> Question
> could there have been "decoloration"
There is great difficulty finding any explanation for the pristine white parchment condition of the 43 folia in Leipzig. The ms. was supposed to be heavily used, also travelled, for 1500+years. We have here an unusual confluence of circumstances.
historical observation
The full codex ms. was identified as white parchment in 1845.by Uspensky
(the Leipzig 1844 sections were gone by then, sitting in the Leipzig library, and could not be changed)
The Leipzig pages were identified as white parchment by Dubschutz.in 1910.
They are white parchment today, as we see very clearly from the Codex Sinaiticus project.. Every one of the 86 pages.
Yet Tischendorf. told the world that the whole ms. is sufflava, Scrivener, relying on Tischendorf, says "yellow with age". No distinction was made for Leipzig and St. Petersburg. The facsimile of Tischendorf smoothed out the difference. The fiction that Tischendorf had created had been maintained by stashing the ms. sections far apart. And pointing all the scholarship to his facsimile. The fiction was maintained by the desire for the textual establishment to accept his theories and representations. And many accepted even the absurd lies he told about the discovery, such as saving the leaves from fire. Even the 2011 Hendrickson and British Library publication, pictures, were adjusted to hide the colour distinction.
We do not have the expected grime in either locale.
We have a ms. in "phenomenally good condition" (Helen Shenton, British Library), supple, easy page turning. (This can be seen in a BBC video.)
Even if the whole ms., Britain and Germany, was in this same colour, it would be a matter of great perplexity.
How could it really be the age claimed?
There is no science to a real antiquity ms resisting ms. aging, and yellowing.
One example given was a Dead Sea Scroll taken out of a jar.
Whille whitish coming out, the scroll quickly yellowed.
The ms. experts tend to ignore the problem, because the Sinaiticus ms. is known to be fourth century. So let's change the subject. Maybe we can modify the science of parchment and ink to match what we know is true of Sinaiticus. Circularity.
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However, the soup thickens.
Simonides and Kallinikos said that the ms. had been coloured in the 1850s. Using substances like lemon-juice and herbs.
Nobody ever checked this accusation by simply looking at the ms sections closely. (And the ms. has never had materials testing.) This changed when the true manuscript photos, done with great professionalism, was put online in 2009 by the Codex Sinaiticus Project. Oops.
This colouring in the 1850s would lead to a:
white parchment 1844 BEFORE in Leipzig and a
yellowed 1859 AFTER in the British Library
This is exactly what we see, courtesy of the Codex Sinaiticus Project.
And, for added pizazz, you can see streaky staining on the British Library pages.
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> Questions
> Can we be sure this is really "artificially coloured"?
> And would colouring disprove the genuineness of the ms and the text it contains?
a) Even if the ms was coloured for an appearance of age, the text it contains might be ancient
b) the ms parchment itself could be ancient and authentic, and mistakenly coloured.
If Tischendorf and/or his allies stained the major part of the ms. in the 1850s, it is very strong evidence that there was deliberate deception involved. And as David Daniels said:
Why stain what you think to be the treasure of a lifetime, the oldest and best manuscript in history? It's like the guy who got a gold medal, and was so excited that he went out and had it bronzed!
At this point, we have to conclude that the Simonides explanation is essentially correct. Everything fits. Now, of course, that does not tell us much about the textual aspects, but it does tell us that the ms. itself was created c. 1840.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Benedict copied a 4th century ms. perfectly in creating Sinaiticus. From the point of view of textual science, that would not matter. The ms. is 1840s. And it is a fairly new parchment, clumsily coloured to make it look yellow.
In fact, the text is a hybrid mess, full of errors. There are various fheories about how it was made.
However, the bottom line is simple .. the Sinaiticus ms was made c. 1840.