James Snapp on colour disparity - "As far as I can tell, they do not vary in color"

Steven Avery

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WIP

This post can go well with:


James Snapp attempts to defend authenticity of Sinaiticus
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.468

In a two-way discussion, James has to try to counter the evidences for Sinaiticus being fake, including the colour. Some of his attempts are hilarious and sad.

In fact, the textual critics have often fallen back on different versions of this absurd argumentation.

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KT: "Why do they vary in color, like someone aged some pages?"

James Snapp
As far as I can tell, they do not vary in color; only the camera-settings differed when photographs of the pages were taken. Certainly Tischendorf had no reason to alter the condition of the pages he obtained in 1859, having already gottten the pages at Leipzig, and discerning that they were all from the same manuscript.
Steven Avery
This absurd position shows the desperation of James to only look at minor subjective soft evidences.

And handwave clear-as-a-bell objective facts, such as the colour tampering evidence.

The British Library itself has totally acknowledged this colour disparity. With the German 1844 pages being significantly lighter than the English portion. (i.e. White parchment as described by Uspensky for the whole manuscript in 1845 and as described by Dobschutz in Germany)

Technically, a team of photographic and computer experts worked with a special committee to make sure that the CSP gave an actual representation of the manuscripts, including the same backgrounds, colour bars and number indicators.

And James, without a scintilla of real evidence, offers a conspiracy theory of incompetent photography.
The confusion and absurdity of James continued with (talking of the Leipzig 43 folia .. not sheets.)

As we both know, that's only 43 sheets from a much larger Bible. The scraps from Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus clearly are *not* pristine. That bears explanation, and two explanation would be, istm, (1) what is often assumed to be a single codex was not a single codex, but consisted of at least two volumes in the OT, and one volume for the NT, intended to be used as a set, or (2) it was once a single codex but its large size made it difficult to use and so it was rebound as separate volumes -- and, either way, the treatment these volumes received was unequal, some being set aside and subject to neglect and decay; others being used regularly.
If James simply understood how the Codex Friderico-Augustanus represents TWO distinct sections in Simoneidos, he would understand how absurd is all the above.

Next, James gives us the absurd myth that Tischendorf did not extract the CFA from an intact volume. James thinks the monks did a major quick rescue work and rebinding after the theft.

SA: "The Uspensky discussion of an 1845 manuscript does in fact describe a single volume."

James Snapp
No doubt, after the monks had collected together what they had. But they couldn't collect together what they didn't have.
Then I went into the overall perspectives.

Steven Avery
The Simonides account clearly fits the facts on the ground far more accurately than that of Tischendorf. Thus the plausibility factor is already decided.

For this reason, you ignore the historical imperative.

The Simonides account clearly fits the facts on the ground far more accurately than that of Tischendorf. Thus the plausibility factor is already decided.

For this reason, you ignore the historical imperative.

In your conspiracy theory, after Simonides, simply out of pique, asserted being part of the Simeonides team that falsely claimed to write the ms, he had to use a time machine to place himself Kallinikos and Benedict back in Athos in 1840 working on manuscripts. Then, his next time travel was to Smyrna, to publish the 1843 Greek Barnabas, which is akin to his Sinaiticus work. Then, he travelled to 1856 to print Hermas, which Farrer astutely called a coincidence that breaks the bank of conspiracy theory (paraphrasing). Then he went forward in time to fudge all the cameras and minds of the CSP project to support the Kallinikos lemon-juice charge. Then had to fudge manuscript dating to cause a phenomenally good condition manuscript to be 1500 years old, heavily aged and worn. And that extra trip needed to line up Claromontanus as an exemplar. And after a few more trips, the time machine wears out..

James, you need to try to understand history.

The testimony of Simonides is simply one salient piece of a wonderful puzzle that we can put together. David Daniels has done a superb job as a puzzle meister.
Then James went back to the confusion about the colour.

James Snapp
...I'm saying that
(a) whatever the explanation is for the difference in the photographs, it doesn't mean that Tischendorf treated some of the pages with lemon juice (which is what Daniels and Avery are saying); Tischendorf had no motive to make any pages look older, inasmuch as he already had published (and put in the Leipzig University Library's collection) the previous batch of pages from the same manuscript.
(b) After looking through the descriptions of the color-tones at the Codex Sinaitucus site, it seems evident to me that the difference probably doesn't have anything to do with the condition of the pages themselves, but is instead a side-effect of the camera-settings when the pictures were taken. And,
(c) Whatever the explanation may be, it does not come remotely close to the evidence for the antiquity of Codex Sinaiticus. It's like, there's a ten-ton weight on the scales, in favor of the genuineness of Codex Sinaiticus, and Avery and Daniels have a few BB's and are saying, "Well yeah, but how do you explain /this/?" -- as if, as long as they can raise a question, theie case must be substantial. It's not
 
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