

22 – εκολοβοθησαν instead of εκολοβωθησαν (+1, -1)

22 – κολοβοθησονται instead of κολοβωθησονται (+1, -1)

23 – ηπη instead of ειπη (+1, -2)

24 – δοσουσιν instead of δωσουσιν (+1, -1)

24 – omits μεγαλα (-6)

25 – προηρηκα instead of προειρηκα (+1, -2)

26 – ειποσιν instead of ειπωσιν (+1, -1)

CODEX VATICANUS (B)

21 – θλειψις instead of θλιψις (+1)

23 – πιστευετε instead of πιστευσητε (a corrector has superlinearly written η (so as to read πιστευητε) (+1, -2)

24 – ψευδοχρειστοι instead of ψευδοχριστοι (+1)

CODEX BEZAE

20 – προσευχεσθαι instead of προσευχεσθε (+2, -1) 

21 – θλειψις instead of θλιψις (+1)

21 – ουκ εγενετο instead of ου γεγονεν (+5, -5)

21 – does not have του before νυν (-3)

23 – υμειν instead of υμιν (+1)

23 – εκει instead of ωδε (+3, -2)

23 – πιστευσηται instead of πιστευσητε (+2, -1)

24 – ψευδοχρειστοι instead of ψευδοχριστοι (+1)

24 – πλανηθηναι instead of πλανησαι (+3, -1)

25 – υμειν instead of υμιν (+1)

26 – υμειν instead of υμιν (+1)

26 – εξελθηται instead of εξελθητε (+2, -1)

26 – πιστευσηται instead of πιστευσητε (+2, -1)

RP2005:  better than
Codex Vaticanus.

            This yields the following results:  Codex Vaticanus has only has five letters’ worth of corruption in this passage, and is one letter longer than the text in THEGNT.  Lectionary 5’s text contains nine non-original letters and is missing 23 original letters.  With itacisms removed from consideration, Lectionary 5’s text remains ten letters shorter than the text in Vaticanus.

            Codex Bezae’s text is the least accurate of the three:  although it is about twice as old as Lectionary 5, Codex D has 24 non-original letters and is missing 15 original letters, for a total of 39 letters’ worth of corruption.  (Lectionary 5, with 9 non-original letters and with 23 original letters omitted, has 32 letters’ worth of corruption.  Without itacisms in the picture, Lectionary 5 has 13 letters’ worth of corruption, and D has 22 letters’ worth of corruption.)  
 

This data may raise some questions:

            ● If scribes tended to add to the text, how is it that a manuscript from the 400’s (or 500’s) has 24 non-original letters here, and a Byzantine manuscript from c. 1000, only has 9 non-original letters, if scribes tended to add to the text?  Apparently the scribes in the ancestral transmission-line of Lectionary 5 never got the memo that stated that they were supposed to gain accretions. 

            ● The RP2005 Byzantine Textform agrees more closely in this passage with the THEGNT and the UBS/NA compilations than Codex Vaticanus and Codex Bezae do.  Even the Textus Receptus – the base-text of the King James Version, compiled in the 1500’s – agrees with THEGNT and NA27 more closely in this passage than the early manuscripts Vaticanus and Bezae do.  How is it that compilations based on late manuscripts, whether many or few, have the best text in this passage?  

            ● Considering that the text of Matthew 24:20-26 in Codex B in the 300’s is longer than the text of Matthew 24:20-26 in Lectionary 5, why do some textual critics (looking at  you, Dan Wallace) continue to teach that copyists – particularly Byzantine copyists – gradually expanded the text?  How many times and in how many ways does the opposite need to be demonstrated before scholars and commentators will concede that no preference should be generally assumed in favor of the shorter reading?

Papyrus 4 and the Mystery at Coptos

            First century Matthew!  In 1994, that was how papyrologist Carsten Peter Thiede described Papyrus 64, three fragments written on papyrus, containing Greek text from Matthew 26 (to be precise, Matthew 26:7-8, 10, 14-15, 22-23, and 31-33).  The fragments are housed at Magdalen College in Oxford, England, and they are for this reason called “The Magdalen Papyri.”  Thiede’s case was a cumulative one, involving subtle factors such as the similarity of the lettering in Papyrus 64 and some of the lettering in the Dead Sea Scroll 4QLXXLev (4Q119). 

            Papyrus 64 is indeed early, but subsequent researchers have responded to Thiede’s claim with strong arguments for assigning a later production-date to P64, around the beginning of the 200s. 

            This is from the same manuscript as Papyrus 64!  That was the verdict of Colin H. Roberts when he described Papyrus 67, a Greek fragment (presently housed at the Abby of Montserrat, west of Barcelona, Spain) with text from Matthew 3:9, 3:15, 5:20-22, and 5:25-28.  Other researchers, after comparing the two manuscripts, have reached the same conclusion:  although P64 and P67 were published separately and were assigned separate identification-numbers, they are really only one manuscript. 

            Where did it come from?  Probably somewhere in Upper (i.e., southern) Egypt – and therein lies a tale which implies that several important New Testament papyri come from the same place.  The acquisition of P64 is no secret; it was purchased by Charles E. Huleatt in 1901 in Luxor, Egypt.  North of Luxor, in the area of Naqada, are various monasteries.  Northwest of Luxor is Nag Hammadi, where a collection of Gnostic texts were excavated.  And northeast of Nag Hammadi is the town of Dishna – which is, as far as anyone seems to be able to tell, where a large collection of papyri were recovered – papyri which eventually ended up in the collections of Chester Beatty and Martin Bodmer.  As specialist Dr. James Robinson has pointed out, the whole collection probably constitutes the remains of a Pachomian monastery’s library, hidden near Dishna in the 600s, along with a variety of Old Testament manuscripts and other documents (some in Greek, some in Coptic), including copies of some letters composed by Pachomius. 

            This means that when textual scholars rely upon Papyrus 66 (Bodmer MS 50), Papyrus 72 (Bodmer MSS 7-8), and Papyrus 75 (previously Bodmer MSS 14-15, but now housed at the Vatican Library and renamed the Hanna Papyrus), they are relying on manuscripts from Upper Egypt.  A variant shared by P66 and P75 represents one, not two, locales.        

            Papyrus 64 and Papyrus 67 were not part of the large collection found near Dishna; they probably came from a location east of there:  the city of Coptos (now called Qift), which, after its citizens rebelled against the government, was destroyed by Roman forces acting on orders from the Emperor Diocletian in 292 (or later in his reign).  What justifies this idea?  Enter Papyrus 4.          

Part of Papyrus 4
(enhanced pseudo-replica)

             Papyrus 4 is a manuscript that consists mainly of substantial fragments from the opening chapters of the Gospel of Luke (1:58-59, 1:62-2:1, 2:6-7, 3:8-4:2, 4:29-32, 4:34-35, 5:3-8, NS 5:30-6:16), written in two columns per page.  P4 also includes a heavily damaged page which appears to have been blank when produced, except for the book-title “Ευαγγελιον Κα[τ]α Μαθ’θαιον.”  Papyrus 4 has been assigned to the late 100s or early 200s – the same era to which P64 and P67 have been assigned.  The handwriting in P64, P67, and P4 is so similar that Colin H. Roberts (the researcher who identified and dated Papyrus 52 as a fragment of the Gospel of John from the first half of the 100s) believed that all three manuscripts were actually parts of a single manuscript.  Philip W. Comfort concurs with Roberts in this view.  So did T. C. Skeat, who developed a theory that these fragments are from one early codex which, when pristine, contained the four Gospels.  Scott D. Charlesworth, however, disagrees with Skeat’s theory, and has offered a nuanced case that at the very least, P64/67, and P4 could not be parts of the same single-quire codex.      

          

            It is generally not denied, though, that the handwriting in all three fragments is very similar, which implies that these fragments share the same production-center or even the same copyist.  If this is granted, then if one fragment’s source can be found, it is very likely that the source of the other two is the same.

            The source of Papyrus 4 is a known quantity, more or less.  In 1889 (not 1880), someone found Papyrus 4 in the ruins of the city of Coptos, and within two years it was obtained by Vincent Scheil at nearby Luxor, along with a leather satchel-like cover and another papyrus manuscript.

            The other manuscript’s text, written on eighty-nine pages, consisted of two compositions – Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres (Who is the Heir of Divine Things?) and De Sacrificiis Abelis et Cainis (The Sacrifices of Abel and Cain) – two parts of a series of treatises by Philo, containing his allegorical interpretations of passages in Genesis.  The manuscript, it seems, had been found inside the wall which was part of the ruins of a house.  According to James R. Royse in his essay The Biblical Quotations in the Coptos Papyrus of Philo, the text of Philo’s two treatises is written on eighty-nine pages:  “the two sides of forty-four folios and one final page that is attached to the inside back cover of the binding.”

            An account of the discovery of both these manuscripts (and their leather container) was provided by Jean Merell in an article in the 1938 Revue Biblique.  Here are Merell’s prefatory comments about the discovery of P4, translated from French: 

            In the course of working on the New Testament papyri, I had the opportunity to study the originals very closely.  I have thus found interesting details, and I had even the good fortune to make some small discoveries; one of them will be the subject of this article.

            This is the papyrus P4, published for the first time in 1892, and later in Memoirs of the French Archaeological Mission at Cairo by Father Scheil. It is now in the National Library [of France], under no. 1120, suppl. 2.

            After careful study of this document, I have found that some fragments have not yet been – as far as I know – deciphered and published. They constitute a larger part than the part already published, and their publication will not be without interest, especially since I can accompany it with photographic reproductions previously unpublished.

            I will give the entire text, for the parts already known call for some adjustments.

History of the manuscript.

            Father Scheil pointed out to me last June that having bought a codex containing two treatises of Philo of Alexandria in 1891, he had the good fortune to find fragments of our biblical papyrus.

            The papyrus was found in Coptos, Upper Egypt, in 1889. [“1880” was a printing error.]  Considered undoubtedly in ancient times as a very precious thing, it had been enclosed and walled up in a niche. The hollow sound of the wall in this place aroused its discoverers’ attention. After opening up the wall, they drew from this hiding place two treatises of Philo of Alexandria.

            The whole thing is in a known format, almost eight inches square, like the Arabic books.  It was contained in a leather cover, with a tongue and a cord of leather falling on the cover.  The book must have been squashed in its hiding place; the mortar was as if it were inlaid on the outside; the pages adhered strongly together in a mass, and were, in addition, fastened to one another by a quantity of small grains of salt [or sand], produced over the ages by a condensation-process in the vegetable tissue.

            Following the forty-fourth leaf [i.e., sheet, consisting of the front and back of a page], in the form of padding [“en guise de bourre”], I think, and to fill the capacity of the cover, there were several fragments of sheets stuck together.  One of them contained κατα Μαθθιον, and the others, fragments of Saint Luke.

            Of the fourteen columns which compose the total, Father Scheil has published four of them. Father Lagrange has reproduced them in his Textual Critique (pp. 118-124).

            Father Scheil gave the papyrus to the National Library [of France].

            I have not been able to ascertain, in spite of much research, the details of the conservation of this papyrus. A paper of April 24, 1913, written by Gregory, however, indicates that the restorer should be Doctor Ibscher of Berlin.

            In Philip W. Comfort’s The Complete Text of the Earliest New Testament Manuscripts (page 27), the phrase “en guise de bourre” is translated as “in the form of a wad.”  However, I think “padding” is a better rendering.  What is meant by “to fill the capacity of the cover” is that the pages that consisted of Papyrus 4 were placed alongside the manuscript of the two treatises of Philo so that the treatises of Philo would be secure and snug within the leather satchel-cover.  This could be done by flat pages better than by a “wad.” 

The satchel in which P4 was found,
along with two treatises by Philo.

            Although T. C. Skeat described Scheil’s discovery as “A papyrus codex, containing two works of Philo, in a leather binding which had been reinforced by leaves from a Gospel manuscript glued together,” some adjustments should be made to that description.  First, the cover being described is not a binding (like a book-binding); it is a leather satchel – basically a rectangular purse made to hold a manuscript slightly smaller than itself. 

            Second, inasmuch as a page of the second treatise by Philo is stuck to the satchel – meaning that P4 was inserted between this page and the rest of the pages of Philo’s treatises – this means, it seems to me, that the pages containing text from Luke were not added merely as padding-material.  It is easy to see how a person could slide a second manuscript alongside the first one, and not notice that a page of the first manuscript had been caught behind the second manuscript, if the purpose was merely to store them both in the satchel.  But it is much more difficult to imagine that anyone would insert discarded pages into the satchel, as permanent padding, without noticing that a page of the Philo-volume was intervening between the padding-material and the leather satchel itself. 

            When Vincent Scheil first analyzed Papyrus 4, he assigned it a production-date in the 500s.  This does not interlock well with the premise that the wall from which P4 was taken collapsed (with P4 and the two treatises of Philo within a leather satchel-cover inside it) in 292 or shortly thereafter.  Scheil did not explain the basis for dating P4 so late; perhaps he thought that the wall’s collapse did not occur until the 500s.  In any event, practically everyone else has assigned a much earlier production-date to the manuscript, usually a period around 200.
            However, a substantial part of the argument for that date depends on the premise that P4, when it was placed in the leather satchel with the two treatises of Philo, was used as padding – the idea being that only decayed or damaged pages would be recycled as padding-material, and that some time would need to be posited between the production of P4 and the time when it was considered suitable only for use as padding-material. 

The page in P4 with
"The Gospel
According to Matthew"
(See Novum Testamentum,
2012, p. 216) 

            If that is the case, and if Roberts, Skeat, and Comfort are correct in their view that P4, P64, and P67 are parts of the same manuscript, then it implies that either (a) P64 and P67 were part of the initial find in 1889, and were taken away from the rest, before P4 was obtained by Scheil in 1891, or (b) the manuscript was indeed in a state of disrepair when part of it (the P4 part) was recycled as padding, and the rest of it (of which P64 and P67 are the surviving representatives) was set aside elsewhere.

            Another possibility – somewhat imaginative, I grant – is that a group of Gospels-readers at Coptos in the 200s had a single unbound Gospels-codex to share among themselves, and they divided it into parts, one of which was eventually hidden with the Philo-treatises when the city was under siege in 292, one which survived elsewhere (barely) as P64+67, and the rest of which is lost.   

              I suspect that P64+P67 constitute part of an unbound codex (not a single-quire codex) that contained the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke together.  The page with “Ευαγγελιον Κα[τ]α Μαθ’θαιον” written on it is, in this case, the final page of the Gospel of Matthew – that is, we see here the closing-title of the Gospel of Matthew, not a flyleaf or opening title-page.  P4 was probably produced by the same copyist, but not necessarily at the same time as the volume of which P64 and P67 are the surviving parts.

   

            Not every question about P4, P64, and P67 has been answered, but at least we may draw the following conclusions:

            (1)  Even before the establishment of Pachomian monasteries in the region, there was a Gospel-reading community in Upper Egypt, and its Gospels-text is represented by P4, P64, and P67.

            (2)  The Alexandrian text of Matthew and Luke was in use in Upper Egypt in the mid-200s. 

            (3)  The arrangement of the text in a format of two columns per page is not a sign of lateness; it was used in the 200s.

            (4)  Reckoning that P4 was not used as binding-material, but was kept in the leather satchel alongside the two treatises of Philo (and also reckoning that P4 is a separate manuscript from P64/67), there is no impetus for the assumption that its pages had worn out prior to being placed in the leather satchel, and this may justify a production-date closer to the mid-200s rather than around 200. 

            Here are a few online resources that one may consult for more information about P4 and/or P64 and P67:
            ● A Comparative Textual Analysis of P4 and P64+67, by Tommy Wasserman, from the 2010 TC Journal.  Wasserman concludes that all three fragments share the same kind of text, correcting an earlier assessment by Kurt Aland, who made a distinction between them.  (At every point of disagreement between Wasserman’s transcription and the one provided by P. W. Comfort, Wasserman’s should be favored.)

            ● The Earliest Manuscript Title of Matthew’s Gospel (BnF Suppl. gr. 1120 ii 3/P4, by Simon Gathercole (downloadable at Academia.edu, for which membership, needed to download documents, is free), published in Novum Testamentum in 2012.  Gathercole provides a clear photograph of the page of P4 which has the title of the Gospel of Matthew written on it.  He transcribes the title (correcting earlier editors’ mistakes) and describes the page insightfully.  Yet I disagree with his view that this page is a “flyleaf.”  It seems more likely that it is a page from a codex in which the text of the Gospel of Matthew ended neatly at the end of the preceding page, and what we see on this page is the closing-title.   

            ● The Oldest Manuscript of the Four Gospels?, by T. C. Skeat, is a chapter in The Collected Biblical Writings of T. C. Skeat, beginning on page 158.  This volume was edited by J. K. Elliott and most of the essay is accessible at Google Books.  Skeat maintained that P64, P67, and P4 are all parts of the same manuscript.  He provided plenty of interesting information about small but significant aspects of the manuscript, such as the similarities between its section-divisions and the section-divisions in Codex Vaticanus.

Some Nag Hammadi codices,
with their satchels.

            ● T. C. Skeat and the Problem of Fiber Orientation in Codicological Reconstruction, by Scott Charlesworth, is a somewhat technical essay in which the author presents obstacles against Skeat’s view that P4 is part of the same manuscript as P64 and P67.

            ● Papyrus Magdalen Greek 17 (Gregory-Aland P64) – A Reappraisal, by Peter Carsten Thiede, features his proposal, in 1995, that P64/67 is a manuscript from the first century.  Thiede provides a transcription and photographs.

            ● The Date of the Magdalen Papyrus of Matthew (P. Magd. Greek 17 = P64):  A Response to C. P. Thiede, by Peter Head (initially published in Tyndale Bulletin in 1995)  tests and effectively refutes Thiede’s dating of P64 and P67 to the first century.

            ● Fragmentary Papyri, by Wieland Willker, in which P4’s Alexandrian text is described and several of its readings are listed (for example, καὶ ἀμφότεροι συντηροῦνται (“and both are preserved”) is not included in P4 at the end of Luke 5:38.)             

 

The satchel of the
Fadden More Psalter.

          In closing:  the discoveries of P64, P67, and P4 raise some questions which are yet to be fully answered:   

            ● Prior to the introduction of Pachomian monasticism, were the New Testament manuscripts in Upper Egypt made by orthodox Christians, or by groups such as the Gnostics in nearby Nag Hammadi?  Even the discovery of a manuscript in the collection of a monastery is no guarantee of the orthodoxy of its text, for many a monk may have studied his theological opponents’ writings so as make a knowledgeable reply against them. 

            ● Is there a connection between the codex-production methods used in Upper Egypt, and the methods used in Ireland?  A link between Upper Egypt and Ireland may seem unlikely, until one notices the popular use of leather satchels in both regions, a persistent tradition about seven Egyptian monks who worked in western Ireland, similarities in some Irish and Egyptian book-illustrations, the papyrus-padded cover of the Fadden More Psalter, and occasional rare readings shared between Egyptian Greek and Irish Latin manuscripts. 

            ● Can manuscripts’ texts be grouped according to the methods used to divide the text into sections?  The ways in which scribes divided the text into paragraphs may shine some light on historical connections between manuscripts.  Perhaps the text-divisions in manuscripts should be handled the same way textual variants are treated.

[Readers are encouraged to use the embedded links in this post to explore additional resources.]

Ten More Reasons Sinaiticus Was Not Made by Simonides

Continuing from where I left off:

(11)  Sinaiticus Has Rare Alexandrian Readings.  As Scrivener observed in his 1864 Full Collation of Codex Sinaiticus, in Matthew 14:30, after the word ανεμον, the word ισχυρὸν is missing.  The printed edition of Codex Vaticanus’ text that was available when Simonides claimed to have made the codex reported that Codex Vaticanus included this word.  It was not until 1855 that the collation of the text of Codex Vaticanus was revised, and it was found that the main text of Vaticanus did not have this word; it was added by a later corrector. 

            This agreement between Vaticanus and Sinaiticus is one of many examples of the special affinity of their contents – agreements which would not exist between Codex Vaticanus and any artificially created composite-text based on the sources described by Simonides.  Simonides claimed to have used a Greek Bible prepared at Moscow, and printed by the Zosima brothers; this was understood to refer to a Greek Bible published by the Holy Russian Synod in 1821, in which the Old Testament portion is based on Grabe’s edition of the text of Codex Alexandrinus (an edition finished in the early 1700’s by other scholars after Grabe’s death).  According to T. C. Skeat, the New Testament portion of this edition consists of the Textus Receptus.  It may thus be expected to represent a fifth-century form of the Greek text of the Old Testament books, but the extraction of many Alexandrian readings from its New Testament text would be impossible.   

            Even if Simonides had somehow acquired a collation of Codex L (a manuscript known from the time of Stephanus (mid-1500’s) to have a text of Mark, Luke, and John which often deviates from the normal Byzantine standard (because, as later researchers discerned, its text in those three Gospels, and in the closing chapters of Matthew, is Alexandrian)), this would not have helped him find Alexandrian readings in the first 20 chapters of Matthew, where L’s text is primarily Byzantine.

            Yet we see many agreements between Vaticanus and Sinaiticus in Matthew 1-20 – of which the following are samples – which are inexplicable if the text of Sinaiticus were put together by the process which Simonides claimed to have used:

            ● The omission of Και (“And”) at the beginning of 3:2.

            ● The omission of (“his”) αυτου in 3:7.

            ● The omission of Ἰωάννης (“John”) in 3:14.

            ● The omission of ρημα (“word”) in 5:11.

            ● The harmonization τασσόμενοος (“placed”) in 8:9.

            ● The omission of και (“and”) in 8:13a.

            ● The omission of αυτου (“his”) in 8:13b.

            ● The omission of αυτου (“his”) in 8:21.

            ● The omission of πολλα (“often”) in 9:14.

            ● The omission of ανθρωπον (“a man”) in 9:32.

            ● The addition of και before Ἰάκωβος (“and” before “James”) in 10:2.

            ● The omission of εισίν (“are”) at the end of 11:8.

            ● The omission of οχλοι (“crowds”) in 12:15.

            ● The inclusion of αυτω (“him”) in 12:38.

            ● The omission of ἀκούειν (“to hear”) in 13:9.

            ● The variant φησιν (“says”) in 13:29.

            ● The omission of ανθρώπω (“a man”) in 13:45.

            ● The omission of αυτον (“him”) in 14:3.

            ● The omission of τὸν in 14:10.

            ● The omission of ισχυρὸν (“strong”) in 14:30.

            ● The omission of αυτων (“their”) in 15:2.

            ● The omission of αυτου (“his”) in 15:12.

            ● The omission of με (“I”) in 16:13.

            ● The addition of Χριστος (“Christ”) after Ἰησους (“Jesus”) in 16:21.

            ●  The variant εχει (“is ill”) instead of πάσχει (“suffers”) in 17:15.

            ● The omission of 17:21.

            ● The omission of εις με (“against you”) in 18:15.

            ● The omission of ανθρώπω (“a man”) in 19:3.
            ● The omission of αυτου (“his”) in 19:10.

            ● The omission of 20:16.

           

            The theory that anyone in the early 1800’s could happen to create all these agreements with Vaticanus is extremely unlikely.  Most of them are agreements in error (regardless of whether one’s standard of comparison is the Byzantine Text or the Nestle-Aland compilation).   

(12)  Sinaiticus Contains Many Non-Alexandrian Readings Which Are Singular or Almost Singular.  A person creating a text in the early 1800’s based on a printed Greek Bible and a few manuscripts from Mount Athos would have neither the means nor the motive to create many readings found in Codex Sinaiticus. Such a person would occasionally make a mistake which at least one earlier copyist also made – but the appearance of so many singular or almost singular readings – not just mistakes – in Codex Sinaiticus puts very heavy strain on the theory that they were made by someone in the early 1800’s who was attempting to produce a gift for the Russian Emperor, because in such a setting there is nothing to provoke them.  Some examples from chapters 1 and 2 of the Gospel of Luke:

            ● The variant Ἰουδαίας (of Judah) instead of Γαλιλαίας (of Galilee) in 1:26.

            ● The harmonization και πατριας (“and lineage”) in 1:27.

            ● The variant Και αναστασα instead of Ἀναστασα δε (both meaning “And rising up”) in 1:39.

            ● The harmonization ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει (“in joy”) in 1:41.

            ● The variant διὰ (“through,” or, “because of”) instead of διελαλειτο πάντα in 1:65.

            ● The variant Θεου (“God”) instead of Κυρίου (“Lord”) in 2:9.

            ● The insertion of λέγοντες (“saying”) in 2:15.

            ● The omission of the last εἰς (“for”) in 2:34.

            ● The insertion of πονηροι (“evil”) at the end of 2:35.

            ● The variant ἐβδομήκοντα (70) instead of ὀγδοήκοντα (80) in 2:37.

            ● The omission of Ἰησους (“Jesus”) in 2:43.

            ● The variant Θεου instead of παρὰ Θεω in 2:52. 

(13)  Significant Parts of Sinaiticus Are Not Extant.  Simonides claimed that he had visited Saint Catherine’s Monastery in 1852, and that he had seen his codex there, and that it was “much altered, having an older appearance than it ought to have.  The dedication to the Emperor Nicholas, placed at the beginning of the book, had been removed.”  However, much more of the Old Testament is not extant.  No pages from Genesis were known to Tischendorf except the small fragment he found in 1853; the parts from Genesis 21-24 were either taken by Porphyry Uspensky, or discovered at Saint Catherine’s Monastery as part of the “New Finds” in 1975.  The entire book of Exodus is gone; only chapters 20-22 of Leviticus are extant, and the surviving pages contain no more than ten chapters of Leviticus; only five of Deuteronomy’s chapters are attested on the surviving pages.   Only two chapters of Joshua are extant, and no text from Judges was known to exist until fragments containing Judges 2:20 and Judges 4:7-11:2 were discovered among the “New Finds” in 1975.  Such a museum of neglect and decay!  And yet all that Simonides can say upon encountering his work in such condition is that it was much altered, and looked a little older than it should?  And that the dedication-note at the front was missing??    

            There is a good reason why Simonides did not express dismay that what had been a complete Greek Bible in 1841 had been so thoroughly damaged that only a small fraction of the pages containing the Pentateuch had survived:  he was unaware of it, having never seen the manuscript at Saint Catherine’s Monastery or anywhere else. 

(14)  Sinaiticus Has a Nearly Unique Text of the Book of Tobit.  No resources at Mount Athos, or anywhere else in the early 1800’s, could supply the form of Greek text of Tobit that appears in Sinaiticus.  As David Parker has noted, the text of Tobit in Sinaiticus agrees with the Old Latin translation of the book more closely than the usual Greek text does.  In addition, the fragment Oxyrhynchus Papyri 1076, assigned to the 500’s, contains Tobit 2:2-5, and it agrees at some points with the text of Sinaiticus.  (For example, both read καὶ ἐπορεύθη Τωβίας (“And Tobias went”) and ἔθνους, “nation,” (instead of γένους, “race”) in 2:3.)

(15)  A Copyist of Codex Sinaiticus Was Probably Familiar with Coptic.  Scrivener explains the evidence for this in the Introduction to his Collation of Codex Sinaiticus:  “It has also been remarked that no line in the Cod. Sinaiticus begins with any combination of letters which might not commence a Greek word, unless it be θμ in Matt. viii. 12; xxv. 30; John vi. 10; Acts xxi. 35; Apoc. vii. 4.”  The letters θμ are capable of beginning words in Coptic, and this is probably why this exception was made; i.e., it was not an exception in Coptic. 

           

(16)  One of the Later Correctors of Sinaiticus Had Unusual Handwriting.  Several individuals – not just one or two – attempted to correct the text of Codex Sinaiticus.  One corrector not only corrected the text, but occasionally corrected earlier correctors.  This corrector’s handwriting was somewhat unusual; he added a small angular serif at the bottom end of the letters ρ, τ, υ, and φ.

 (17)  Constantine Simonides Was a Notorious Con Artist.  It may be helpful, when evaluating Simonides’ claims about Codex Sinaiticus, to observe his other activities that he undertook at about the same time that he published those claims.  In the same letter written by Simonides that was published in The Guardian on September 3, 1862, Simonides claimed that while at Saint Catherine’s Monastery in 1852, he had not only seen the codex, but also, among the manuscripts in the library, he found “the pastoral writings of Hermas, the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, and the disputed Epistles of Aristeas to Philoctetes (all written on Egyptian papyrus of the first century).”  He had mentioned this manuscript earlier, in a book with the verbose title, Fac-Similes of Certain Portions of the Gospel of St. Matthew, and of the Epistles of Ss. James & Jude, Written on Papyrus in the First Century, and Preserved in the Egyptian Museum of Joseph Mayer, Esq. Liverpool.  

            In that book, Simonides claimed that in the antiquities collection of a resident of Liverpool, England named Joseph Mayer (a silversmith who was also an antiquities-collector), there were five papyrus fragments containing text from the Gospel of Matthew.  After a long defense of the view that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Greek, rather than in Hebrew – and in this part of Simonides’ work there is some genuine erudition on display – Simonides described, complete with a transcription and notes about textual variants, this item.  (The book even has pictures of the papyri.)

            He claimed, for instance, that its text of Matthew 28:6 read “the Lord over death,” rather than simply “the Lord,” and he stated, “I prefer this text of Mayer’s codex over the others.”  He also stated, “The 8th and 9th verses of the received version [i.e., the Textus Receptus] are extremely defective when compared with the text of Mayer’s’ codex.”  Simonides belittled the usual readings of the passage [Matthew 28:9b] repeatedly, calling them incorrect and defective, “while Mayer’s codex gives the passage pure and correct, Καὶ ἰδοὺ ἐν τῷ πορεύεσθαι αὐτάς, ἀπήντησεν αὐταις ὁ Ἰησους λεγων Χαίρετε.”

            As Simonides described the text of Matthew 19 on one of Mr. Mayer’s papyrus fragments, he remarked upon its text of verse 24:  “ΚΑΛΩΝ is the reading I found in a most ancient manuscript of Matthew, preserved in the Monastery of Mount Sinai (Vide fac-simile No. 8, Plate I. p. 40.)  This remarkable and precious manuscript, which I inspected on the spot, was written only 15 years after Matthew’s death, as appears from a statement appended by the copyist Hermodorus, one of the seventy disciples mentioned in the Gospel.  It is written on Egyptian papyrus, an unquestionable token of the highest antiquity.”

            Max Müller, in the journal The Athenaeum, in an article written on December 7, 1861, harshly reviewed the career of Simonides before declaring that “not one of these pretended documents is genuine.”  Simonides, Müller wrote, had once visited Athens and had claimed that among the manuscripts at Mount Athos, he had found “an ancient Homer,” but when examined, this document “turned out to be a minutely accurate copy of Wolf’s edition of that poet, errata included!”  That is, the supposedly ancient handwritten text was based on a printed edition of Homer.  

            Müller proceeded to list several more attempts by Simonides to defraud people with false antiquities.  After Simonides had been repeatedly exposed as a charlatan, Müller contended, he “came soon afterward to Western Europe, bearing with him a goodly stock of rarities, and a reputation which the Cretans of the Apostolic times would have envied.”  [The meaning of this remark is that the Cretans were notoriously dishonest, a la Titus 1:12, but Simonides’ reputation was far worse.]   

            Müller also mentioned that at a meeting of the Royal Society of Literature in May of 1853, Simonides presented what he claimed to be “four books of the Iliad from his “uncle Benedictus of Mount Athos,” an Egyptian Hieroglyphical Dictionary containing an exegesis of Egyptian history,” and “Chronicles of the Babylonians, in Cuneiform writing, with interlinear Greek” –  but by the end of the day, it was pointed out that “the so-called cuneiform characters belonged to no recognized form of these writings, while the Greek letters suspiciously resembled badly or carelessly formed Phoenician characters.” 

            Müller’s summary of Simonides’ career as a huckster of forgeries stopped with his mention of “the explosion of the Uranius bubble.”  By this phrase, Müller was referring to an earlier incident in which Simonides had offered to sell to the German government what he claimed to be an ancient palimpsest, containing the remains – 284 columns of text – of a work by a Greek historian named Uranius about the early history of Egypt, over which, it seemed, other compositions had been written in the 1100’s.  

            The members of the Academy of Berlin were persuaded, except for Alexander Humboldt, that it would be worthwhile to make a scholarly edition of this newfound text, and this task was undertaken by K. Wilhelm Dindorf.  Eventually, however, a closer examination of the document, by Constantine Tischendorf and others, was undertaken, and with the help of chemicals and a microscope it became clear that the document was a fake (or half-fake – the forged ancient writing which, chronologically, should have had the medieval writing written over it, was above it instead).  In 1856, Simonides was arrested, as reported on page 478 of the National Magazine.  The case was not pursued in the courts; instead, Simonides left the country.
            Tischendorf, in a letter written in December of 1862, responding to Simonides’ claim to have made Codex Sinaiticus, reminded his readers about that incident:  “He contrived to outwit some of the most renowned German savants, until he was unmasked by myself.”  

            This should provide some idea of the nature of Simonides’ career, and how he worked:  he created fraudulent manuscripts, using genuinely old – but blank or already used – papyrus or parchment on which to introduce his own work.  He also occasionally acquired genuine manuscripts (including several Greek New Testament minuscules), in the hope that the affirmation of their genuineness would rub off on his own creations.  He was guilty of fraud many times over.  

            After Tischendorf had helped expose the fraud that Simonides had come very close to pulling over on the Berlin Academy, Simonides may have afterwards harbored a strong desire to embarrass, or at least distract, Tischendorf.  This may be why he later claimed that the most important manuscript Tischendorf ever encountered was actually the work of Simonides himself – a claim which, had it been true, would have drawn into question the accuracy of Tischendorf’s earlier appraisal of the Uranius palimpsest. 

John 21:24-25 in Codex Sinaiticus,
viewed under ultraviolet light.

(18)  The Last Verse of John Was Initially Omitted in Codex Sinaiticus.  Although Tischendorf insisted that there was something weird about the final verse of John in Codex Sinaiticus, this was doubted by subsequent researchers, since even in photographs nothing seemed amiss.  When the scholars Milne and Skeat, studying the manuscript in the early 1930’s for the British Museum,  applied ultraviolet light to the passage, however, Tischendorf was vindicated:  the copyist at this point finished the text at the end of 21:24, and drew his coronis, and wrote the closing-title of the book – and then he erased the closing-title (gently scraping away the ink) and the coronis, and the closing title.  Then he added verse 25 immediately following verse 24, and remade a new coronis and closing-title.  All this is as plain as day, as long as one has an ultraviolet light handy to examine the manuscript.

            A thoughtful copyist could decide to reject the final verse, regarding it as a note by someone other than John.  And his supervisor could overrule his overly meticulous decision.  But Simonides would have had no reason to stop writing at the end of verse 24, add the coronis and closing-title, and then undo his work and remake the text with verse 25 included.

(19)  The Lettering on Some Pages of Sinaiticus Has Been Reinforced.  On page after page, the lettering that was first written on the page has been reinforced; that is, someone else has written the same letters over them, so as to ensure the legibility of what was once faded.  The first page of Isaiah is a good example.  This reinforcement was not undertaken mechanically, but thoughtfully; the reinforcer did not reinforce letters and words that he considered mistakes; he introduced corrections, such as in 1:6, where the reading καιφαλης is replaced by κεφαλης.  Inasmuch as it is highly unlikely that the writing of a manuscript made in 1841 would be so faded that it would need to be reinforced within a few years, this weighs heavily against Simonides’ story. 

                       

(20)  Pages from Near the End of the Shepherd of Hermas in Codex Sinaiticus Are Extant.  When Simonides wrote his letter for The Guardian in 1862, he very clearly stated he concluded it with “the first part of the pastoral writings of Hermas,” but his work then ended “because the supply of parchment ran short.”  Such a description plausibly interlocked with what one could discern at the time about the contents of Codex Sinaiticus by reading Tischendorf’s description of it.  At the time, only the first 31 chapters of the text of Hermas were known to be extant in Codex Sinaiticus; that is all that Tischendorf had recovered from Saint Catherine’s Monastery.  However, in 1975, when the “New Finds” were discovered, they included damaged pages from Hermas – to be specific, from chapters 65-68 and chapters 91-95.  The Shepherd of Hermas has a total of 114 chapters.  In no sensible way can Simonides’ statement that he wrote “the first part” of Hermas and stopped there be interlocked with the existence of pages containing the 95th of its 114 short chapters.

            The clear and incriminating implication of this evidence is that Simonides’ report about how he produced the codex, including the prominent detail that he wrote the first part of Hermas but stopped there because he ran out of parchment, was shaped by his awareness of Tischendorf’s description of the codex, which stated that there was no text of Hermas extant after that point.  If Simonides had actually written the codex, he would have said something to the effect that a large part of his work was missing.  

            More evidence against the plausibility of Simonides’ story could be accumulated:  indications that the copyists of Sinaiticus at least occasionally wrote from dictation, and the existence of textual variants (in Matthew 13:54, Acts 8:5, and First Maccabees 14:5) which suggest that a copyist was working at or near Caesarea, and the remarkable similarity between the design of the coronis applied by Scribe D at the end of Tobit and after Mark 16:8 in Sinaiticus, and the design of the coronis at the end of Deuteronomy in Codex Vaticanus, and the drastic shift in the text’s quality in Revelation, and more.  But enough is enough.

            Simonides’ motives for spreading the false claim that he made Codex Sinaiticus may be a mystery till Judgment Day, but his guilt is not hidden at all.  He was a well-educated charlatan, and his claims about Codex Sinaiticus were false, as Tischendorf, Tregelles, Bradshaw, Scrivener, Wright, and others, equipped with the skill to evaluate the evidence, and the wisdom to evaluate the accuser, have already made clear.