Catholicism versus Protestantism down the centuries

I need a list of the arguments themselves, the claims and concepts with their references for every time the subject comes up or someone demands evidence for something or other. So: I'd need "Evidence That Simonides Was Not Lying", followed by the references, location, page and paragraph etc., and quote, along with references to counterarguments and everything else related. I've started this reference index. It's not something you could help me with, it's something only I can do for myself. But thanks anyway. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

But Burgon makes it quite clear that he thinks that was an accident. "Mutilated" does not imply intent, let alone malicious intent. That Gnostics messed with some Gospels is highly likely (certain if we count Marcion as a Gnostic). But it is not to this that Burgon attributes the deficiencies of the early uncials. Rather, he writes, let me quote this once more: This stuff about Gnostics seems to have been invented by loonies who apparently decided that Burgon's position just wasn't crazy enough for Christian fundamentalists. After all, if you just went about saying that the Sinaiticus and the Vaticanus are not entirely reliable, and that Westcott and Hort attributed to them greater evidential weight than they actually possess, you run the risk, not only of sounding sane, but of being downright correct. And where's the fun in that?

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Tischendorf was only the senior of Simonides by
five years, and in the science of palaeography had
neither his knowledge nor his experience.

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One of the chief objections urged in 1863 against
these papyri was the similarity of the handwriting
in documents belonging to widely different periods.
But this similarity is the last thing that can be fairly
predicated of them. Let any one compare the two
volumes of the facsimiles, and it is rather the
diversity than the similarity of the handwriting
which will strike his attention.

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That Simonides was a good enough calUgrapher,
even at an early age, to have written the Codex,
is hardly open to doubt, and it is in his favour that
the world was first indebted to him in 1856 for the
opening chapters in Greek of the Shepherd of
Hennas, with a portion of which the Codex Sinaiticus
actually terminates. The coincidence seems almost
more singular than can be accounted for by chance.

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monides' claim was supported
on its first appearance by certain letters in the
Guardian purporting to come from Alexandria and
signed '* Kallinikos Hieromonachos ". These letters,
inspected at a meeting of the Society of Literature,
were thought to be in a handwriting identical with
that of Simonides and to be written on paper like
that used in Simonides* own letters; the inference
being that Simonides had written them himself and
sent them to Alexandria to be posted back to Eng-
land {Parthenon, 14th February, 1863). But this
alleged similarity of handwriting was never certified
by any expert in handwriting.

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Yet one has only to refer to
Lampros' Catalogut; of the Mount Athos MSS.
to find Benedict's name appended to several MSS.,
and to one as late as 1844 (though Simonides gave
1840 as the year of his death). (See Nos. 5999,
6118, 6194, 6360, 6362, 6393.) The same work
attests as conclusively the real existence of Kallinikos.
A MS. dated March, 1867, is signed with the hand
of Kallinikos who is " also the least of the monks
of the monastery of Russico" {i.e., Pantelemon)
(No. 638). And there is another MS. at Pantele-
mon, copied by the hand of Constantine Simonides
on 27th March, 1841 (6405), and two other copies
of the same work by Kallinikos Monachos (6406,
6407), which prove that Kallinikos and Simonides
were at Pantelemon at the same time and associated
in the same work.

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Mr. Scrivener's argument that no mere youth of
at most nineteen could in a few months have com-
posed a volume of nearly 4,000,000 uncial letters,
though convincing about most youths, is not con-
vincing where that youth was Simonides. On the
side of Simonides is his unlimited skill in calligraphy ;
the very audacity of such a claim if entirely baseless ;
the remarkable presence in the Codex of a portion of
the Shepherd of Hennas^ which Simonides was the
first scholar ever to have seen in Greek ; the very
natural allusions to the work in the lithographed
letters ; the fact that no visitor to the monastery at
Mount Sinai before 1 844 had ever seen or heard of such
a work as belonging to the monks ; and the very ex-
traordinary story told by Tischendorf of his discovery
and acquisition of the Codex

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Simonides,
with his extensive learning, his knowledge of manu-
scripts, his miraculous calligraphy, his passionate
nature, and above all his claim to the authorship of
the Sinaitic Codex, will ever stand out as pre-eminently
the first of his order. In literary ability he surpassed
all his contemporaries

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Literary Forgeries, James Anson Farrer, 1907

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In Alexandria, where professors are scarce, he contrived to quarrel
with some Arabs, pistolled two of them, received some ugly wounds on the head and face firom a third, the
marks of which are still visible, and parted with a small knob of his os fronHa, detached by the sabre of a
fourth. In Macedonia, his native country, though he was only at the time on a visit, he succeeded in getting
up a very pretty little insurrection among his countrymen, and in conjunction with a few choice spirits who
joined him in the leadership of the patriot bands, he, one fine morning, fell on a detachment of Turkish
soldiers, drove them into a river, and destroyed some one hundred and fifty of them before breakfast. In
this interesting transaction he received a spent ball in his chest, and had a musket bullet through his thigh.
But we have no space to record the escapades of M. Simonides, which extend over nearly twenty years, and
the scenes of which are laid variously in Abyssinia, Siberia, Mesopotamia, Persia, Arabia, and the site of those
ancient nations who dwelt at the foot of the Himalayah range. Everywhere the same fatality has attended
him. He has been abused, vituperated, and denounced in nearly every civilised language ; books have been

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written against him, newspapera have eontinnally been striving to expose liim ; he has been aocnsed of literaiy
forgeiy, impostore, and swindling, bat in eyeiy case the accusation has fallen through, for though accused and
condemned he has never been convicted, nor, indeed, has the evidence against him ever risen to anything
definite and precise. In each case of accusation the verdict of impartial men has been " not proven," and
Simonides has gone his waj.

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we have abundant evidence that the Egyptians, who also
taught metempsychosis, were persuaded that those who lived virtuously should rise from
the dead, both soul and body, and should live for ever.

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And so they taught truth, even the truth of the Gospel.

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The periplus of Hannon, by K. Simonides (1864)I provided the links earlier, shouldn't be too hard for you to find the quoted sections (use the Full Text link over to the side so you can do easy searches, the OCR isn't perfect as you can see).Oh, and 'Is Codex Sinaiticus (א) The Oldest Manuscript OR Just An Invention of the 19th Century?', Brian Sirois, 2013 should be a veritable Gold mine for you.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

What is so inherently crazy about the idea of gnostic tampering as the cause of the omission of, say, the Johannine Comma, the Pericope Adulterae or the last twelve verses of Mark? These are blatant omissions. I don't have any need to think it's gnostic tampering, that's just what I've understood to have been the case with so much of the alteration, especially the changes that remove well known passages, remove references that identify Jesus as God, leave out key concepts of the gospels and so on. Corrupt the manuscripts certainly are, not merely less than "entirely reliable." HERE'S a page of some of the differences that someone just sent as a comment at my blog, comparing the KJV as based on the Traditional or Majority Greek texts, with the NIV as representing the Critical Texts that incorporate the corrupt Alexandrians:These are the sorts of changes that gnostics would make.Edited by Faith, : Reduce URL code to word "HERE'S"Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Or perhaps, to put it more charitably, everyone loves a good story, and a good story needs villains. Scribal error is something we might all perpetrate, how much more dramatic to lay textual corruptions to the blame of Evil Gnostics. Bishop Westcott, perhaps, was not a very good textual critic; the same may be true of many of us. Let him instead be a "leading non-Bible-believing apostate". Burgon writes of Tischendorf: "That [he] was a critic of amazing research, singular shrewdness, indefatigable industry; and that he enjoyed an unrivalled familiarity with ancient documents; no fair person will deny", but goes on to say that he was lacking in critical judgement. Well, this will never do. Let him instead be a moronic bungler and a crook who unjustly conspired to defame the virtuous St. Constantine Simonides.And now we have a story! Unfortunately it's complete bollocks, but it is much more appealing to the imagination than the unvarnished truth.For the hero of the piece, you seem to have seized on Dean Burgon. You could do a great deal worse: the man was a scholar, in which capacity he would appear to exceed all the members of his fan club put together. But your hero does not concur with the dramatic scenario in which you wish to place him. He thinks his enemies are carelessness, error, and folly, and not the forces of darkness made incarnate.

Burgon was a very careful scholar, very cautious about his arguments and very generous to his opponents, and I admire him greatly for all that. But just that one paragraph of his about how notoriously it was known that the Bible was tampered with in the early years shows that he did not exclusively attribute the errors in the Alexandrians to "carelessness, error, and folly."And although I do appreciate some of the work done by the KJV-onlies, including those of the Dean Burgon Society, which is what I assume you mean by his "fan club," I don't identify myself with them at all and generally try to keep my distance from them.ABE: And I'll mention again the link I just included in my previous post of the differences between the two manuscript traditions which suggest something rather more premeditated than mere "carelessness, error and folly." Burgon may have held back from making the obvious accusations that must have occurred to him as he contemplated this pattern of changes and omissions, but there are places in his writings where he comes close. In any case the rest of us don't have to be so cautious when we see this blatant pattern.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I don't see why you would say that except that it's the sort of thing you like to say.

Or to Evil Gnostics.And the sort of tampering he describes in the Alexandrians, where it was by design, would in fact fall under "folly".Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Did the Gnostics manage to keep it out for over a thousand years?You will find it in Greek in the following:
Codex Montfortianus (which omits 'Holy')
Codex Ottobonianus (which is just a Latin translation
Minuscule 918, 2318 (which may be a translation from Pope Sixtus V's version of the Vulgate), 2473, 221 (in the margin), 177 (margin), 636 (margin)
Codex Regis (margin)
Codex Wolfenbttel (margin)Look at any other Greek manuscript that contains the chapter, and it is simply not there. That is, to be clear, IT IS ABSENT FROM THE BYZANTINE MAJORITY TEXT.Scholars, therefore identify that it doesn't appear in an original Greek version until about the 16th Century. Then Erasmus was harangued into including it and it was in the countless versions that copied his work.Of course, it's all over the Latin stuff. The Roman Catholic works:Codex Legionensis
Frisingensia Fragmenta
Codex Cavensis
Codex Ulmensis
Codex Complutensis I
Codex Toletanus
Codex Theodulphianus
Codex Sangallensis 907
Codex Sangallensis 63 (margin)And just about every version of the Vulgate ever made (except some in the 19th and 20th Centuries).All that remains are the Church fathers, but I can't easily find the dates of the copies of their works.In any event, one has to suppose that Catholic corruption is quite likely here.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

The thing is, there IS a pattern to the changes that "folly" doesn't capture. They play down the deity of Christ and essential elements of the gospel message among other things. Heretics other than gnostics may also have had a hand in it, since there are omissions that would please Arians (Jehovah's Witnesses) as well.

SOURCE

What is your opinion of the fact that 'Christian' is not present in the original Sinaiticus (and Vaticanus for that matter)? It was 'corrected' by someone later from 'Chrestian', meaning 'do-er of good'. So it might read something like There is the reference by Tacitus which some people think has been 'corrected' from: And there's a few other references in the ancient world. Which do you think is the real corruption? Or are they both legit?

Not noticeably. And, crucially, not remotely systematically. Can you imagine your crew of Evil Gnostics or Arians or whatever saying "Aha, let's remove one percent of the proof texts for the divinity of Christ from the Bible, that'll show 'em! But let's leave in, for example, the first chapter of John, we don't want to overplay our hand."Compare this with what you get when someone really does edit the text with an agenda --- the Jefferson Bible, for example, or the Gospel of Marcion.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

You realize that I gave you that source. On your blog? Research time, which manuscript is this? Diatesseron? Where? As the words of an apostle/Jesus? Where? And why are you citing books that the Catholic Church foisted upon the world as the official Bible? I thought there was an agenda by the evil Tischendorf, who was partial to a bit of Vulgate, to undo sola scriptura... Such as? But always in Latin, right? I think your best shot is The Varimadum. Give it a try. Let me know what the earliest copy is you can find so we can see how long the church/gnostics/jesuits/jews/satanists/atheists had to 'massage' things...Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

It's more like they omitted words that bothered them here and there as they were copying a portion of the manuscript, and their changes got passed down. Not systematic, just enough to show a certain mindset and make a mess of the text.