The Forging of Codex Sinaiticus by William Cooper

[Steven Avery]

Equally suspect is the glaring question of who funded his quest.
In his own account of the matter, Tischendorf boasts that in 1840 he
set out on what was a blind quest with nothing more to his name
than some unpaid bills (changing this later to $50). Yet he also tells
us that his expenses (travel and hotels) came to $5,000. That was
no insignificant sum in the 1840s, and he would have us believe that
he was reimbursed for his outlay - though not until his return - by the
Saxony Government and Leipzig University on his presenting to
each of those bodies a collection of manuscripts which he had
picked up on his travels, fifty of which he gave to the university
library and an untold number to the government.

8. There were considerably more than fifty in fact. Tischendorf
goes on to tell us, “I handed up to the Saxon Government my rich
collection of oriental manuscripts.” Ibid., p. 24. His gift of fifty
manuscripts to the library of Leipzig University was clearly separate
from those which he donated to the government. Even in those days,
unless he is a thief, no man could possibly acquire such collections
without massive funding. So where did that funding come from? And
then, of course, there is Codex Sinaiticus...

16. Merrill, George. The Parchments of the Faith. 1894.
Philadelphia. p. 176, citing Tischendorf’s own article in Leipziger
Zeitung for 31st May 1866. Displaying his colossal vanity,
Tischendorf even adorns the title page of his Novum Testamentum
Vaticanum with a list of all his various honours. It takes up eight lines
of small close type. It was this weakness for honours and admiration
of his that the Vatican was able to exploit to the full.



The closest they ever came to
dislodging this Bible was with the printing of the Douay-Rheims Bible
of 1610, translated out of Jerome’s Latin Vulgate. But alas for the
enterprise, though its English loosely mimicked that of William
Tyndale’s New Testament, it was based on a very faulty translation -
the Latin Vulgate - and it showed.

Giuseppe Balzani della Mendola, papal legation of Rimini, convicted of lèse-majesté.

“While the police harried the people in their daily lives, the
Inquisition collected the secrets of the confessional, and launched its
spiritual thunders on the unconforming. An edict is extant by the
Inquisition-General of Pesaro in 1841, commanding all people to
inform against heretics, Jews, and sorcerers, those who have
impeded the Holy Office, or made satires against the pope and
clergy.”3

That problem was Jerome’s Latin Vulgate Bible. Consider. The
Vatican had held for many centuries that the only authoritative text of
the Scriptures was encapsulated within Jerome’s Latin Bible, and
that none other was ever to be held as its superior, no, not even its
Hebrew and Greek originals. And no, this was not just an academic
opinion, but was encoded into canon law. Since AD 383 when Pope
Damasus ordered its publication, no Bible version or translation
other than Jerome’s Vulgate was allowed to be consulted or referred
to or even read on pain of death! This ban on all other translations of
the Bible was reinforced by the Council of Trent in 1546, and again
enforced by Clement VIII in 1592. So the problem was not only how
to sell Codex Vaticanus to the world, but how to explain the fact that,
with all its corruptions which outnumbered even those of the Vulgate,
Codex Vaticanus was somehow authoritative. To be authoritative, it
had to be at least on an equal footing with the Vulgate, even though
it omitted much of what the Vulgate included, and contained
readings which were not to be found in the Vulgate. But the dilemma
was very simply avoided.

That is why, exactly a year after Tischendorf had his audience with
the pope in May 1843, in which he (Tischendorf) was granted access
to Codex Vaticanus, Gregory XVI issued his encyclical against Bible
Societies everywhere, which was dated the 8th May 1844, and titled
Inter Praepicuas - for the full English text of which, see Appendix
Three

For example, the personal names in the codex are spelt as they
appear in the Vulgate, and not as in the Greek mss - e.g. Isak (for
Isaac) and Istrael or even Isdrael (for Israel) – and in the Book of
Acts especially the chapter divisions are those of the Vulgate, and
not of the Greek.10 Hence, the following admission is made by the
two infamous editors of the Revised Version of 1881, Westcott and
Hort, that Vaticanus and even Codex Sinaiticus had been written out
in Rome, and not in Alexandria:

forgers know this, yet even they are unable to disguise their own
foibles and habits all the time. Sooner or later, they will make the slip
which betrays them. Such is the case with Codex Vaticanus.
For example, the personal names in the codex are spelt as they
appear in the Vulgate, and not as in the Greek mss - e.g. Isak (for
Isaac) and Istrael or even Isdrael (for Israel) – and in the Book of
Acts especially the chapter divisions are those of the Vulgate, and
not of the Greek.10 Hence, the following admission is made by the
two infamous editors of the Revised Version of 1881, Westcott and
Hort, that Vaticanus and even Codex Sinaiticus had been written out
in Rome, and not in Alexandria:

“In B [Codex Vaticanus] the Alexandrian indications are to the
best of our belief wholly wanting.... Taking all kinds of indications
together, we are inclined to surmise that B [Vaticanus] and A
[Sinaiticus] were both written in the West, probably at Rome; that the
ancestors of B [Vaticanus] were wholly Western (in the geographical,
not the textual sense) up to a very early time indeed ; and that the
ancestors of A [Sinaiticus] were in great part Alexandrian, again in
the geographical, not the textual sense. We do not forget such facts
as the protracted unwillingness of the Roman church to accept the
Epistle to the Hebrews, commended though it was by the large use
made of it in the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians....”11

forgers know this, yet even they are unable to disguise their own
foibles and habits all the time. Sooner or later, they will make the slip
which betrays them. Such is the case with Codex Vaticanus.
For example, the personal names in the codex are spelt as they
appear in the Vulgate, and not as in the Greek mss - e.g. Isak (for
Isaac) and Istrael or even Isdrael (for Israel) – and in the Book of
Acts especially the chapter divisions are those of the Vulgate, and
not of the Greek.10 Hence, the following admission is made by the
two infamous editors of the Revised Version of 1881, Westcott and
Hort, that Vaticanus and even Codex Sinaiticus had been written out
in Rome, and not in Alexandria:
“In B [Codex Vaticanus] the Alexandrian indications are to the
best of our belief wholly wanting.... Taking all kinds of indications
together, we are inclined to surmise that B [Vaticanus] and A
[Sinaiticus] were both written in the West, probably at Rome; that the
ancestors of B [Vaticanus] were wholly Western (in the geographical,
not the textual sense) up to a very early time indeed ; and that the
ancestors of A [Sinaiticus] were in great part Alexandrian, again in
the geographical, not the textual sense. We do not forget such facts
as the protracted unwillingness of the Roman church to accept the
Epistle to the Hebrews, commended though it was by the large use
made of it in the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians....”11
In other words, the aptly named Codex Vaticanus has Rome and
the Vatican written all over it. It was composed in Rome by forgers
brought up in the Vulgate tradition, and hence of Vulgate habits and
usages, doubtless shortly before its ‘discovery’ in 1475. Hence the
15th-century hand in which it is written, this hand seemingly
overwriting an earlier attempt at its forgery. It was clumsy, yes, but
for now it would have to do.
Meanwhile, Codex Vaticanus on its own was seen even by the
Vatican to be insufficient, for as a lone voice it could easily be
discredited. Erasmus of Rotterdam had found the manuscript
wanting all integrity as early as 1521, and Vaticanus’s reputation had

 

[Steven Avery]

palaeocalligraphist

nous

palaeocalligraphy known as ‘αμφιδεξιος’ – ‘amphidexios’

According to the monastic elder, Constantius, who commissioned
Simonides to do the work, it had been decided by the monastery
(Mount Athos) to send the Tsar a splendid gold-bound copy of the
Bible written out on vellum in the ‘old style’. There were never any
pretensions, Simonides was assured, toward it being presented as
an original and ancient copy, but simply as the likeness of one.

 

[Steven Avery]

Worm holes
Tischendorf’s admirers, most of whom have never set eyes on these
manuscripts - against Simonides smack of overkill, and of therefore
being unlikely in the extreme. So, discounting those accusations,
which are merely diversionary tactics in any case, we need to ask
whether there is any forensic evidence which casts a doubt over the
claimed 4th-century origin of Codex Sinaiticus, and which would
suggest that Simonides’ claim to have written the manuscript in the
1830s-40s on already ancient vellum might be true.
A Matter of Forensics
In its April 1863 edition, The Christian Remembrancer editorial
asks a question which Elliott considers a “telling and amusing point”
against Simonides. The question is this:
“Are the worm-eaten holes through the letters, or do the letters
avoid the holes?”6
The question brings up a most important point. If the writing on
the vellum is the same age as the vellum itself, then any wormhole
damage which occurred over the following centuries would
occasionally have damaged or destroyed some of the letters.
Whereas if the letters were recently written upon an ancient vellum
which had naturally suffered wormholing over previous centuries,
then the scribe would tend to space his letters around the damaged
areas. Quite why Elliott finds this a “telling and amusing point”
against Simonides is beyond me, because we are about to examine
evidence which shows that the scribe did space his letters around
pre-existing wormholes in certain places of the manuscript, and in at
least one instance actually bends his line of text upwards to avoid a
hole. This occurrence is seen in the following photograph of the
bottom line of Q12:f.6r:col.4:

The bottom three lines of column 4 begin parallel to each other,
yet the bottom two lines suddenly veer upwards to avoid the very
large wormhole which lies in the path of the bottom line, and the line
above it veers upwards to allow the bottom line room for manoeuvre.
The last letters of these lines are also seen to be reduced in size as
the scribe tried to squeeze them into the available space. Now, had
these lines been written when the vellum was new, all three lines
would have remained parallel, the letters of a uniform size, and the
last four letters of the bottom line would have been swallowed by the
wormhole. But the fact that they avoid the hole shows that they were
written long after the hole was made by the bookworm. On the back
side of the folio, its verso, the second vertical stroke of the letter pi,
which begins the word ‘pros’, tellingly stops a fraction short of the top
of the same hole.

But wormholes are not the only hazard to have caused the
scribe to break his text. What appear to be splashes of candlewax
are another. One such example is to be seen in Q38:f.1v: col. 4: l.
30. There the word ‘apotha’ is seen to stop a whole letter-space
short of the end of the line because, as shown in the photograph
below, a tiny blob of candlewax is occupying the space. Its grease
has permeated through to the other side where it is avoided by the
scribe on the recto side of the leaf in column 1, line 30. The first word
of that line, ‘otan’, has the omicron and tau spaced anomalously
either side of the blemish.

But the most clear and blatant avoidance of a blemish that I
have met with so far is to be found in Q42:f.6v: col. 2: l. 10, where in
the word ‘pegon’ the pi is separated from the rest of the word by a
very large space, only for the rest of the word - with no break in the
spelling - to appear on the other side of the blemish, as seen plainly
in the photograph below.

Now it is important to state clearly that these three examples
were discovered during a very brief online examination of random
pages of Codex Sinaiticus.7 What a careful and prolonged hands-on
search of the original manuscript were to reveal can be seen in the
following chapters, but here we see very clear evidence indeed of
the fact that the text was recently added to vellum which was already
ancient and damaged by time, worm and wax. In other words,
Simonides’ claim to have written out the text of Codex Sinaiticus in
the early-mid 19th century, on already very ancient vellum, suddenly
appears to be viable and true.

In the 28th January 1863 issue of The Guardian newspaper, a
Mr Bradshaw asks the pertinent question, “How is it possible that a
MS written beautifully, and with no intention to deceive, in 1840,
should in 1862 [sic] present so ancient an appearance?”8 To which
Simonides cogently replies a week later:

“The MS had been systematically tampered with, in order to give
it an ancient appearance, as early as 1852, when, as I have already
stated, it had an older appearance than it ought to have had....”9

Again, just a brief random search of Sinaiticus’ pages reveals
evidence of just the sort of tampering that Simonides was
complaining of. Q12:ff.1r-2v (containing Numbers 16:7-19:3), for
example, shows extensive ‘water’ damage that has left the adjacent
leaves untouched. How is that possible? Q12:f.2 likewise shows
‘worm’ damage which again has left the adjacent folios untouched
(including folio 1). Suspicion is raised here by the fact that the lower
and outer edges of folio 2 are completely intact, showing no line of
ingress by which a worm could reach that part of the leaf. How could
it possibly have got there without gnawing its way through either the
adjacent leaves or through the lower or outer edge of this leaf?

But then we come to the unnatural fading of the ink in certain
parts of the manuscript, unnatural because it is so inconsistent. For
example, Q36:f.1r is faded almost to the point of oblivion, whereas
on its verso the vellum is clean and fresh, and the ink is crisp, clear
and very new in appearance. It looks for all the world as if the recto
has been washed in an ill-judged attempt to fade the ink. Simonides
merely notes the fact of someone having tampered with the
manuscript, though he offers no solution as to who that might have
been:

 

[Steven Avery]

But Stewart was not his only friend and ally. He had another in
the person of one Kallinikos, a scholar-monk who had watched
Simonides at work when he wrote out the Codex in the Mount Athos
monastery, and who was only too ready to testify that Simonides had
woven identifying acrostics and monograms into the text of
Sinaiticus. Concerning these identifying signatures, Madan tells us:

“... Simonides asserted, not only that he had written it, but that,
in view of the probable scepticism of scholars, he had placed certain
private signs on particular leaves of the codex. When pressed to
specify these marks, he gave a list of the leaves on which were to be
found his initials or other monogram. The test was a fair one, and the
MS., which was at St Petersburg, was carefully inspected. Every leaf
designated by Simonides was found to be imperfect at the part
where the mark was to have been found.”13

 

[Steven Avery]

Postscript
What follows here are the entries in Lambros’ Catalogue (see
Bibliography), twelve in all, that show Benedict, Kallinikos and
Simonides to have been present and working at the Mount Athos
monastery in 1841, precisely as Simonides and Kallinikos claimed.
Why they have gone unnoticed and unmentioned by the critics for
more than 120 years is something that we can only wonder at. The
references at the end of each entry show the volume and page
number of the Catalogue in which each entry is found. For those
whose eyes are unfamiliar with the Greek alphabet, I have
highlighted the names:

Benedict:
5999. 23 (φ. 161a). Ακολουθια της Ζωοδοχου πηγης
Επιδιωρθωθη παρα του διδασκαλου Βενεδικτου. (2:301)
6118. (annotation): Μετα διαφορων σημειωσεων, προσθηκων
και αφειρεσιων του διδασκαλου Βενεδικτου (2:404).
6194. (annotation): Εγραφη δια χειρος του διδασκαλου
Βενεδικτου ιεροδιακονου – Recorded by the hand of Master Benedict
the archdeacon. (2:414).
6360.8: ... διδασκαλου κυριου Βενεδικτου (2:445).
6362. ... ελλογιμοου κυρ Βενεδικτου (2:445).
6393. Διδασκαλου κυριου Βενεδικτου ιεροδιακονου (2:452).

Kallinikos:
6387. Χειρ Καλλινικου και εν μοναχοις ελακιστου. (2:451)
6389. `Ο κωδιξ εγραφη δια χειρος Καλλινικου μοναχου. (2:451)
6406. Εν τελει Χειρ Καλλινικου μοναχου. – in the hand of Kallinikos the monk. (2:454).
6407. Δια χειρος του αυτου Καλλινικου μοναχου. – by Kallinikos in the monk’s own hand. (2:454).

Simonides:
643. `Ερμα Ποιμην [Shepherd of Hermas]. Το λοιπον μερος της
συγγραφης πλην του τηλους, σωζομενου μοννον εν λατινικη
μεταφρασει, ευρισκεται εν τρισι φυλλοις εν τη πανεπιστημιακη
βιβλιοθηκη της Λειψιας, ωνησαμενη αυτα παρα του περιβοητου
Κωνσταντινου Σιμωνιδου. (1:56).
6405. Εν τελει Χειρ Κωνσταντινου Σιμωνιδου. 1841. Μαρτιου 27.
– in the hand of Constantine Simonides (dated) 27th March 1841.
(2:454).
Lambros was certainly no friend of Simonides (he calls him
περιβοητος – notorious), so it can never be claimed that he doctored
his entries in any way in order to exonerate Simonides or to damn
his critics; which leaves the poor critics with no explanation for the
entries, except possibly to say that Simonides must have come back
from the dead and forged the Catalogue. After all, it seems that
anything is possible in their world.

The term Καλλινικου μοναχου [of Kallinikos the monk] is of much
interest, because it is the same term by which Kallinikos himself
signs his letters to Simonides and those he wrote in support of
Simonides to the newspapers – Καλλινικος μοναχος, Kallinikos the
monk. It certainly belies the notion that Simonides and Kallinikos
never knew each other, that Kallinikos never existed, or even that
Simonides forged these letters himself as was so strongly alleged by
Aldis Wright et al. To do that, to forge Kallinikos’ signature, he would
have to have known what Lambros was going to publish decades
after. Simonides was clever; very clever; but he was not as clever as
that.

 

[Steven Avery]

Alas for the publisher’s and the University’s reputation,
Tischendorf did not discover until after its publication that the item
was not what they thought it was. It was a fake. He rightly and fairly
avoided accusing Simonides of actually having forged the piece, but
he did – also rightly – point out that it was not a copy of the original
Greek text, but merely a retranslation back into Greek of a late
medieval Latin recension, from, he estimated, the 14th century
onwards. Tischendorf knew what he was talking about. He had
earned his first flush of fame by retranslating back into Greek

Jerome’s corrupt Latin Vulgate Bible, and when you do work like
that, then Latinisms in both vocabulary and grammar will make
themselves unavoidably evident and easy to spot. Tischendorf’s
accomplished eye spotted it immediately, and he reported the fact.2
Poor Tischendorf, however, was soon to regret his own
cleverness. Just three years after the academic hoo-ha which
followed his triumphant exposé, he was, in 1859, to bring back from
Sinai the rest of Codex Sinaiticus, and there, bound inextricably
within the volume, he found a Greek text of the Shepherd of Hermas
that was practically identical to the 19th-century Greek text that
Simonides had recently produced back at Leipzig, and which he, the
great Tischendorf, had gone to such scholarly lengths to expose as a
medieval-modern production. Now what was he to do? The plan that
he had ‘hit upon’ with his Jesuit friends had been to produce a wholly
corrupted version of the Bible that could be made out to date all the
way back to the 3rd or 4th century, yet here was an integral – and
much publicised – part of the volume that by his own previous
analysis of Codex Lipsiensis belonged to his own modern times. His
dilemma was this. If his analysis of Lipsiensis was in any way valid –
and it surely was – then those same findings would apply with equal
force to the text of the Shepherd of Hermas which belonged to
Codex Sinaiticus. The two are practically identical, warts and all,
linguistic and grammatical. In other words, Sinaiticus would be
proven by its Shepherd of Hermas to be, like Lipsiensis, itself of
comparatively recent origin. It may as well have had a 19th-century
date-stamp printed all over it.

But what exactly is it about the Shepherd of Hermas’ Greek text
in Sinaiticus that betrays the fact that it is a modern production?
Surely, Greek is Greek, and it should be impossible to tell whether a
text originated in ancient times or in modern? But actually, it is very
easy to tell. James Donaldson explains the technicalities for us:
“The late origin of the Greek text [of the Codex Sinaiticus
Hermas] is indicated by the occurrence of a great number of words
unknown to the classical period, but common in later or modern
Greek.... The lateness of the Greek appears also in late forms... and
some modern Greek forms... have been corrected by the writer of
the manuscript. The lateness of the Greek appears also in the
absence of the optative and the frequent use of ινα... generally with
the subjunctive, never with the optative.... But if we consider that the
portion which has now been examined is small, and that every page
[of the Sinaiticus Hermas] is filled with these peculiarities, the only
conclusion to which we can come is, that the Greek is not the Greek
of the at least first five centuries of the Christian era. There is no
document written within that period which has half so many neo-
Hellenic forms, taken page by page, as this Greek of the Pastor of
Hermas.”3

Donaldson goes on to say:
“The peculiarities which point out a Latin origin are the following:
There are, first, a number of Latin words where you would naturally
expect Greek.... Then there is a considerable number of passages
[of the Hermas] preserved to us in Greek by Origen and other
writers. The Sinaitic Greek differs often from this Greek, and agrees
with the Latin translation, especially the Palatine. There is every,
especially internal, probability that the Greek of the ancient writers is
nearer the original than the Sinaitic.”4

Now Donaldson was saying no more about the Sinaiticus
Hermas than Tischendorf had said about the Leipzig. Yet he was to
be pilloried for saying it. The way Donaldson’s analysis was
received, given the times in which he gave it, is not very surprising.
Preparation for the Revised Version was well under way, and
Sinaiticus was being trumpeted all around the world as the original
text of the Bible; Higher Criticism was riding the crest of a very large
wave, and Tischendorf’s honest bungling was about to bring it all
crashing down around the Vatican’s ears. They just didn’t need at
that moment in time Donaldson’s insightful analysis, so out came the
knives of assassination in the public press. Notice that no competent
linguist ever challenged his analysis. No academic. No scholar of
any note. It was left instead to others of lesser rank whom academe
could distance itself from should the truth ever come out. The
Saturday Review was commendably prompt in publicly disparaging
Donaldson, and here’s how they did it. The ‘review,’ of course, is
anonymous:

linguist ever challenged his analysis. No academic. No scholar of
any note. It was left instead to others of lesser rank whom academe
could distance itself from should the truth ever come out. The
Saturday Review was commendably prompt in publicly disparaging
Donaldson, and here’s how they did it. The ‘review,’ of course, is
anonymous:
“And here we must say that Dr Donaldson seems to us to have
lost his way in meddling with matters beyond the scope of his
ordinary studies.... It is really provoking to see a clever and, in his
province, a learned man, pass such a summary judgment as this on
a subject to which every line Dr Donaldson writes about it serves to
show that he has never paid adequate attention. In Greek
manuscripts, as in Latin, and even in English, though in them not to
the same extent, there exist from the fourth century downwards
certain peculiarities in the style of writing which are described and
illustrated in well-known text-books on palaeography and biblical
criticism... whereby the experienced eye may tell at a glance the true
date of a venerable book.... Tried by these tests, the Sinaitic
manuscript could not be referred to a lower period than that fixed by
Tischendorf, though it is probably a little junior to its famous partner
in the Vatican. Of course a document of this kind may be made by
craft and skill to simulate an antiquity which does not belong to it,
just as a bank-note may be successfully forged; but suspicions of
such a kind, when they arise, can be cleared up one way or another
to a moral certainty by a close examination of the internal character
of its contents, by scrutinizing the nature of its texts and the
congruity of the readings it exhibits with what we know from other
sources that they ought to be.”5

But obeying the same rules of investigation as the ‘review’
commends is precisely what Donaldson had done. And having done
it, he was led to the inexorable conclusion that the Hermas
embedded within the pages of Codex Sinaiticus was a modern
never once demonstrates with an example where Donaldson was at
fault. There is vitriol, sarcasm and spite aplenty, but no science, no
analysis and no positive rebuttal. In other words, the ‘review’ is a
worthless libel against one of the most industrious scholars of his
age.
But what exactly was the “scope of his ordinary studies” that so
limited the ignorant Donaldson in the eyes of our anonymous
reviewer? To begin with, such was the accumulation of his
knowledge in the field of the Greek language, ancient and modern,
that King Edward VII conferred a knighthood on him in 1907. Forty
years earlier, he had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of
Scotland. In 1881 he became Professor of Humanity at Aberdeen
University, and in 1890 Principal of St Andrews. Apart from his
earned doctorate, he was awarded two honorary doctorates by
Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities. He was the author of: A
Modern Greek Grammar for the Use of Classical Students, 1853;
Lyra Graeca, Specimens of Greek Lyric Poetry from Callinus to
Alexandros Soutsos,1854; A Critical History of Christian Literature
and Christian Doctrine from the Death of the Apostles to the Nicene
Council, issued in three volumes between 1864-1866; He
collaborated on the writing and editing of The Ante-Nicene Christian
Library, published in twenty-four volumes between 1867–72; The
Apostolical Fathers, of 1874, in which he offered his analysis of the
Shepherd of Hermas; Lectures on the History of Education in
Prussia and England, also in 1874; Expiatory and Substitutory
Sacrifices of the Greeks, 1875; The Westminster Confession of Faith
and the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, 1905; and
finally, Woman, her position and influence in ancient Greece and
Rome, published in 1907. Add to this list, books in German and
Latin, and I don’t know how many pamphlets, articles, lectures, talks
and debates that he must have engaged in over the years.
Moreover, he merited two biographical entries, one in the New
International Encyclopaedia, published in New York in 1905, a sure
token of his international reputation, and another in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1911. I doubt that our anonymous
reviewer could have boasted as much.

production. It is interesting indeed that our anonymous reviewer

 

[Steven Avery]

“The Greek of the first four chapters and a half.... contains many
of the conjectural emendations previously proposed by scholars.”