The character of Simonides
Faith has actually denied that Simonides was a fraudster. She seems to think that there was some sort of conspiracy against him. If so, the conspiracy must have begun long prior to the kerfuffle over the Codex Sinaiticus; he was denounced as a fraud in Greece, denounced as a fraud in Constantinople, denounced as a fraud in England, denounced and arrested as a fraud in Germany, before the Sinaiticus ever came to light.
If he was not a fraud, his share of both good and bad luck is remarkable --- he had the good luck to discover more remarkable documents then ten other men; including what is perhaps the most remarkable document of all time, the original of the Gospel of Matthew; and yet he also had the worst of luck, in being separately and severally accused of fraud everywhere he went.
It seems, however, that he was in fact a practiced and serial fraudster. An account of his activities in several nations may be found
here, pages 133 - 136.
Here he is being detected in Greece:
Several years ago he suddenly appeared at Athens, and offered a mass of the rarest MSS. of lost works, and some very important MSS. of the Classics, all very ancient. He said his uncle had discovered them in a monastery on Mount Athos: he had carried them away secretly, and there were still more left behind. He was very mysterious, and spoke always of his enemies and spies. The Greek Government appointed a Commission to examine his MSS. He produced a very ancient Homer, with the complete Commentary of Eustathius. The Commission reported favourably: there was only one dissentient voice. A new inquiry was made, and the MS. turned out to be a most accurate copy of Wolf’s edition of Homer, with all its errata.
And here he is cutting an inglorious figure in Constantinople:
A last appeal was made. Ibrahim Pasha, one of the most learned men at Constantinople, was building a new house near the Hippodrome (Atmeidan). Excavations were going on; and Simonides, on being asked by M. Cayol, declared that an Arabian MS, written in Syriac characters, would be found on a certain spot. The workmen dug for two hours, Ibrahim Pasha and M. Cayol being present, and Simonides not being allowed to descend. At last a pause was made, and the gentlemen partook of a luncheon. After luncheon the digging was resumed, and almost immediately Simonides was heard to exclaim, ‘There it is! bring it up.’ A box was brought; but the soil which adhered to it was of a different kind from that of the ground. The workmen were grinning : and when interrogated, confessed that, during luncheon, the Greek came out for a short time, jumped into the pit, and began to burrow.
This put an end to Simonides’ career in the East.
These details appeared in the
Athenaeum of 1856, "taken from a literary Hue-and-Cry published in 1853. They rest on the authority of Dr. Mordtmann, Charg-d’Afaires of the Hanseatic Towns"; i.e. they were published
before the Sinaiticus affair. If anyone proposes there was a conspiracy against Simonides --- an international conspiracy, extending to multiple countries and two continents --- must at least admit that the motive cannot, therefore, involve the Sinaiticus. They are free to suggest what the motive was, and attempt to establish the conspiracy, but the onus of proof would very much be on them.
The motive of Simonides
We come now to the Sinaiticus affair itself.
Did Simonides had a motive? Yes. His repeated failures must have left him embittered against the scholarly world in general; but he had a particular motive against Tischendorf. The following is taken from Javier Martnez,
Fakes and Forgers of Classical Literature: Ergo decipiatur!, BRILL, Jan 16, 2014.
It was also there [Leipzig, 1856] that he sold his most notable forgery, Uranius's Historia Aegyptiae. Uranius was an author that Simonides dated to the fourth century of our era and whose manuscript he passed off as authentic with such success -- he even convinced a commission of the Prussian Academy, endorsed by professors Boeckh and Lepsius -- that the well-known philologist K.W. Dindorf, on behalf of the Prussian king, paid a substantial sum for it and began to prepare a critical edition of it in Leipzig. It was on the verge of being published, but the book was retrieved just in time from the printers after Professor Tischendorf and other scholars meticulously examined the purported codex rescriptus sold to Dindorf upon royal commissioning in view of the record of forgeries of Simnoides in England. [...] The whole issue ended, as Lalanne reported, with the arrest of Simonides in Leipzig and impounding of the sum of money he had received for the Uranius' palimpsest.
So Tischendorf was instrumental in having Simonides arrested and losing him a small fortune. This is a reason to hold a grudge.
Moreover, it can be shown from Simonides' letters that he did in fact hold a grudge against Tischendorf: he repeatedly says that Tischendorf must be a complete incompetent to have been taken in by the Sinaiticus, and also insinuates that he stole it:
You have thus a short and clear account of the Codex Simonideios, which Professor Tischendorf, when at Sinai, contrived, I know not how, to carry away [...]
Any person learned in paleography ought to be able to tell at once that it is a MS of the present age.
You must permit me to express my sincere regret that, whilst the many valuable remains of antiquity in my possession are frequently attributed to my own hands, the one poor work of my youth is set down by a gentleman who enjoys a great reputation for learning as the earliest copy of the Sacred Scriptures.
This has nothing, however, on the spite and animus shown by "Kallinikos", of whom more below.
Digression: an anti-motive?
First, a quick digression: it has been suggested by Faith and her friend Pinto that Simonides had what one might call an "anti-motive". The discovery of the Sinaiticus persuaded Tischendorf to recant his previous belief that the Athens
Hermas was a medieval retranslation.
This admission could be of no benefit to Simonides. It was not on the basis of
Hermas that he had been reviled across the face of Europe as a fraud. It was not by showing that
Hermas was a fraud that Tischendorf got Simonides arrested in Leipzig. That was over his spurious
Historia Aegypticus.
So all the Sinaiticus did was get Tischendorf to change his mind on a matter of no importance to Simonides. Now, I am not a vengeful man, but it seems to me that the pleasure of seeing one's enemy change his mind about a scholarly question to which one is personally indifferent, is nothing when compared to having him publicly reviled as an incompetent buffoon, a poseur, a fraud, and a thief, which is was Simonides aimed at and partially or temporarily achieved with his letters and those of "Kallinikos".
And Kallinikos?
Well, as he is Simonides one support in this whole matter, and as Simonides, we must now grant, was a conman, it is important to find out whether "Kallinikos" actually existed.
People tried and failed. From the
British Quarterly:
Determined to follow up the matter, Mr. Wright shortly afterwards took the trouble to make inquiries respecting this said Callinikos Hieromonachos. He wrote to the British chaplain at Alexandria, and requested him to ascertain the character and position of this worthy. The chaplain applied to a Greek gentleman holding a high position in that city, and through his assistance the following information was obtained from a priest belonging to the cathedral of Alexandria. There is no one answering to the Callinikos Hieromonachos who was said to have written to Simonides, living at Alexandria. But there was an individual of that name at Sinai. Application was therefore at once made to him. The inquiry was met by a negative. He knew no one of that name; and all the leading persons at Mount Sinai, including one who was librarian from 1841 to 1858, were ready to vouch for the fact that Simonides had never visited the monastery at all!
So not only couldn't they find Kallinikos, they also couldn't find anyone at Sinai to confirm Simonides' story.
---
That, then, gives us the background. Simonides was a liar and a fraud; he had a reason to hold a grudge against Tischendorf; he did
in fact hold a grudge against Tischendorf; he could exercise that grudge by doing what he did; Kallinikos was apparently what we would now call a "sock-puppet"; and no-one else can vouch for Simonides' story about the Codex Sinaiticus.
With all this in mind, we could now turn to the Codex itself, and see whether the evidence is more consistent with it having been forged-but-not-really by Simonides, or with it being an authentic document. But that would be a subject for another post.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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