What Darkened Sinaiticus? - the strange hand-wave theories of Jacob W. Peterson and James Snapp

[Steven Avery]

Dear readers,
To go directly to the response to James Snapp and Jacob W. Peterson, please go down to the second post:

What Darkened Sinaiticus? - Friday, July 13, 2018
James Snapp with Jacob W. Peterson
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.715/post-1467

This first post is an introduction

=========================

WHY ARE THE 1859 SINAITICUS (British Library) PAGES "YELLOW WITH AGE"?

=========================

First, to see the basics:

Codex Sinaiticus Authenticity Resesarch
Parchment Colour - Four Contiguous Points
http://www.sinaiticus.net/four contiguous points.html

And two videos that emphasize the colouring
http://www.sinaiticus.net/video resources.html

Who Darkened Sinaiticus? - David W. Daniels

[video=youtube_share;WpezSRZcnUw]https://youtu.be/WpezSRZcnUw[/video]
Coloring The Truth - David W Daniels

[video=youtube_share;ezCO0p7-c68]https://youtu.be/ezCO0p7-c68[/video]

=========================

For the PureBibleForum, and the attempts of Jacob W. Peterson to lessen the colour evidences, this is a continuation of:

"it did NOT look to be 1600 years old"
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.684

AND

Jacob W. Peterson - "physical condition should play little part in dating a manuscript."
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.685

And the various attempts to downplay the colour evidence can be seen here:

can photography anomalies account for the 1844 CFA white vs the 1859 yellow ?
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.525

And you are welcome to find more on these topics on this site.
While discussion is possible here, most of our discussion takes place on Facebook, including:

Facebook - Sinaiticus group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/sinaiticus/

Facebook - Pure Bible group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/purebible/?ref=linked_groups_search

And well-moderated scholarly forums like:

Eureka! Medieval Manuscripts on the Web
https://www.facebook.com/groups/digital.eureka/

Palaeography
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1557478997849423/

==========================

For the "phenomenally good condition" of Sinaiticus, the short 2-minute BBC video is a must see!

BBC Four - Beauty of Books

[video=youtube;U4Xkv2gjzZw]

[/video]

Try to find similar videos of the of the other "Great Uncials"
As a comparison example, Skeat & Milne talking about Codex Alexandrinus, says it has a:

"limp, dead appearance in marked contrast to the vellum of the Codex Sinaiticus".

The Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Alexandrinus: with six illustrations (1938)

 

[Steven Avery]

What Darkened Sinaiticus? - James Snapp with Jacob W. Peterson

==========================

And will respond to the new post by James Snapp:

What Darkened Sinaiticus? - Friday, July 13, 2018
James Snapp with Jacob W. Peterson
http://www.thetextofthegospels.com/2018/07/what-darkened-sinaiticus.html

==========================

LEIPZIG FOLIOS - "NOTABLE FOR THEIR WHITENESS"
Compare JACOB PETERSON vs. GAVIN MOORHEAD (British Library Conservator)

Before we begin, let's remind our dear readers that the British Library and CSP accepts that there is a large distinction in colour between the Leipzig and the British Library leaves. Clearly, Jacob Peterson, with the rah-rah support of James Snapp, would have to consider those men to be unreliable on the matter.

Gavin Moorhead - Conservator, British Library, email in March, 2016:
"the Leipzig folios are notable for their whiteness."

Which Jacob and James have been told before, and could have easily read on this site.

Clearly, on the white parchment thread we see that the historical observation was "white parchment". Clearly on the CSP images, we see the Leipzig pages are white parchment (perhaps an off-white, but clearly white, with nary a tinge of yellow). Gavin Moorhead acknowledged this graciously in response to our email inquiries: "the Leipzig folios are notable for their whiteness." Stringent standards were established and followed to standardize the photography. Colour bars are included. The background is identical.

So ... in comparing two professional opinions about the colour of the Leipzig pages ... who do we believe? On a simple factual matter.

Gavin Moorhead of the British Library and the CSP Project, a gentleman who worked closely with the manuscript and professionals and staff and knows about the photography. Cillian O'Hogan, then at the British Library and now at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, helped make the connection with Gavin Moorhead, and wrote the actual correspondence, quoting Gavin. Gavin also has the photographs of the Codex Sinaiticus Project on his side.

(Later, after reading this, Jacob tried a worthless attempt to agree with the "notable for their whiteness" concept based on colour numbers. Of course Gavin was talking about visual and photographs, NOT NCS codes.)

Or should we accept the confusions of Jacob W. Peterson who afawk has worked with ... NOTHING, involving Sinaiticus. His only concern has been to give a general dismissal, or at least downplaying, of the incredible evidence we can see directly by the Codex Sinaiticus Project.

The answer is rather obvious.

============================

Now, to be fair, as you would expect, the British Library does not accept this colour distinction as demonstrating Sinaiticus as a recent manuscript (remember, this is their "priceless" holding, and there is a lot of history and reputation behind the acquisition. We do appreciate that they were, nonetheless, willing to talk forthrightly and honestly about the colour.)

They, like Jacob, would like there to be some explanation. Perhaps in storage and conservation, without offering any sensible, real explanation. However, the British Library does this from the integrity position of accepting the clear and obvious major colour variance between their British Library leaves and those of Leipzig. This is what Jacob Peterson has been struggling against for two years, and Jacob has continually failed to show the manuscript sections in Leipsig and the British Library as actually close in color.

============================

THE 1859 BRITISH LIBRARY STREAKS AND STAINS ARE PART OF THE EVIDENCE

Let’s also notice how this crafty dynamic duo of Peterson and Snapp omitted discussing or even referencing one of the most important auxiliary facts.

The colour-consistent off-white 1844 Leipzig leaves are essentially stain and streak free.

The widely variant 1859 British Library leaves are stained and streaky.

Why?
Nothing from Jacob to explain the stain and streak anomaly distinction. A big zero.
And streaks and stains are 100% consistent with artificial colouring.

Here is one spot that has stain-related analysis:

British Library facsimile 2011-2012 "sensitive adjustments" pictures of stained pages - comparing Leipzig 1844 and British Library 1859
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.548

In addition, Jacob does not tell you about the:

"phenomenally good condition" (Helen Shenton of the BL) of BOTH sections of Sinaiticus,
how it turns easy-peasy like today's newspaper as you can see in the BBC video,
the freshness of the ink and the lack of acid deterioration of the parchment
--- and so many evidences that Sinaiticus is simply not ancient.

Jacob and James do a lot of avoidance therapy.

=========================

PETERSON'S BLIND CLAIMS AGAINST THE CSP PHOTOGRAPHY

And let's also remember that Jacob Peterson is NOT claiming that he has done ANY study of the leaves at all. Afawk, Jacob has not viewed the two sections, he was not involved with the photography, and he has NOT made any efforts to contact the museusms or the professionals, including the photographers. It is quite unlikely that Jacob Peterson has even looked at more than a couple of the Codex Sinaiticus Project pages, or the 2011-12 Hendrickson and British Library book. He is pontificating and flying blind (we saw this in our previous discussions as well.)

By contrast, the SART team has made numerous contacts, received special hi-rez photos, and had correspondence with the museums and the photographers (whenever possible.).
We also researched why the 2011-2012 Hendrickson and British Library pricey Sinaiticus edition masked the colour distinction by darkening the Leipzig pages, using the cover ruse of “sensitive adjustments.”

British Library facsimile 2011-2012 "sensitive adjustments"
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.131

====================

CRAFTY WORDING TO DECEIVE THE READERS

Before we go down point-by-point, let's start with the crafty wording, technique used by Jacob W. Peterson. A gentleman who often stumbles on simple logic, at least when discussing Sinaiticus. A weakness we first saw clearly when Jacob falsely and wrongly claimed that the non-authenticity position is non-falsifiable.

Jacob Peterson
the leaves in Leipzig .... It is demonstrably untrue that those leaves are drastically different from those in London.

Even from a classical ad hominem approach, allowing all his questionable arguments to be true, Jacob Peterson has not remotely demonstrated his claim here.

Jacob has only made efforts to fudge the difference, claimed shades of variance. Jacob Peterson has NOT shown that the British and Leipzig leaves are close, rather than drastically different, as we see on the Codex Sinaiticus Project site.

This statement above alone shows that Jacob is really not trying to do accurate scholarship.

Such crafty wording. Jacob Peterson is trying to imply that he has proven that there is not a large colour distinction that requires careful consideration and explanation. Jacob wants to falsely imply that he has proven the basic issue.

Yet, all Jacob has done, though, is throw a little fuzz and buzz into the air. He clearly has not proven ... anything at all ... about the Leipzig-British Library distinction. An obvious and significant distinction which is even acknowledged by the British Library Conservator quoted above.

Gavin Moorhead - Conservator, British Library, email in March, 2016:
"the Leipzig folios are notable for their whiteness."

And it looks very clear that Jacob carefully parsed his words with one goal — to deceive the readers.

====================

ONE PAGE TO ENGLAND COULD PROVE THE POINT

Here is one simple way to end all the hyper-theorizing of the Snaiticus authenticity defenders, who deny the CSP images as accurate.

Take any leaf from Germany (they are all virtually identical in parchment colour) and bring it to England. Open up the English binding and place the 1844 Leipzig page right there, overlapping. Do that for 5 Brit pages, since they vary. Take photographs. Publish the results. End of story.

Then I believe we would laugh for a week about the Jacob Peterson hyper-theorizing.

====================

WHAT DARKENED SINAITICUS? - WORKING DOWN THE JAMES SNAPP ARTICLE

Now, let’s work down this Snapp-Peterson pseudo-scholarly train wreck.

What Darkened Sinaiticus?

Snapp
Last year, I wrote a three-part series of posts refuting a conspiracy-claim to the effect that the famous Codex Sinaiticus is a forgery made in the 1800s. Alas, the conspiracy theorists – particularly David W. Daniels of Chick Publications, assisted by Steven Avery – have continued to promote their theory that a man named Constantine Simonides produced the manuscript in his youth.

Since James ignored major points and most of his arguments were a "mulitiplicaiton of nothings" .. nothing was refuted. Feel free to study the rebuttal to his rather vapid argumentation.

James Snapp attempts to defend authenticity of Sinaiticus
three-part article by James Snapp
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.468/post-939

Notice that James did not offer any response as his points were dismantled.

Note: Sinaiticus was very possibly designed as a replica, not a forgery.

As to being "conspiracy theorists", what a silly phrase. In fact, I used to support the idea that Sinaiticus was authentic, even into the White-Pinto debate of 2013, and even listed a few reasons for my belief. Over time, however, the evidence that Sinaiticus was produced c. 1840 became massive, with a key component being the examination of the manuscript after the 2009 Codex Sinaiticus Project. And the ability to use the net to take apart the various historical myths about the Sinaiticus history, learn much more, find new documents and articles, have Uspensky's words translated, find the 1843 Barnabas of Simonides, do historical forensics, and piece the puzzle together.

Plus the real theory is that a team under Benedict did most of the prep work, at Mt. Athos. And that Simonides was simply a principle scribe. You can easily see the Simonides involvement by studying the "Sinaitic" editions of Barnabas (1843) and Hermas (1855) that Simonides published ... BEFORE the Sinaiticus Tischendorf "discovery" of these books.

No, James Snapp does not talk about major parts of the historical evidences, like Tischendorf he tries to tell you to just "look over here". With Tischendorf it was his carefully tampered facsimile, with James Snapp it is his little 3-part article, his multiplication of nothings.

Lately their website has focused on a particular question about the difference between the photographs of the portion of Codex Sinaiticus that is housed at the University of Leipzig and the portions that are housed elsewhere (mainly at the British Library, and at Saint Catherine’s Monastery):

Lately?? The amazing color disparity has been a central part of our studies since the 2014 discovery that Leipzig is in fact "white parchment.” While the British Library is "yellow with age" and streaky and stained.

And this website, that shows the smoking gun, BEFORE and AFTER, evidences of the colouring has been up for about 2 and a half years!

Codex Sinaiticus Authenticity Research
http://www.sinaiticus.net/

“Why,” they ask, “are the CFA pages in Leipzig University Library white, while the remainder of the pages, described in 1845 as “white”, are stained and yellowed with age?”

Yes, great question. And that is from the web-site and has been there for years.

– the insinuation being that Constantine Tischendorf (who took most of the manuscript from Saint Catherine’s monastery during visits to Saint Catherine’s monastery in 1844 and 1859) artificially colored the second batch of pages, in an attempt to make them look ancient. “Sinaiticus is clearly a fake,” Daniels states about Codex Sinaiticus in his book, Is the World’s Oldest Bible a Fake?, and “It is not an ancient manuscript at all.”

Constantine Tischendorf, or individuals working at his behest in St. Catherine's (and possibly Cairo) are the logical candidates for this tampering.

One important fact that James craftily omits. This colouring was specifically called out in the 1862-1864 controversies, where Kallinikos consistently gave the inside information from Sinai. Here is one of the quotes:

the early 1860s references to the colouring of the manuscript
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.490

“I know too, still further, that the same Codex was cleaned, with a solution of herbs, on the theory that the skins might be cleaned, but, in fact, that the writing might be changed, as it was, to a sort of yellow colour.”

Amazing. According to James Snapp, Simonides knew nothing of the ms. It would be obviously absurd to make this claim in the blind. On what basis? And if there were no streaking, or if the two sections were the same, you would be immediately refuted.

However, nobody publicly compared the two sections of the ms., which matches this event to a "T", until after the 2009 Codex Sinaiticus Project!

The real Bible, Daniels affirms, is the King James Bible. Much of his book has nothing to do with Codex Sinaiticus and is a presentation of KJV-Onlyist propaganda, which I shall not address here. Instead, I shall consider today a question which Daniels raised repeatedly: why are the pages from the first collection of pages that Tischendorf obtained in 1844 (the “Codex Frederico-Augustanus” pages housed at the University of Leipzig, in Germany) lighter in color than the rest of the pages?

The bulk of the Sinaiticus material, including this website and the www.sinaiticus.net research site, are done fully with the focus on Codex Sinaiticus.

And in his (first) book on Sinaiticus, in paperbook or Kindle:

Is The "World's Oldest Bible" A Fake? (2018)
David W. Daniels
https://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Oldest-Bible-Fake-ebook/dp/B078XKXDW8
http://www.chick.com/catalog/books/1442.asp

David gives point after point directly about Codex Sinaiticus, other than the colour and condition issues, that James Snapp simply ignores, such as the:

1843 Barnabas which once again, along with Hermas, shows Simonides in a pre-Sinaiticus mode,
Porfiry Uspensky account, demolishing Tischendorf lies, that we had translated
Athos history from Spyridon Paulou Lamprou emphasized in Literary Forgeries by James Anson Farrer.

These are taking simply from The Sinaiticus Smoking Gun? in p. 299-329. The James Donaldson linguistics is in p. 139-156, once again unmentioned by James Snapp. So James could easily bypass any emphasis on the King James Bible and work with the Sinaiticus issues.

Jacob W. Peterson, with a book-cradle for manuscript photography.

This issue about the color of the parchment seems to have been a sort of spark to Daniels’ investigations. In his book, he describes an experience he had: “I prayed and asked God, ‘What question should I ask?” And I heard “What color is it?” And that was the beginning of all that you are about to read. Please, check the facts all you want.”

This is accurate. Thank you Lord Jesus.

And I remember the first night that David stayed up looking at all the Codex Friderico-Augustanus pages and many of the British Library pages. I had helped point him to the question, but David really ran with the studies!

Okay. Let’s check the facts. To test Daniels’ claim that “someone darkened Sinaiticus,” I’ve consulted Jacob W. Peterson, a photography-specialist at the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts who has worked with almost 500 New Testament manuscripts and prepared thousands of photographs of manuscripts for CSNTM. Here’s the conversation we had about the differences in the photographs of the different portions of Codex Sinaiticus:

Jacob has tried hard over the years to “explain” the manuscript sections.

Now we have 9 Q&A.

Q&A-1

Q: Jacob, the photographs of the pages of Codex Sinaiticus at Leipzig clearly have a lighter tone than the photographs of the pages of Codex Sinaiticus at the British Library. How do you account for this?

Peterson: There are two explanations for what is going on here between the parts of the manuscript in the two collections and their online presentation. As that sentence hints at, these differences are part actual and part visual effect. As to the actual difference, there are undoubtedly differences in the storage conditions of these two sections of the manuscripts that likely led to some of the color difference.

For instance, you can look at other portions of the Codex Sinaiticus that are currently housed at St. Catherine’s that share the same color qualities of the London leaves. They are just as dark, if not slightly darker. It should be obvious that the manner in which a manuscript is stored can, and does, have an effect on its color and condition. The visual effect on the images is immediately recognizable for anyone who has worked in digital reproduction and with manuscripts in particular.

We’ll get into some of the finer details in a bit, but as an introduction, the color balance for the images appears to be off and my suspicion is that the lighting in the room had adverse effects on the resulting images. What this means is that the photographs of the Leipzig portion are not entirely accurate representations of the real leaves. Storage has definitely played a role. I’m not saying that the leaves are actually dirty brown, but rather that the leaves are not greyish-white.

Now let's study this a bit

As to the actual difference, there are undoubtedly differences in the storage conditions of these two sections of the manuscripts that likely led to some of the color difference.

Wait a minute.
Jacob acts as if Sinaiticus began its history in 1840!

Yet Jacob tells us that in his history ALL the manuscript was in the SAME storage conditions from c. 350 AD to 1845 AD. So the colouring and hardening and aging and oxidation should be virtually identical, irrespective of small differences after 1840 (unless there was a fire, or flood, or ice age.)

It is almost like the Sinaiticus authenticity defenders check their thinking abilities at the door. .

Plus we have an historical announcement, from Porfiry Uspensky in 1845, that the WHOLE manuscript was white parchment. So how did the ms. stay white for 1500 years, in a variety of usage and handling and corrections and reading and activity - in the dry desert that normally would yellow a ms. an have it lose it suppleness?

And then all of a sudden the ms. does a "streaky yellow gallop" after 1859? And only in Russia, while Leipzig stayed white?

Jacob does not deal with the actual colour and conservation issues. He simply throws out hyper-theorizing.

One more point (emphasis added):

differences in the storage conditions ... likely led to some of the color difference.

This is stated again and again by Jacob and James. Without even one smidgen of evidence. This is really a "hopeful monster". There is not a shred of evidence from Leipzig or from the British Library that colours were changing dramatically. That stains and streaks were being added. NOT ONE SHRED of evidence.

Their only basis for this claim is their desire to "explain" the huge differences.

For instance, you can look at other portions of the Codex Sinaiticus that are currently housed at St. Catherine’s that share the same color qualities of the London leaves. They are just as dark, if not slightly darker.

Jacob simply does not know the Sinaiticus history. The Hermas leaves in the New Finds were likely discarded by Tischendorf due to the linguistic embarrassment, after his awkward linguistic accusation and retraction, as we discuss on this forum. They may well have been yellowed before being discarded, and the New Finds was an unusual spot where there could easily be moisture and flooding. So Jacob's analogy is worthless.

... as an introduction, the color balance for the images appears to be off and my suspicion is that the lighting in the room had adverse effects on the resulting images. What this means is that the photographs of the Leipzig portion are not entirely accurate representations of the real leaves. Storage has definitely played a role. I’m not saying that the leaves are actually dirty brown, but rather that the leaves are not greyish-white.

Some artful dancing here. "We can agree with "not entirely accurate representations", which means next to nothing. As the colour bars show us that the whites, creams, and yellows are in fact reasonably consistent, and that corrections to match the two sections would be very minor compared to the huge colour variance that is visible.

As for the Leipzig pages not being "greyish-white" or "off-white", actually Jacob never gives any evidence against this visible colour. And he seems to want to avoid the word "yellow", since that is the colouring of the British leaves and there is no comparable yellow colour in Leipzig.

Q&A-2

Q: Here you have supplied, as an example of the effect of subtle environmental factors, two photographs of the same manuscript page. One image looks darker than the other. Did you apply lemon juice or tea to the manuscript-page before you took the second photo, or is there some other explanation?



Peterson: Haha, no. This is a great example of how digital photography is not as simple as pointing a camera at an object, pressing a button, and out pops a perfect reproduction of the object. These images were taken about 15 minutes apart. If I remember the day correctly, we had just bought new cameras and were trying them out. We were working in a room with yellowish walls and the color would not come out correctly no matter how hard we tried. We moved the manuscript over to another room, where the walls were white, and the image was much better. So we brought the manuscript back to the main room, turned off the overhead lights, and only used the lights on our digitization stand. The correctly colored image on the left was the result. The implication is that the overhead lights were causing enough reflection off the walls to affect the color-tones in the photograph. When possible, we now use only the lighting attached to our equipment, which is designed to emit both warm and cool tones to provide as neutral lighting as possible.

The difference is so small that Jacob and James are simply proving our position and understanding about the 1844 Leipzig and the 1859 British Library. Grasping at straws is the Jacob Peterson method.

Thanks!

Q&A-3

Q: When you compared the colors of the photographs of different parts of Codex Sinaiticus, what did you observe, and what does that imply about the environments in which the photographs were taken?

Peterson: The portion of the manuscript housed in London features the typical slight variations one would expect in a manuscript. Some pages are slightly lighter, and some are darker. This is due to which side of the parchment you’re looking at (hair or flesh) and several other factors, like different kinds of animals used as sources of parchment.

The leaves at Leipzig, on the other hand, are a consistent off-white, which I would describe as having a cool-grey tone. There are a couple of problems with this: (1) Leaves should have a little more variation than we see here due to the factors just mentioned, and (2) Manuscripts typically don’t have a cool-grey tone. Most manuscripts I’ve seen shade toward warm-yellow tones since this is more or less the default starting tone for parchment. If I were of the conspiracy mindset and knew that the images were accurate, I would actually be more inclined to think the Leipzig leaves were bleached to make them look newer. The situation would be comparable to the guys who polish the patina off of old guns to make them appear to be in better condition, but in doing so ruin their value. But I digress.

Ok, many problems here:

"The portion of the manuscript housed in London features the typical slight variations"

Wrong. Mark Michie has shown by the coded numbers that there are large variations, and quite inconsistent. You can easily see this by your own observation. It is my opinion from how he writes that Jacob has spent very little time looking at the Sinaiticus photography pages.

Plus the stains and streaks are common, only on the London pages. No mention from Jacob.

"The leaves at Leipzig, on the other hand, are a consistent off-white,"

Yep.

(1) Leaves should have a little more variation than we see here due to the factors just mentioned, and (2) Manuscripts typically don’t have a cool-grey tone. Most manuscripts I’ve seen shade toward warm-yellow tones since this is more or less the default starting tone for parchment.

There are starting tones of white parchment after production, spoken of in the parchment literature, depending on the animals and the care of production. Although not after 1650 years of use!

One of Jacob's problem is that he is used to seeing manuscripts that are, say, 1000 years old. Those will be yellow with age, unlike Sinaiticus. Leipzig is off-white because the parchment was made with some care, and it is less than 200 years old.

If I were of the conspiracy mindset and knew that the images were accurate, I would actually be more inclined to think the Leipzig leaves were bleached to make them look newer. The situation would be comparable to the guys who polish the patina off of old guns to make them appear to be in better condition, but in doing so ruin their value. But I digress.

So then there should be a record of this polishing at the Leipzig University Library.

Plus, how does that theorized colouring get rid of the stains and streaks that are common on the British Library pages? In fact, this phantom cleaning would be likely to increase streakiness.

Plus, we are told by Uspensky that it was in fact a fully "white parchment" manuscript in 1845. All sections. oops.

The "let's try the kitchen sink" theories of Jacob fall apart, once again.

Q&A-4

Q: When you compare the color-charts that accompany the pages at Leipzig to the color-charts that accompany the pages at London, do you notice any difference?

Peterson: There are immediately recognizable differences. The color chart in the London images is visually much closer to what I would expect. The color variations between the patches are clear and sharp. There’s no mistaking the magenta for a slightly different red. Similarly, the gradient of the greyscale proceeds nicely and evenly with differences between the sections noticeable at every point.

The Leipzig color charts unfortunately have some problems. The magenta and the purple patches are clearly not correct. At times the magenta is barely distinguishable from the red and the purple almost looks black. The grey and black patches are also barely distinguishable. Similarly, the greyscale portion of the chart has barely distinguishable sections on the black end and the middle grey color ends up being in the upper third of the chart rather than in the middle. To these color differences can also be added the background color for the images. I do not know for certain that they used the same board or material, but it looks that way and would be a sensible protocol. Yet, the background color does not match in the images across locations.

Some differences in magenta and purple are going to have minimal effect on white, off-white, cream and yellow parchment representations.

The grey and black patches are also barely distinguishable.

His comment on gray and black simply is funny, since that would make the Leipzig pages darker. (Elijah Hixson gave a critical tweak to this in our discussion. An interesting discussion, but it gets far away from the basics of these posts.)

And I will show you the British and Leipzig colour charts and both have an easy time distinguishing gray and black, since there is a separate bar for gray-scale.

Let's take the colour charts from the first contiguous pages. (On the Brit I went one page earlier simply to avoid the flip.)

British Library
http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/m...lioNo=1&lid=en&quireNo=35&side=r&zoomSlider=0

Leipzig
http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/m...lioNo=1&lid=en&quireNo=35&side=v&zoomSlider=0
Sinaiticus.net Contiguous picture
http://www.sinaiticus.net/four contiguous points.html

=========================

Now the colour bars.

Clearly there are some modest differences.

And clearly they have very little to do with the difference between the pages in Leipzig and the pages at the British Library, which is a rather massive off-white to yellow distinction.

The differences would be more significant if this was a beautiful wonderland countryside showing blue waters and green trees and dark red autumn leaves.

Q&A-5

Q: Does this mean that someone has been darkening the color-charts, along with the parchment, using lemon-juice or some special chemical agent?

Peterson: Definitely not.

The question from James Snapp is actually quite stupid.
As we would agree 100% that nobody has darkened the color-charts!

As to the parchment, we still have the following anomalies (combined with the fact that the libraries do NOT want any material testing.)

1) the Leipzig pages are noticeably whiter

2) the British pages are noticeably stained and streaky and uneven in colour

3) the Leipzig pages are basically stain-free

4) all pages are far too supple and young for their supposed use and age. And for Tischendorf to push for the 4th century date there was an incentive to become "yellow with age".

5) the colouring of the pages was specficially noted as having occurred in the 1850s, written in 1862. This is the fine art of historical forensics, an area where James and Jacob are simply clueless. Neither one ever touches the fact that the colouring was declared publicly.

6) Tischendorf deceived about the colour of the parchment, and he described the Sinaiticus parchment as sufflava. When in fact Leipzig was white, and is today.

7) Tischendorf told various brazen lies about how and when he saw and received (i.e. stole) the manuscript sections, including the self-serving "saved from fire" nonsense.

8) There was very limited access to the two sections, which were kept far apart. Tischendorf pointed everyone to his facsimile edition, where he could pretend the whole ms. was yellow.

It is the combination of these facts that shows us that the colouring of the manuscript artificially between 1845 and 1860 is quite definitely a historical fact.

Rarely, if ever, does authenticity or forgery analysis get such a powerful evidence as:

a) white parchment 1844 Leipzig, no stains
b) yellowed parchment 1859 British Library, stained and streaky

Matching perfectly the historical account of the staining!

And there are no evidences available against the hand-colouring. Mostly convoluted hand-waves, at which James Snapp (who throws out all sorts of contradictory tries) and Jacob, are skilled, but to no avail.

In fact, one argument we come across with some frequency is that .. yes, there may be colouring by herbs and lemon-juice, but that does not prove by itself that Sinaiticus was not actually fourth century. That is actually a more honest approach to these evidencs, but leaves the Sinaiticus authenticity position in quite a sticky wicket.

Q&A-6

Q: What, then, does it mean?

Peterson: There are perfectly normal explanations for everything involved. Again, I think the storage conditions make up a significant portion of the differences, but the imaging has really altered our perception of the manuscript’s color. At the NT Textual Criticism discussion-group on Facebook, I offered the possible explanation that the Leipzig portion was photographed under particularly cool lights (in the 6500K range). This would have given everything a cool-grey appearance so that what the photographers were seeing in the images was accurate to what they were seeing with their eyes. It would be like the difference between seeing things by the light of old yellow-tinted headlights versus new blue-tinted halogen headlights. The tone of the light you are using drastically influences your perception of the objects you’re looking at.

In such a scenario, the Leipzig crew did nothing blameworthy, and unfortunately their photographs were negatively affected by the lights of the room they were given to work in. Photographing manuscripts is not an easy task and there are so many variables, often out of your control, that can really affect the end product. My job is to critique photographs of manuscripts and you can ask teams working under me how much of a stickler I can be about getting things right. We have a shooting standard called “practical perfection” because we know that perfection is unattainable and sometimes there’s just nothing you can do or the equipment just won’t adjust quite right. At the end of the day, the Sinaiticus images are perfectly usable and I’d never advocate for re-imaging them because the minimal returns that would result would not be worth the risk of damaging the manuscript.

All of this is basically blah-blah hyper-theorizing (notice how Jacob never checks his various theories with the photographers or conservators) to try to go against the "facts on the ground":

pictures are professionally and excellently done, under a Working Standards commitee
British Library Conservator agrees with the difference
nobody who worked with the sections has claimed that the Leipzig pages are really yellow or close to the Brit pages
the colour bars affirm the basic integrity of the colour comparision.
Jacob will not discuss the stains and streaks, or the "phenomenally good condition"
Jacob does not realize that these sections had identical storage for 1500 years, per his theory.

If one sheet from Germany was brought to England, all this wild theorizing would be put to the test .

Q&A-7

Q: So, which possibility seems more likely to you: that Constantine Tischendorf deliberately darkened 347 pages of parchment, or that the photographs taken of the pages at Leipzig were taken under conditions that caused the parchment to look lighter than it actually is?

Peterson: I definitely think the Leipzig leaves are artificially lighter in the images than in reality. I made a technical measurement of the lightness value of the white square in the color target in one of the images at Leipzig, and it was 99, which is impossible given the type of target used and in comparison to the 95 value seen in the images at London. This means that the image from Leipzig is washed out. At minimum, it has what is technically called a Δ4 change.

Once again, the British Library agrees with what we see in the CSP photography:

the Leipzig folios are notable for their whiteness.

The pictures show a huge difference. To claim that the Leipzig pages are a smidgen less light is possible, and is consistent with the small differences in the colour bars. Yet all the basic elements and problems by the colour and stain variation to Sinaiticus authenticity remain.

Leipzig came out first, 1844 it is white parchment, pristine, unstained
In 1845 all the full remaining manuscript was white parchment, per Uspensky.
Yet in 1859, the Russian section was yellow, stained and streaky
Leipzig is still white parchment in 2018

All very simple and clear, and the small issues of off-white raised by Jacob here change nothing.

 

[Steven Avery]

Q&a 8-9

q&a 8

q: could you explain in a little more detail what is wrong with the approach being used by David Daniels?

Peterson: the individuals who are claiming that sinaiticus is a forgery are focusing on the hcl color values that were assigned to the images. There is, no doubt, some objectivity and subjectivity to the process of assigning hcl color values when this is done without a spectrometer and averaging software. Nevertheless, they provide a much better picture of the real color since they were done with the actual manuscript at hand. The conspiracy theorists have said the following about the color of the pages at leipzig:

“the colour of the cfa pages housed in leipzig are consistently characterized by the csp as s 1005-y20r, while the leaves housed at the british library are more variable. They tend toward a ncs number of s 1010-y or s1010-y10r but vary all the way from s 1005-y20r to s 1515-y10r.”

​

they then offer this image [shown to right] as a sample of these ncs values. You would have to be imbibing severe amounts of alcohol to think three of those colors even remotely describe codex sinaiticus. The github generator they’ve used to convert the ncs code into rgb has serious deficiencies. If i had to guess, the code has inverted the yellow-red values. The s 1515-y10r looks rather like actual ncs color s 1515-y90r (as an aside, not recognizing such an issue casts strong doubt on the generator provided by the organization that came up with the ncs.

Regarding the claims about supposedly radical differences in page color, let’s just say i am less than impressed. I don’t have an explanation for why in leipzig they seemed to have gone with a single descriptor code. Perhaps they wanted to be a bit more specific with the larger sample size of leaves in london. Perhaps the leipzig leaves are more uniform. Again, storage conditions perfectly explain the latter option if that’s the case. Regardless of which of these is true, it is demonstrably untrue that the leaves in leipzig are the cool-grey color that is shown in the digital images. It is demonstrably untrue that those leaves are drastically different from those in london. The leipzig leaves in actuality have a slight yellow tint that is exactly the same as, or very near to, the tint of some leaves in london.

Q&A-8 Response

Now we get down to the real smoke and mirrors from Jacob W. Peterson.

the individuals who are claiming that sinaiticus is a forgery are focusing on the hcl color values that were assigned to the images.

This claim is totally false. We generally go over the colour codes in response to false claims from Jacob Peterson (and we had to correct an Elijah Hixson error), starting in 2016. The codes are helpful (e.g. they show us that the Leipzig pages are uniform while the British pages vary widely, even wildly) but not fundamental due to numerous limitations which we have carefully explained to Jacob, such as the paucity of discrete points, the variation in the streaky British Library pags, a bit of personal subjectivity and the differences in colour generation patches

Our emphasis on the colour of Sinaiticus is directly from the Codex Sinaiticus Project (CSP) pictures.

That is obvious from the SART web site, and also the COVER of the book of David W. Daniels, which shows that superb composite picture! For Jacob to say otherwise shows that he does not pay attention to what we have presented.

they provide a much better picture of the real color since they were done with the actual manuscript at hand.

Wrong again. Not in Sinaiticus, for the reasons given. Some of which Jacob agrees with (e.g visual numbers, no spectrometer). Others he ignores, like the discrete points and variation within the pages. One problem for Jacob is that he refuses to actually engage in full dialog (like this post in response), iron sharpeneth. Jacob tries to cherry-pick a point here and there, and ignores anything else.

Thus, Mark Michie (who, unlike Jacob, has actually looked at and analysed the numbers from Sinaiticus pages in depth) points out:

Mark Michie
I did note some places where the photos seemed to show differently than the colour data seemed to indicate.

See also the earlier 2016 and 2018 discussions, documented on this website.

The conspiracy theorists

This is actually a very silly attempt to marshal some support from the readers who actually believe that Government and Instituational "science" is the fount of truth. Thus they should also accept without thinking vapid pronouncements by men who are "textual critics".

have said the following about the color of the pages at leipzig:

“the colour of the cfa pages housed in leipzig are consistently characterized by the csp as s 1005-y20r, while the leaves housed at the british library are more variable. They tend toward a ncs number of s 1010-y or s1010-y10r but vary all the way from s 1005-y20r to s 1515-y10r.”

Yes, this is accurate information from Mark on the page:

Parchment Colour - Four Contiguous Points
http://www.sinaiticus.net/four contiguous points.html

We will bring over a more complete picture than the one in the James Snapp blog.

they then offer this image [shown to right] as a sample of these ncs values. You would have to be imbibing severe amounts of alcohol to think three of those colors even remotely describe codex sinaiticus. The github generator they’ve used to convert the ncs code into rgb has serious deficiencies. If i had to guess, the code has inverted the yellow-red values. The s 1515-y10r looks rather like actual ncs color s 1515-y90r (as an aside, not recognizing such an issue casts strong doubt on the generator provided by the organization that came up with the ncs.

Putting aside the stupid insult (we never claim the pictures represent Sinaiticus very well, by generation, the Sinaiticus PICTURES are on the www.sinaiticus.net page, much larger, and the PHOTOGRAPHS represent Sinaiticus) we can try to parse the actual truth here.

It is clear that in three cases the colour generator gives too much red, compared to Codex Sinaiticus. Whether that is because of the numbers chosen, with problems like the limits of discrete points, or the weakness of the generator, is a question to study. While Jacob tries the insult mode, the actual material from Mark is, we believe, accurate. It would be good to add the colour generator used, and a bit more background, so stay tuned here for a bit more.

Yet, just recently, on the NT Textual Criticism forum, Jacob tried to recreate the actual colours using a different generator, and only for one or two pages.

Facebook NT Textual Criticism
https://www.facebook.com/groups/NTTextualCriticism/permalink/2041383142615342/?comment_id=2041572409263082&reply_comment_id=2042685552485101&comment_tracking={"tn":"R"}

We discussed this here, showing all the methodology errors of Jacob, (since James Snapp would not take my posts.)

"it did NOT look to be 1600 years old"
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.684

Jacob did this to try to claim that the numbers would show Leipzig and the British Library are really close, so don't look at the photographs! However, this was a total failure, as will be any Sinaiticus claims that try to generate the colour from the numbers.

In fact, Jacob knows that this must be a failure, as he pointed out one of the many flaws in an earlier conversation:

Jacob Peterson
... NCS profiles. ... Look at the individual pages: If you're the conservator, which point do you use as the color standard for the whole page? Can any one point represent the color of the page? (Hint: the answer is no).

And there are other flaws like the lack of a spectrometer and the paucity of discrete points.

So why did Jacob try to show Leipzig and the British Library to be close based on a totally flawed methodology? My answer -- either confusion on his end, or trickery.

We will go over the rest of his colour generator comments in a bit.

Regarding the claims about supposedly radical differences in page color, let’s just say i am less than impressed.

And we are quite umimpressed with your attempts to fight the radical differences that are obvious to anybody who actually goes through the CSP photographs.

I don’t have an explanation for why in leipzig they seemed to have gone with a single descriptor code.

Then why don't you actually LOOK AT the photographs of the 86 pages. You will see that they are incredibly uniform, unlike the wild variance in the British Library pages. In fact, you might start wondering if the British Library pages got that way by artificial tampering!

Emphasis added:

Perhaps they wanted to be a bit more specific with the larger sample size of leaves in london. Perhaps the leipzig leaves are more uniform.

Jacob, if you LOOKED AT the Codex Sinaiticus Project photographs, you would see they are much more uniform. (A uniformity and condition that fits the 180 year scenario much better than the Tischendorf theory of 1650 years.)

Again, storage conditions perfectly explain the latter option if that’s the case.

The same blunder as above. Jacob does not even realize that his theory is that these two sections have EXACTLY the same storage conditions proposed for 1500 years! Amazing!

Now James M. Peterson goes into FULL-BLOWN ERROR mode, a point I made in the introduction.

Regardless of which of these is true, it is demonstrably untrue that the leaves in leipzig are the cool-grey color that is shown in the digital images.

Actually, all that we have seen (and the colour bars are a big help here) is that the Leipzig colour are likely a smidgen darker than they look. "cool-grey" is subjective, and may well actually be accurate.

It is demonstrably untrue that those leaves are drastically different from those in london. The leipzig leaves in actuality have a slight yellow tint that is exactly the same as, or very near to, the tint of some leaves in london.

And this is a fabrication. Jacob is totally wrong here, possibly out of confusion and bias).

Jacob is contradicting the Conservator with CSP experience --
"the Leipzig folios are notable for their whiteness."

And Jacob is contradicting some of his own statements, where he indicated there could still be real differences after whatever changes he wants to make to the Leipzig colour, away from the CSP photographs. One example is the far more cautious :

I'm not saying the (Leipzig) page will suddenly turn brown. I'm saying it will lose it's grey hue and look like actual parchment. It will be more yellow, but yes it will still be lighter than the other leaves. It just shouldn't look like a dead body.

Admittedly, there are differences between the locations, but they aren't nearly as drastic as the images make them out to be.

Actually, we can be quite confident that they are drastic, but even his statement above is totally different than:

"exactly the same as, or very near to"

Jacob is simply trying to deceive the readers by pretending he has "explained" the white parchment Leipzig pages.

q&a 9

Q: So, how – with a minimum of jargon – would you answer David Daniels’ question, “Who darkened Sinaiticus?”

Peterson: The natural passage of time, with possibly a little help from the British climate. The options are to trust either (1) color science as demonstrated by L*A*B* and NCS color schemes, the physical assessment of the manuscript by a team of scholars, and my experience digitizing manuscripts or (2) A theologically motivated group who have never, to my knowledge, photographed, handled, worked with, or seen a manuscript except for perhaps in a museum display.

TTotG: Thanks, Jacob. I remind our readers that in addition to this explanation of the color-differences as basically a phantom-difference caused by different cameras’ environments, 20 more reasons why Codex Sinaiticus is not a forgery are listed in my earlier posts Ten Reasons Why Sinaiticus Was Not Made by Simonides and Ten More Reasons Why Sinaiticus Was Not Made by Simonides. I would also like to draw reader’s attention to a 21st reason: a newspaper report (mentioned by Dr. Tommy Wasserman in a comment in 2017) announcing that a fragment from Codex Sinaiticus (with text from Joshua 1) was discovered by researcher Nicholas Sarris in a book-binding from the 1700s.

Q&A-9 Response

The natural passage of time, with possibly a little help from the British climate.

The bulk of the "natural passage of time", in Jacob's theory, is 350 AD to 1850 AD. 1500 years! Yes, it is possible that the British Library section was yellowed in that time (but it also should have oxidized, lost suppleness, become brittle in the desert heat) .. but then the Leipzig pages would be identically aged and yellowed.

This is simple Logic 101. The theory of Jacob simply does not work.

The options are to trust either (1) color science as demonstrated by L*A*B* and NCS color schemes, the physical assessment of the manuscript by a team of scholars, and my experience digitizing manuscripts or (2) A theologically motivated group who have never, to my knowledge, photographed, handled, worked with, or seen a manuscript except for perhaps in a museum display.

Jacob is deceiving about the colour science. He only demonstrated that the numbers assigned have great unreliability to show us the Sinaiticus colours. While the photography with the colour bars tell the story. Thus, this supports the huge colour difference affirmed by the British Library.

Jacob is deceiving about the "physical assessment". Every element worked with the presupposition that Sinaiticus was 4th century .. so they could not consider alternatives. e.g. The Sinaiticus parchment and ink is in "phenomenally good condition" according to Helen Shenton of the British Library. Nobody disputes this, and it is visible on the BBC video. Clearly it is evidence that the manuscript is not a weathered 1650 year-old desert relic, with crusty corrections and scribbles during the centuries. However, in the current "deeply entrenched scholarship" there is NO assessment allowed about this condition that does not accept Sinaiticus as very ancient (although David Trobisch has as times placed it a couple of hundred years newer.) Yet, the problem with the wonderful condition should be glaring and obvious.

And Jacob is deceiving once again, about "theologically motivated".

As I can show you where I happily supported Sinaiticus authenticity, before the massive evidences that it is 1800s became clear. e.g. In November, 2011, I happily gave what I though were reasons for authenticity:

[TC-Alternate-list] Simonides as Siniaitcus scribe - an idea whose time has gone
Steven Avery
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/TC-Alternate-list/conversations/topics/4738

Then the evidences started coming in, I was surprised, and I had to change my position.

Sinaiticus is like no other manuscript. Maybe Jacob W. Peterson should do less theorizing, and visit the two parts and ask to be allowed to handle the two sections. Take his own pictures. Maybe Jacob could arrange to take one page from Leipzig to the British Library to see if his basic sometimes claim (which he contradicts at other times) that the colour is almost the same (ignoring the stains and streaks and inconsistency in the Brit pages) has any merit.

The fact that Jacob W. Peterson has handled many manuscripts is irrelevant. He is working with an institutional bias. His presentation has been full of errors and holes.

More importantly, he does not understand the Sinaiticus situation.
Talking of manuscripts considered ancient:

No other manuscript has the "phenomenally good condition" of Sinaiticus.
No other manuscript has the lack of provenance along with great suspicions, until 1844.
No other manuscript has a clear alternate production scenario, supported by a mountain of evidence
(e.g. Hermas and Barnabas) supported by confirmations everywhere.
No other manuscript has the historical forensics of the Simonides-Kallinikos reports from Sinai.
No other manuscript has the anamolies of Sinaiticus - the CSP site is continually puzzled.

No other manuscript has a BEFORE and AFTER section that demonstrates colour tampering.
No other manuscript has a clear historical accusation of tampering that is made right when it becomes publicly known.

This list goes on and on.

James Snapp end by his own little "multiplication of nothings" apologetic, and a reference to the Nikolas Sarris fragment. Both of those are fully discussed on this forum.

Thanks for your interest !

Responses, thoughts and feedback welcome, iron sharpeneth.

Steven Avery
purebible@gmail.com

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https://www.facebook.com/steven.avery.7568

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[Steven Avery]

the shifting sand positions of Jacob Peterson

Jacob W. Peterson (who may be a superb photographer) is one of the most confused young men that we have seen when it comes to trying to do an overall analysis.

Above (and now being documented in Jacob W. Peterson
July 10 at 8:37 AM
I may turn this into a blog at some point, but I wanted, as briefly as possible, to discuss some technical aspects of colour balancing in regard to the "Sinaiticus is a fake crowd." Because of images, this post will not contain my entire comment, so please read within the comments. In the digital imaging world there was a long debated argument over the nature of colour, its perception, and how to objectively measure it. The solution has been CIE L*A*B* values. A perfect white will have a L*A*B* value of 100,0,0 (L is most important here as it tells us lightness; the other two relate to chroma and hue). This 100,0,0 is impossible, because no coloured material in existence reflects all light. In extremely technical environments, think multispectral imaging, materials such as spectralon (99,0,0) and magnesium oxide (~98,0,0) are used. The run of the mill color target is going to be in the 92-96 lightness range. The color target we use alongside spectralon for our MSI application was measured at 96.1,0,0 and our camera was calibrated specifically for that individual target, not just that brand and model of target. This is how particular and demanding colour balancing is.
So, we can take two images of Sinaiticus, one supposedly falsely stained and one not, and measure their L*A*B* values. Here is a "stained" image:

In both, my cursor is in the center of the white patch. I tested the parameters of Photoshop and it's max L*A*B* lightness value is 99. In the first image we see a value exactly where we would expect: 95. In the second image, we see a 99. To repeat, no printed color can achieve that. Pigments can't achieve it. It requires special materials like those previously mentioned.

This means the second image is washed out. Because the value is 99, we can't even tell *how* washed out. We know that, at minimum, it has a Δ4 change.

The black and grey values, selected with the 1 and 2 crosshairs in each image, are also worth noting. The pop-up panel gives you the RGB values for each. Black should absorb all colors and give an RGB of 0,0,0, but again we're dealing with the real world so this isn't possible. But note how little the black and grey differ in the "white" shot than in the one above. This is again indicative of problems with the colour balance, or the lighting setup in the room.

Finally, there other factors that don't require measuring to see the problems. The background is clearly a different color, when they should match each other. The colors within the color chart do not match (see especially how difficult it is to determine the top colour is purple and how not magenta the magenta looks).

Of course, colour is but one point of the "Fake Sinaiticus" group's absurd claims. But we should now put to rest the notion that the images prove it is a forgery.

I should note, having done this for years, it is very easy to make the mistake the Leipzig crew did. I do not fault them for this. Besides, the images are still good and useful even if the color is not right. The hand selected HCL color values provided by the Codex Sinaiticus Project are not perfect because they weren't done with a spectrometer and averaging software, but they provide a much better picture of the real color. The Leipzig leaves are definitely lighter than the other leaves, but they do not have a cool grey tone. They look like well preserved parchment.

If I had to offer a wild guess as to what caused the problem, the Leipzig crew was possibly working under florescent bulbs in the 6500K range. This could have caused them to see the manuscript as cooler than it actually was and the image captured on their screen would have matched it. In your experience, you know the really warm yellow tinted headlight bulbs versus the blue halogen bulbs in newer cars; this is more or less the type of phenomenon I'm trying to describe. The two types of bulbs drastically change your perception of things; especially white-brown objects. But again, that's a guess based on experience and one that doesn't imply they made serious errors, but the result was just a product of environment.[/QUOTE] Here is one of his key deceptions.

Of course, colour is but one point of the "Fake Sinaiticus" group's absurd claims. But we should now put to rest the notion that the images prove it is a forgery.

Actually, we do not claim that the images alone prove that Sinaitcius is non-authentic, they are simply one excellent part of the evidences. They are part of a mountain of historical and material evidences. e.g. Above we noted eight related issues that go with the Leipzig and British Library colour distinction. Plus that really only scratches the surface, and this thread could really help with the basics.

why do we know that the 1859 CSP leaves were artificially coloured?
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php/threads/a.230

Some of the eight reasons in the text above are historical analysis, (historical forensics) but Jacob is simply a one-dimensional guy who can't think about history. A simple example. If Simonides was not connected with Kallinikos and the monastery and the manuscript, how in the world would he make a pie-in-the-sky claim that the ms. was coloured to make it look older? Without any visible knowledge of the library, he would be ending his own claim very quickly. Yet, ironically, nobody in the duped textual criticism community compared the colour of the two sections. Until they became visible after the 2009 Codex Sinaiticus Project. Wait, even then the textual criticism community did NOTHING. However, the SART team went over the pages very carefully.

Jacob never discusses the Sinaiticus history, he should document what history and analysis he considers "absurd". e.g. What does he think about the 1843 Barnabas and the 1855 Hermas of Simonides? He does not even have the historical integrity to discuss the fact that the colouring was specifically noted in an 1862 publication as having occurred in Sinai.

As to all his various guesses, like the flourescent bulb theory, (highly unlikely) he could simply correspond with Leipzig, and the photographers. He could also ask the people who are by the manuscript if they feel the images give a poor representation of the actual manuscript.

Jacob likes to guess and theorize, though, and look for possible excuses for the huge Leipzig-BritishLibrary differences (on colour, he never discusses staining, streakiness or the issue of the general condition of parchment and ink.)

Daniel Gan Can we request Leipzig to reshoot?

Jacob W. Peterson Ha, it could be done, but at this point it's not worth the physical damage to the manuscript to put it through digitization again.

Wrong, Jacob. You would only have to reshoot one page, however, since all 86 pages are very uniform. Maybe two pages, one leaf, one hair and one flesh side. Jacob is, once again, quite weak on simple logic.

And the manuscript is in "phenomenally good condition". They really have no concern about physical damage, taking a leaf out and taking a picture. Look at the BBC video.

David Inglis, as usual, makes a good point, (which is what I said above, simply take a leaf from Germany and bring it to England, and end all the hyper-theorizing.)

David Inglis A side-by- side comparison in one shot would be the only way to satisfy everyone that there's 'no collusion,' I suspect.

In response to David, Bill Brown shows how the Sinaiticus authenticity crew might try to avoid the rather obvious results

"And why anyone thinks pages in different places for 150 years should look the same is a gratuitous assumption, given I have books the same age that don’t all age the same."

They would go back to the idea that either Germany applied a totally unknown pumice-style cleaning, or England spilled yellowish coffee, or something. One thing they would avoid, at all costs, is noticing that the parchment and ink are simply not 1650 years old.

Elijah Hixson, who sometimes discusses issues with integrity, apparently forgets that this is a censored forum, and writes:

Elijah Hixson
Radio silence from all the people who have been commenting on posts here lately asserting that the different colors in the BL/Leipzig pages prove that it's a modern forgery.

Now we return to Jacob Peterson, emphasis added:

their reading of me shows that they still have no idea what it means to do LAB value checking and that they still haven’t used a good NCS converter to check their supposed wild range of colour in the London leaves. The first is an accurate way of assessing image fidelity and the second reveals not a lot of distinction (especially compared to the lipstick colour they were fooled into thinking was real by their “colour engineer”). They also, of course, are only good at nuance when it’s a conspiratorial point. They look at my own image that was affected just by a change in light and say “we see the effect, it clearly doesn’t matter for Sinaiticus.” Mind blowing selectiveness; the effect is minor to be sure but it went from green to red tones and isn’t intended to perfectly replicate any other setting, but merely show how light affects perception. Their repeated mantra of “the colour charts aren’t *that* different” is so idiotic it hurts. If it’s wrong, the image is objectively wrong. They’re admitting to ignoring what’s plain before them.

And somehow “the Leipzig leaves are known for the whiteness” (a real point of focus for them) neither contradicts what I’ve said nor claims exclusivity for their colour against sections in London...as the NCS codes, selected by the people SART is so quick to point out are manuscript experts (they are), reveal.

I’m not surprised they’re both normally illiterate and scientifically illiterate, it takes a lot of misunderstanding, bad reading, and plain ignorance to maintain such delusion. (I mean, they’re so bad it that they actually discuss something I say is a stupid digression).

Jacob is such a master at blah-blah does not really say anything, along with gratuitous insults.

Jacob is so weak in analysis that he does not realize something that is logically trivially obvious. Minor colour chart differences (very small differences in the bars compared to the difference between Leipzig and British Library parchment colour) in the white and cream and yellow scales make all his hyper-theorizing virtually irrelevant. You do not need the precision of perfection, or near-perfection, when the differences are huge and visually glaring. Jacob compounts his lack of logical sense, when he calls that accurate comment "idiotic". All this shows that he is a tech-geek who has trouble thinking sensibly and logically.

Another example is his unspecified "stupid digression". This is probably where he said we should theorize the Leipzig pages being cleaned (I call it the pumice theory) to make Leizpig more white. However, Jacob is simply ignorant of the debate. This idea is, in fact, floated by Sinaiticus authenticity apologists. And it makes about as much sense as his conjectures. And it has the same amount of evidence -- ZERO.

At other times, Jacob actually takes our view, and defends the basic integrity of the Leipzig methodology. The man is an argumentation chameleon, unable to have a dialog on any real issues. Before this latest barrage of nothing, I did send an email privately to Jacob, with the idea that we could discuss together on some of these issues, iron sharpeneth. He refused, and instead likes to hear himself pontificate about NCS codes, and understands virtually nothing about the Codex Sinaiticus issues.

And I also have suggested that the integrity path, and also to guard against writing foolishly, would be simply to review the 86 pages of Leipzig online and many British Library pages. It became obvious that he never spent even an hour in review, especially when he made mistaken comments on the variations in the two sections.

Beyond that, he was in such a rush to make ill-informed conjectures about the colour and storage, we note that he never made any efforts to contact the Libraries or the CSP. His presentation is not scholarship, it is a bunch of hand-waving excuses, done in ignorance, without the most rudimentary checking.

In his writing above, another major error from Jacob is to connect the "notable for their whiteness" British Library declaration (which he sort of wants to agree with now) to the NCS codes. Gavin Moorhead was referencing the visual and photographic appearance of the manuscript sections, NOT the NCS codes, quite obviously. They even sent photos in the discussion.

Elijah Hixson
I have lost count of how many times I've read this statement in various contexts, public and private: "Gavin Moorhead - Conservator, British Library, email in March, 2016:
"the Leipzig folios are notable for their whiteness." "

Four times on that page alone.

It's as if nobody ever made a generalization before in the history of scholarship.

Elijah is correct, except that it is an observation not a generalization. Especially since the 86 pages in Leipzig are extremely, extraordinarily (for a supposed 1650 years of use) uniform.

That one comment essentially refutes the various posts of Jacob Peterson over two years. It is emphasized quite consciously and deliberately. The point is very simple. The British Library, a gentleman, a Conservator, who worked closely on the Codex Sinaiticus Project, had absolutely no difficulty in acknowledging the difference in colour of Leipzig to England. They even discussed how it works out in contiguous pages, as we do on the web site.

The roundabout theorizing of Jacob is essentially falsified and irrelevant.

============================

btw, I enjoy quoting these long posts from Jacob.
Essentially, Jacob says nothing other than:

"the Leipzig photography is a little off, but still respectable, and I want to tell you about various guesses and conjectures that I give without making any attempt at checking with the libraries or professionals And don't trust your eyes, listen to me. Leipzig pages are really not very different from the British Library pages in colour, except that they are quite a bit whiter. And I agree that they are whiter, but the difference might be a little less than you see on the Codex Sinaiticus Project. Don't be concerned, though, there must be some explanation other than the possibility that the staining on the British leaves was artificial tampering. Maybe a pumice-style cleaner was used to scrub the German pages, secretly, and this got rid of the yellow aging."

Then Jacob spins the same confusion around from another angle. He will carefully avoid discussing the staining, the history and anything outside of his little colour-geek world.

Anyone can see that all his hyper-tweaking conjectures and colour-geek analysis really means nothing. The Codex Sinaiticus Project gives a very excellent, albeit not perfect, picture of the colour distinction.

Plus he does not even understand that all the pages were under identical conservation and storage for 1650 years, under his theory. And thus the relatively brief time in European libraries will make very little difference, barring exceptional circumstances like floods, fire and pumice cleanings.

 

[Steven Avery]

Here is some of the conversation, which I also mirror on the Facebook - Pure Bible group:

First, from Textual Criticism and Archeology:

On one forum, James referenced that Tischendorf responded negatively to the Simonides claims! I felt that this would be a springboard for a more comprehensive response on a Facebook post.

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Facebook

Textual Criticism and Archaeology
https://www.facebook.com/groups/132641790211116/permalink/1168998306575454/?comment_id=1171612352980716&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R1%22%7D

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Are we surprised that Tischendorf rejected the Simonides claim? Of course not. This beautiful parchment had become his textual crown jewel, leading to fame, position and lucre.

Starting from when Tischendorf surreptitiously removed five quires and three leafs (86 pages) from an intact white parchment ms. in 1844 and stashed it in Leipzig as the Codex Friderico-Augustanus. And disingenuously claimed that it was 4th century. Tischendorf omitted mentioning the supple, youthful, pristine white parchment condition and the amazing ink. Tischendorf emphasized instead elements like the ancient boxy script and the colophons. However, the script is trivially easy for Mt. Athos calligraphers and everyone knows the trick of adding colophons to pretend that a manuscript is ancient. Even Alexandrinus has a very questionable colophon.

Even into the 1860s, when Tischendorf at first hesitated to connect the two sections in his writings, Tischendorf never told anyone that the CFA was a beautiful, supple, like-new white parchment. Or that this Leipzig part lacked stains, smudges or grime from its supposed 1500 years of hot, dry desert use. (The St. Petersburg section was similarly supple, but it did have the pale yellow colour, with streaks and stains. How and when did they get there?)

In the 1860s, Tischendorf viciously berated any scholars, like Hilgenfeld, who questioned the 4th-century date. (Two books are in German and are an embarrassment) And the scholars would be told to work off his tampered facsimile, not the ms. Similarly Scrivener wrote up an apologetic without seeing the manuscript or pictures.

The truth was not a concern for Tischendorf. He was used to brazen lying, as when in 1859 he claimed that the 43 leafs he had stolen in 1844 had been saved by fire. And thus he claimed to be the savior, when he really was the thief.

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THE COLOUR HISTORY

When the 1859 section came out to St. Petersburg, it was now jazzed up with light yellow colour, and thus could be called “yellow with age”. And it was stained and streaky, and that “aged” colour was uneven and inconsistent. Not like with truly ancient manuscripts, when the aging colour is deeply intrinsic to the page and its brittleness, and the ink acid has become a threat to the parchment integrity.

Oh, in 1862-4 we were actually informed from Sinai that Tischendorf and friends had in fact in the 1850s coloured the ms with lemon juice and herbs to make it look older. An old trick. How could Simonides know? How could they make such an accusation? Unless they saw it happen, it would be a ridiculously absurd claim, since it would be disproved on simple examination.

And since the Codex Sinaiticus Project of 2009 we, layman and even the scholar, can now see the BEFORE and AFTER with our own eyes.

Amazing, an evidence par excellence.
When do you get something like this? The manuscript sections show the history.

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So of course it is no surprise that Tischendorf disputed the generally accurate and now ultra-verifiable account of this ms. being created at Mt. Athos c. 1840.

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As for the three earlier articles from James Snapp, I do think it is a wonderful idea to go through his “multiplication of nothings.” As long as this is part of learning a bit about the amazing Sinaiticus history. And, as part of the project, you also read the response to his 3-part article which I placed online.

James Snapp attempts to defend authenticity of Sinaiticus
three-part article ... trying to claim "Sinaiticus Is Not a Forgery"
https://www.facebook.com/groups/traditionaltext/permalink/2051654598418246/?comment_id=2054070308176675&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R%22%7D
[/SIZE]

James E Snapp Jr
Well, though some may think it reckless to question such a specialist in convolution, confusion, and contradictions, Jacob's explanation does not seem strange or inconsistent at all. He mentioned two factors -- different storage-environments, and different conditions (or settings) of the photography. Both of these, especially the latter, seem entirely sufficient explanation of the color-difference. I would suggest that you compare the color-charts, if I thought that offering rational ideas would be helpful at this point.

Here is my response.

James, I did compare the colour bars, and, unlike you, included a picture in the response above of the two sections followed by the two colour charts.

Looking at that carefully will show you that all of the posturing of Jacob is simply to make a minor tweak to the off-white shade, which affects nothing in the Leipzig-British Library fundamental difference.

Jacob could surely take pictures, or contact the Libraries and Conservators, or even request one leaf to travel to England. He will not do anything, because he will have egg on his face, so he just writes geek-stuff instead, using contradictory conclusions to try to dupe the readers. An old trick.

The CSNTM seems to have a bit of a presuppositional bias to Tischendorf, Sinaiticus and its vaunted history with a key role in giving us the Critical Text.

Plus the textual criticism pseudo-science clique is concerned about the embarrassment of being such dupes for 160 years.​

====================

James, why do you avoid addressing the stains and streakiness and inconsistent colour of the 1859 Brit pages?

James, why not address the supple, “phenomenally good condition” of the parchment and ink? Including the lack of acid deterioration.

James, why not address the historical “called shots”, including the 1862-3 sections that specifically say the ms. was coloured in the 1850s with lemon juice and herbs?
Only after 2009 was this checked, and the “facts on the ground” confirm the account to a “T”. Looking carefully at unusual claims is a key part of historical forensics.

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And how would “storage conditions” create stains and streaks and inconsistent yellow colour? If there was no yellowing for 1500 years, why such radical changes in 160? Vodka spills?y James, I did compare the colour bars, and, unlike you, included a picture in the response above of the two sections followed by the two colour charts.

====================

 

[Steven Avery]

WIP - (add from the 1600 year old thread and maybe the earlier textualcritcism)
quotes about less dead or more lively

THIS POST IS GATHERING QUOTES AND IS A WORK-IN-PROCESS

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"the Leipzig photography is a little off, but still respectable"

"the color balance for the images appears to be off... the photographs of the Leipzig portion are not entirely accurate representations of the real leaves. "

"The Leipzig leaves are definitely lighter than the other leaves, but they do not have a cool grey tone. They look like well preserved parchment."

"I’m not saying that the leaves are actually dirty brown, but rather that the leaves are not greyish-white."

"the Sinaiticus images are perfectly usable and I’d never advocate for re-imaging them"

" I definitely think the Leipzig leaves are artificially lighter in the images than in reality ... the image from Leipzig is washed out"

Referring to the photographs:
"The leaves at Leipzig, on the other hand, are a consistent off-white, which I would describe as having a cool-grey tone. There are a couple of problems with this: ...."

"it is very easy to make the mistake the Leipzig crew did. I do not fault them for this. Besides, the images are still good and useful even if the color is not right."

the possible explanation that the Leipzig portion was photographed under particularly cool lights (in the 6500K range). This would have given everything a cool-grey appearance

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DECEPTION AREA - TOTALLY DIFFERENT THAN THE ABOVE

it is demonstrably untrue that the leaves in leipzig are the cool-grey color that is shown in the digital images. It is demonstrably untrue that those leaves are drastically different from those in london. The leipzig leaves in actuality have a slight yellow tint that is exactly the same as, or very near to, the tint of some leaves in london.

the leaves in Leipzig .... It is demonstrably untrue that those leaves are drastically different from those in London.

PETERSON CONJECTURAL FANTASIES ABOUT THE STORAGE


Peterson: There are two explanations for what is going on here between the parts of the manuscript in the two collections and their online presentation. As that sentence hints at, these differences are part actual and part visual effect. As to the actual difference, there are undoubtedly differences in the storage conditions of these two sections of the manuscripts that likely led to some of the color difference.

Peterson is very good with conjectural weasel wording

undoubtedly differences in the storage conditions ... that likely led

Peterson NEVER shows us even the slightest hint of differences in storage conditions that would affect the manuscript in this way.

Turn the British pages yellow, stained and streaky???
Turn the German pages white, and get rid of stains and streakss???

Where is the slightest evidence of this bogus "likely" claim?

Peterson drones this fantasy again and again, playing the readers for fools

possibly a little help from the British climate.
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With all the loose vagueness, Jacob could simply give us his best guess correction. I think he had a whiteness excuse for not trying that.

We will be happy to contribute to his efforts to take a corrected picture. He can make sure there is no flourescent lights, a good colour bar and double-check the background. I’ll even go up to Franconia and hand him an oz. of gold, to help with the expenses, once the details are ironed out and we are ready to roll.

We would like him to request one leaf of Leipzig to go to London for a day. Since the Brit pages are fine in their colour, and the Leipzig pages are consistent.


==========================

Notice that Jacob Does not indicates that the Leipzig pages should be more yellowish, which is the ONLY way they could get close to the British Library page. A slightly darker off-white is not yellow.

Jacob mentions storage and climate and "passage of time" about five times or more - again without ONE SMIDGEN of evidence that the colours and stains and streaks changed in London. This is simply an attempt to deceive the reader with smoke and mirrors.

'"The natural passage of time, with possibly a little help from the British climate. '

In the world of Jacob, time passes in England, but not in Germany.

We will plan on posting the comments from Jacob, that he gives without a SMIDGEN of evidence, and ignoring the fact that the first 1500 years would do the great bulk of any aging and colouring of the parchment. (The British section has colouring without aging.)

==================================

"The hand selected HCL color values provided by the Codex Sinaiticus Project are not perfect because they weren't done with a spectrometer and averaging software, but they provide a much better picture of the real color."

So many bogus claims. We saw in the thread that they have tremendous problems to be used for generating a picture. Jacob even had pointed out the problem since pages, especially in Britain, are not uniform. The paucity of discrete points. The subjectivity. Jacob's statement is total ignorance, that he had actually refuted earlier. Mr. Contradiction.