academics can't handle simplicity

Steven Avery

Administrator

In my experience, academics sometimes do have a handle on elegance.

However, simplicity is much more difficult for the academic to accept.

(Especially if they are in what is considered a tech-geek area like textual criticism. Similar with manuscript collation, and related fields.

What is amazing about the basic Sinaiticus issues is that they are exceedingly simple. The proverbial fifth grader can easily see and understand the colouring of the manuscript. They can look at The Tale of Two Manuscripts and put together A-B-C.

My friends can watch the Sinaiticus British Library turn pages like a Life Magazine and chuckle about the purported history. And manuscripts turn yellow with use and age, even the British Library tells you that. Yet the Leipzig pages remain snow-white after their supposed 1650 years, with much movement and heavy use. No grime. You don't need rocket science to figure this one out.

The academic can not. Dubious presuppositions abound. And how many peer-review papers have your written? How's your Greek geek? This question was discarded long ago.
Yada. And a Yada. And some more.

Even the manuscript people go all over the map. "Hey, I saw a purple dye fade on a manuscript .. you should be an expert like me."

Bottom line, the Sinaiticus physical manuscript issues are exceedingly simple. See the smoking gun page and then do some study.

Steven Avery
 

Steven Avery

Administrator
the scholars are trained to think in a way that misses the basics

Take the situation with the colouring, comparing Leipzig with England.

The complicated, convoluted mind, starts talking of coulor balancing, possible arcane reasons for the difference, tiny differences in the colour bars, the small difference between flesh and skin side, any difference in equipment that might possibly be brought to play.

Really, though the question is ultra-simple:

Is Leipzig a white parchment ms?

That is the way all 43 leaves look on CSP. And that is matching the way they were historically described.

If the Leipzig ms. is white parchment, colour balancing subtleties and all these other diversions are irrelevant, since everybody agrees that England is yellowed (whether by age or lemon-juice.)

The "manuscript expert", the "textual critic", goes around the horn on every minor diversion possible.

Obviously, all the evidence is that Leipzig is white parchment. (England is yellowed. And the best explanation for the difference is the colouring by hand.)

If somebody wants to claim that the CSP is wrong, and the Leipzig leaves are really yellow, let them do so and offer some evidence. The person who makes the "shot in the dark" explanation is the one who needs some evidence. When we say that the Leipzig is white parchment, we are working right off the evidences, and it is confirmed:

e.g. when Gavin Moorhead of the British Library says they are notably white.
And when Mark Michie uses the numbers to show the same thing, or sets up a web page with the images side-by-side.
And when David Daniels makes a composite picture of the manuscript.

The evidence is clear, and everywhere.

Dealing with the scholars on these evidences is a bit like deal with evolutionary pseudo-science. They can not see the simplest points. (Every exception is a breath of fresh air.)

Steven Avery
 
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