the colophon question in the 1860s debate

Steven Avery

Administrator
The British Quarterly Review (1863)
The Sinaitic Codex
https://books.google.com/books?id=TMNjkkJZw8UC&pg=PA363

One circumstance we have not yet referred to deserves notice. On the occasion of the meeting of the Archaeological Association in October, I862. the fac-simile edition of the Codex-Fredericus was laid before Dr. Simonides, and the question plainly put to him, 'Did you write with your hands the MS. from which these fac-similes were taken ?’ The answer was at once, ‘ I did.’ He was then asked, 'Were the various subscriptions appended to the books your writing?’ ‘They were.’ 'And whatever was stated therein was true ?’ ' Most certainly.' The subscription on the thirteenth leaf was then shown him, which reads us follows : ‘ Compared with a very old copy, corrected by the hand of the holy martyr Pamphilius,' &c, meaning the friend of Eusebius, who suffered A.D. 308. He was then asked, ‘Had you then at Mount Athos a copy of the Scriptures corrected by the hand of Pamphilius himself?’ Here the interpreter for the first time was unable to make the Greek understand the import of the question; and, strange to say, no answer was obtained to this simple interrogation until the next day. The reply when at length given was, that it was not Pamphilius’ own copy, but a copy of that, which was still preserved in the Monastery of Mount, Athos!

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Steven Avery

Administrator
Elliott

p. 48
1. On the 7th October, 1862, Simonides came into the Cambridge University Library. The facsimile of the Codex Friderico-Augustanus was put before him. Every one who is acquainted with that MS. knows that at the end of 2 Esdras, and again at the end of Esther, is a note to the effect
that it had been compared with the extremely ancient copy corrected by the hand of the holy martyr Pamphilus. Simonides was asked, «Have you at Mount Athos the very copy which Pamphilus himself corrected»? He was unable to answer at the time, but came next day with a lame story that they had, not the original of Pamphilus, but a copy.

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71
The identity of characters named in the actual manuscript causes The Christian Remembrancer, April 1863, to ask:
Can Dr. Simonides favour us with any information about Theophylact, Dionysius, and Hilarion, whose names occur in the Codex Sinaiticus? or
have the names been inscribed since the parchments passed out of his keeping? or are the triad men of straw? or noms de guerre? Who are Antonius and Pamphilus, mentioned in the note in the Codex Friderico-Augustanus Augustanus?

122
(4) And now the claim that he in 1840 wrote a MS. in perfect imitation of a document of the fourth century, professing in part to be copied from an ancient Codex, corrected by the hand of the martyr Pamphilus; and containing corrections apparently of various ages, and by very various hands. Simonides replies to this in his characteristic way (in The Literary Churchman, 16th, March, 1863).
 
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