Steven Avery
Administrator
Let's discuss various aspects of the saved from trash burning myth.
We will being with what Tischendorf wrote in 1844.
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Tischendorf, 1844 - letter to brother - the ms "came into my possession"
The Discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus as reported in the personal letters of Konstantin Tischendorf
Jeffrey-Michael Featherstone
https://www.academia.edu/1123038/Th...he_personal_letters_of_Konstantin_Tischendorf
Notice that there is no mention of saving any parchment from a basket, or from fire. No reference to a gift from any of the administrators at Sinai. To be blunt, the phrasing is that of the thief who is hauling around some goods. Look, they just came into my possession.
The story that was created was creative. A manuscript is preserved in a monastery for over a millennium. And the very day that Tischendorf is sitting there, they are going to burn this 1000 year old vellum! Yeah right. (And have you burned a lot of animal skin products for heat? Do you look for old shoes to throw in the fireplace?)
================================================
Even by 1843, Tischendorf already had a Manuscript Reputation as a Manuscript Thief
================================================
The Tischendorf Myth of Saving Sinaiticus from Trash Burning
Later, came the new idea, of leaves in a basket saved from burning.
All these stories have huge difficulties. Especially with Uspensky writing of seeing the full manuscript in 1845 and 1850. Rather than simply accepting that the Codex was intact, and Tischendorf had fabricated the story of discovery, the modern theoretical geniuses hypothesize that the Sinai Monastery did some quick rebinding between 1844 and 1845. After a search to find the scraps of the ms. (Amazingly, in this theory, the whole New Testament was found unbound after 1500 years and included.) Bridge for sale. They are so wedded to the tissuedorfs (myths from Tischendorf) that they turn history upside down.
Remember, beginning in 1859, fifteen years later and lasting a decade, there was international intrigue and the politics about the ms was heating up. These stories about being the savior of the ms were very handy in getting European support for Tischendorf. As a saviour of mss, rather than one who stole mss. Tischendorf was being accused of chicanery or theft and it was such an effective counter that it is repeated again and again today. Yet those close to the times often were aware that this was a fabrication of convenience.
Below is the ongoing charade, and examples of scholars discussing the Tischendorf myths.
================================================
1859 - Letter alluding to Trash Can Story (not burning)
================================================
The first Tischendorf accounts that had the fanciful claims were published in 1860 in:
Tischendorf - 1860
Notitia editionis Codicis Bibliorum Sinaitici : accedit catalogus codicum nuper ex oriente Petropolin perlatorum, item Origenis Scholia in Proverbia Salomonis, partim nunc primum partim secundum atque emendatius edita cum duabus tabulis lapidi incisis
https://books.google.com/books?id=4Ac4AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA5
1862 in the Bibliorum codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus and then in the popular literature of Tischendorf.
A full Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus with the received text of the New Textament (1864)
Scrivener
https://books.google.com/books?id=v-JUmBD5zIcC&pg=PP14
When Were Our Gospels Written?: An Argument by Constantine Tischendorf. With a narrative of the discovery of the Sinaitic manuscript.(1867)
Constantin von Tischendorf
http://books.google.com/books?id=uJ0HAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA23
1865 - Tischendorf - When Were the Gospels Written
This is the English translation of the 1865 - Wann wurden unsere Evangelien verfasst?
This writing also includes the red cloth story.
================================================
1871 - Tischendorf's last account
================================================
1800s - skepticism
P. C. Sense and related
Bottrich ref
Donaldson
more
================================================
1908 - James Rendel Harris - "what a run this myth has had"
Granted, James Rendel Harris is not getting into the more fundamental questions like the discrepancy between the reports of Tischendorf and Uspensky about 1844-1845. The hidden history. Despite that, Harris is willing to bluntly call Tischendorf a myth-maker.
================================================
1995-today - James White - any “scholar” who can’t even get this story straight is not really worth reading, to be honest.
Just a little sidenote. James White has for decades insisted that the saved from trash can story is a type of AV-defender myth or ignorance and he has aggressively attacked the reference. In his book and blog and in the Jack Moorman debate, against Dave Hunt in the 1990s and attacking Douglas Stauffer.
James White manages this trickery, or confusion, by emphasizing the red cloth story (or myth) of Tischendorf of 1859, where the ms is said to be carefully preserved, not lying around ready to be burned. However, the saved from burning story is directly from Tischendorf about his 1844 visit, with the supposed 129 folia, and those folia are Sinaiticus. The saved from the trash, saved from burning, story looks to be a total fabrication, but it is Tischendorf's own fabrication.
Dr. Stauffer on Codex Sinaiticus - (2006)
James White
http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php/2006/03/15/dr-stauffer-on-codex-sinaiticus/
You can see that White does not recognize that the 1844 find was from the Sinaiticus ms , so he concludes.
And I include this blunder by James White here because making false accusations against others based on your own ignorance and shoddy scholarship is so grievous. It is still proper for James White to make a public retraction and apology.
Note: when the James White errors on the Jack Moorman debate were presented on his own blogs to be discussed, they were scrubbed and sanitized, poofed away. The history of that erasing was maintained on Facebook. In our experience, James White has not been interested in factual corrections of error.
================================================
Daniel Wallace on the Tischendorf account
Daniel Wallace - August 17, 2007
http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2007/08/historical-renewal-friday-lobegott-tischendorf/
================================================
Jurgen
2015 - Elden Jay Epp
========================================
There is a separate thread on the pattern of theft and mutilation
the theft and mutilation of mansucripts
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/b.91
========================================
Steven Avery
We will being with what Tischendorf wrote in 1844.
================================================
Tischendorf, 1844 - letter to brother - the ms "came into my possession"
The Discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus as reported in the personal letters of Konstantin Tischendorf
Jeffrey-Michael Featherstone
https://www.academia.edu/1123038/Th...he_personal_letters_of_Konstantin_Tischendorf
He has come into possession of [=ich bin in den Besitzgelangt von] 43 parchment folia of the Greek Old Testament which are some of the very oldest preserved in Europe. He believes they are from the mid-fourth century, and they are remarkable not only for their age but also other reasons. - Constantine Tischendorf to his brother Julius, Cairo, 15 June 1844
Notice that there is no mention of saving any parchment from a basket, or from fire. No reference to a gift from any of the administrators at Sinai. To be blunt, the phrasing is that of the thief who is hauling around some goods. Look, they just came into my possession.
The story that was created was creative. A manuscript is preserved in a monastery for over a millennium. And the very day that Tischendorf is sitting there, they are going to burn this 1000 year old vellum! Yeah right. (And have you burned a lot of animal skin products for heat? Do you look for old shoes to throw in the fireplace?)
================================================
Even by 1843, Tischendorf already had a Manuscript Reputation as a Manuscript Thief
A letter from the president of the monastery in Cairo became unusable from my point of view because that perfidious Greek instructed his monastery to place everything at my disposal but be wary of me in respect of the manuscripts. Bottrich Tischendorf-Leesbuch p. 93, quoted in The Bible Hunter Gottschlich p. 73
================================================
The Tischendorf Myth of Saving Sinaiticus from Trash Burning
Later, came the new idea, of leaves in a basket saved from burning.
All these stories have huge difficulties. Especially with Uspensky writing of seeing the full manuscript in 1845 and 1850. Rather than simply accepting that the Codex was intact, and Tischendorf had fabricated the story of discovery, the modern theoretical geniuses hypothesize that the Sinai Monastery did some quick rebinding between 1844 and 1845. After a search to find the scraps of the ms. (Amazingly, in this theory, the whole New Testament was found unbound after 1500 years and included.) Bridge for sale. They are so wedded to the tissuedorfs (myths from Tischendorf) that they turn history upside down.
Remember, beginning in 1859, fifteen years later and lasting a decade, there was international intrigue and the politics about the ms was heating up. These stories about being the savior of the ms were very handy in getting European support for Tischendorf. As a saviour of mss, rather than one who stole mss. Tischendorf was being accused of chicanery or theft and it was such an effective counter that it is repeated again and again today. Yet those close to the times often were aware that this was a fabrication of convenience.
Below is the ongoing charade, and examples of scholars discussing the Tischendorf myths.
================================================
1859 - Letter alluding to Trash Can Story (not burning)
Tischendord told their Majesties the whole story, from the discovery of the Codex Friderico-Augustanus on ; the famous basket evoked shock and amazement.
================================================
The first Tischendorf accounts that had the fanciful claims were published in 1860 in:
Tischendorf - 1860
Notitia editionis Codicis Bibliorum Sinaitici : accedit catalogus codicum nuper ex oriente Petropolin perlatorum, item Origenis Scholia in Proverbia Salomonis, partim nunc primum partim secundum atque emendatius edita cum duabus tabulis lapidi incisis
https://books.google.com/books?id=4Ac4AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA5
1862 in the Bibliorum codex Sinaiticus Petropolitanus and then in the popular literature of Tischendorf.
A full Collation of the Codex Sinaiticus with the received text of the New Textament (1864)
Scrivener
https://books.google.com/books?id=v-JUmBD5zIcC&pg=PP14
While he was travelling in 1844 in search of ancient manuscripts, under the patronage of his own sovereign. King Frederick Augustus of Saxony, he was so fortunate as to pick out of a basket of papers, destined to light the stove in the convent of S. Catherine on Mount Sinai, forty-three vellum leaves containing portions of the Septuagint version, chiefly from 1 Chronicles and Jeremiah, with Nehemiah and Esther complete, bearing every mark of extreme antiquity, in oblong folio, written with four columns on each page.
When Were Our Gospels Written?: An Argument by Constantine Tischendorf. With a narrative of the discovery of the Sinaitic manuscript.(1867)
Constantin von Tischendorf
http://books.google.com/books?id=uJ0HAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA23
It was at the foot of Mount Sinai, in the Convent of St. Catherine, that I discovered the pearl of all my researches. In visiting the library of the monastery, in the month of May, 1844, I perceived in the middle of the great hall a large and wide basket full of old parchments, and the librarian, who was a man of information, told me that two heaps of papers like these, mouldered by time, had been already committed to the flames. What was my surprise to find amid this heap of papers a considerable number of sheets of a copy of the Old Testament in Greek, which seemed to me to be one of the most ancient that I had ever.
1865 - Tischendorf - When Were the Gospels Written
This is the English translation of the 1865 - Wann wurden unsere Evangelien verfasst?
This writing also includes the red cloth story.
On the afternoon of this day, I was taking a walk with the steward of the convent in the neighbourhood, and as we returned towards sunset he begged me to take some refreshment with him in his cell. Scarcely had he entered the room, when, resuming our former subject of conversation, he said, " And I too, have read a Septuagint, i.e. a copy of the Greek translation made by the Seventy and so saying, he took down from the corner of the room a bulky kind of volume wrapped up in a red cloth, and laid it before me. I unrolled the cover, and discovered, to my great surprise, not only those very fragments which, fifteen years before, I had taken out of the basket, but also other parts of the Old Testament, the New Testament complete, and, in addition, the Epistle of Barnabas and a part of the Pastor of Hermas. p. 29
================================================
1871 - Tischendorf's last account
================================================
1800s - skepticism
P. C. Sense and related
Bottrich ref
Donaldson
more
================================================
1908 - James Rendel Harris - "what a run this myth has had"
Dr. Gregory on the Canon and Text of the New Testament (1908)
James Rendel Harris
https://books.google.com/books?id=xuYqAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA127
But Dr. Gregory is to be congratulated on the abandonment of one myth, which has had wide circulation. Tischendorf always insisted, in his vivacious accounts of the finding of the Codex Sinaiticus, that he had rescued the book, in part at least, from the flames. "I perceived a large wide basket full of old parchments, and the librarian told me that two heaps like this had already been committed to the flames, etc." (Discovery of the Sinaitic MS., p. 23). What a run this myth has had, of a convent stove fed with parchment! Unhappily for the statement, the basket is still there, a regular part of the library furniture, and not a suggestion can be found that it was ever used to carry vellum books to the kitchen for burning. But any story will be believed against the Sinaitic monks, even that they made fires with parchment.
Granted, James Rendel Harris is not getting into the more fundamental questions like the discrepancy between the reports of Tischendorf and Uspensky about 1844-1845. The hidden history. Despite that, Harris is willing to bluntly call Tischendorf a myth-maker.
================================================
1995-today - James White - any “scholar” who can’t even get this story straight is not really worth reading, to be honest.
Just a little sidenote. James White has for decades insisted that the saved from trash can story is a type of AV-defender myth or ignorance and he has aggressively attacked the reference. In his book and blog and in the Jack Moorman debate, against Dave Hunt in the 1990s and attacking Douglas Stauffer.
James White manages this trickery, or confusion, by emphasizing the red cloth story (or myth) of Tischendorf of 1859, where the ms is said to be carefully preserved, not lying around ready to be burned. However, the saved from burning story is directly from Tischendorf about his 1844 visit, with the supposed 129 folia, and those folia are Sinaiticus. The saved from the trash, saved from burning, story looks to be a total fabrication, but it is Tischendorf's own fabrication.
Dr. Stauffer on Codex Sinaiticus - (2006)
James White
http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php/2006/03/15/dr-stauffer-on-codex-sinaiticus/
I’m sorry, but any “scholar” who can’t even get this story straight is not really worth reading, to be honest. I remember correcting Dave Hunt on this very same error a few years ago in St. Louis. Sure it is common to say this, but repeating an error does not make it true. And for someone who claims the level of expertise necessary to write a book on the translation of the Bible and the issues of the King James Version should surely know better than to repeat errors like this. What is worse, he cites from my book frequently, which means he knows this statement is factually untrue. Here is the section from my work:
You can see that White does not recognize that the 1844 find was from the Sinaiticus ms , so he concludes.
So as you can see, Sinaiticus was not found in a trash can. It was clearly prized by its owner, and well cared for. The only reason Stauffer and those like him continue to repeat this story is for its impact upon those ignorant of history and unlikely to actually look into it for themselves. But for anyone serious about the subject, such dishonesty destroys one’s credibility.
And I include this blunder by James White here because making false accusations against others based on your own ignorance and shoddy scholarship is so grievous. It is still proper for James White to make a public retraction and apology.
Note: when the James White errors on the Jack Moorman debate were presented on his own blogs to be discussed, they were scrubbed and sanitized, poofed away. The history of that erasing was maintained on Facebook. In our experience, James White has not been interested in factual corrections of error.
================================================
Daniel Wallace on the Tischendorf account
Daniel Wallace - August 17, 2007
http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2007/08/historical-renewal-friday-lobegott-tischendorf/
The evidence points to a monasterial modus operandi that speaks loudly against Tischendorf's claim that the monks were burning books. One suspects that he wrote this so that his removal of manuscripts from Sinai would look like a rescue operation and thereby gain sympathy in Europe.
================================================
Jurgen
2015 - Elden Jay Epp
========================================
There is a separate thread on the pattern of theft and mutilation
the theft and mutilation of mansucripts
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/b.91
========================================
Steven Avery
Last edited: