In the last video I talked about what an amazing a coincidence
it was that the monk Kallinikos
was in various places, just in time
to see Simonides and Tischendorf in various stages of creating,
or looking at, or changing
the Greek Codex Sinaiticus.
But maybe it wasn't a coincidence.
When you find the same guy, again and again,
at crucial points of a story, and he really was
in those places at those times, you start to wonder
if he has a bigger part in the picture than you thought before.
But before I delve more about Kallinikos,
I have to tell you this.
Years ago, when Chris Pinto of Adullam Films
first approached me with the concept of Simonides
creating the Sinaiticus, I had real, legitimate doubts.
One of the biggest had to do with
the place called Mt. Athos.
But it turned out that I had the completely wrong idea
about what Mt. Athos was, is, and isn't.
And over the course of the last year, before your very eyes on this vlog,
I began to find out the truth about Mt. Athos,
and why Simonides' story rings true or not.
Finally, things started making sense!
But some of all that thinking process was behind the scenes,
and some more of it was after I finished
last year's "Something Funny About Sinaiticus"
series and started to put together
the upcoming book.
Would you like to see what helped change my thinking,
and what may very well influence yours?
Hi, I'm David Daniels from Chick Publications.
At no time do I want you to think I'm forcing you into anything.
That's what cults do.
Cults (and I've been in a couple) force a party line
down people's throats, and demonize anyone and everyone
who doesn't toe the line.
I can't do that.
That's not me.
All I can do is put the facts out there,
and let you, Brothers and Sisters, make your own decisions.
I already believe Sinaiticus isn't and couldn't be
God's holy and preserved words, in any way, shape, or form.
So it really doesn't matter to me whether the Sinaiticus is a new fake
or an old fake.
But I am so intrigued by this.
I love a good mystery, as a lot of you know.
And when I have a question, it just nags at me
until I get the facts.
So let me tell you the basic story, a couple of my objections,
and the answers I found.
The basic story is this.
Simonides claimed that his Uncle Benedict,
who was the monk over the monastery
at Panteleimon (Pan te LAY moan) on Mt. Athos,
sent for Constantine Simonides, his 19--year--old nephew,
to copy various documents and make a main big Greek Bible
in ancient--looking script.
It was to be corrected and then it was to be presented
as a gift from Benedict to Tsar Nicholas I of Russia,
the patron of the monastery.
Benedict hoped the Tsar would express his gratitude
for the gift by giving the monastery
a printing press.
Uncle Benedict also had a stash of documents
that were entrusted to Benedict by Gregory,
a monk on his deathbed.
Benedict then put them at Simonides' disposal,
to read and copy them, since Benedict's eyes were failing.
The main calligrapher at Panteleimon at this point was Dionysius.
He was old, not a professional calligrapher,
he didn't know ancient Greek, and didn't feel he was up to the task.
So Benedict sent for his nephew Simonides,
an excellent young copyist, to do that massive job.
Is that clear so far?
Each one of those elements is important.
So if you need to, stop and go back, and listen to
that short summary again.
Okay, truth be told, l was lost at Step One, Mt. Athos.
For months last year I could not figure out
what was so special about some mountain
in the middle of Greece.
Wasn't that really just a hill with a bunch of monks
and libraries on it?
No.
Once I learned about what Mt. Athos really is,
and a bit about its geography and history,
it all started to make sense.
Mt. Athos is not a mountain in the middle of Greece,
like I once thought.
Mt. Athos is really an isolated peninsula.
It is almost completely surrounded by water.
It's only 3 to 5 miles wide, with over 20 miles of coastline
dotted with monasteries facing the Aegean Sea
on one side alone.
And the Aegean Sea was a welcome mat to pirates.
Every so many years, pirates would brave
the winds and weather, and land on Athos,
and start pillaging the monasteries of their valuables.
So naturally, any monk who wanted
to keep his holy books safe ----and any other stuff----
had to learn how to hide it.
It only makes sense.
And if you read about the history of the monks on Athos
(there are a number of sources on the Internet, fascinating reading),
it's obvious why the monks trust few others.
So they pick and choose who they pass information down to.
Generation after generation, one guy would learn secrets,
then pass them down to another, trusted guy
from the next generation.
But there are two sides to the peninsula.
There's the open Aegean side.
And there's the calmer side, along the Gulf of the Holy Mountain.
But to get there you have to sail around
the southern tip of Athos.
And the winds and weather there are so dangerous
they once sank a Persian fleet.
492 BC.
Look it up.
So if you were going to hide precious books,
where would you take them?
I'd take them to the protected side, and give them to a trustworthy monk
for safe keeping.
By the way, Panteleimon monastery is on the protected Gulf side.
It would be only natural for a monk on the protected side
to get control of a stash of precious books,
away from the marauding influence of pirates.
I already read about the story about right over here,
another place, Chilandariou.
They stored their stuff at Panteleimon.
But secret doesn't mean you show it to anyone
who comes onto the peninsula, looking for books.
That explains how the Greek historian
Spyridon Paulou Lampros could come onto Mt. Athos,
visit all the monasteries,
write a detailed, 2 volume Catalogue
of the Greek Manuscripts on Mount Athos
from 24 collections, and yet not find
the most valuable Greek texts.
But they were there!
And when certain leaders decided to,
they took a number of ancient Greek documents
from Mt. Athos out of hiding.
And two of those documents were copies of Barnabas
and the Shepherd of Hermas.
See? There's an Athos edition.
Right here.
The Shepherd of Hermas.
Coincidentally, the same two we find at the end of Sinaiticus.
So valuable manuscripts were on Mt. Athos.
They were just hidden.
That's not conjecture.
That's history.
So let's move on to Simonides.
Simonides started on the Sinaiticus in late 1839, around November.
A year and a half later, on March 27th, 1841,
we find the monk Kallinikos working with Simonides
at Panteleimon on Mt. Athos, on a side project
for the feast day of John of Damascus, March 27th.
Then 2 years after that, in February of 1843,
the monk Kallinikos saw Simonides again on Mt. Athos,
working with what we call the Sinaiticus.
Based on what we know about 1843, Simonides was probably
going over the Sinaiticus text of Barnabas
with a fine--toothed comb.
I'll get to that in a minute.
He had been comparing 7 -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 --
7 different versions of Barnabas, from those secret stashes
on Mt. Athos revealed to Simonides
by his Uncle Benedict.
Then he put all that information in his Barnabas book
Look at the facts.
Tischendorf stated that in 1844
he had been the first person to discover an ancient document
now called the Sinaiticus.
In 1859 he claimed he found out
that it contained a book called
the Epistle of Barnabas.
Just a few months ago, I found out something special about
the Barnabas in Codex Sinaiticus.
It was more complete than any other
ancient Greek edition, anywhere, because it had the first 4 chapters,
and 7 verses of the 5th, 1:1 to 5:7a,
that were missing from every other Greek version known.
No one in the West had ever seen
those first four-plus chapters in Greek.
But wait a minute.
A year before Tischendorf even saw Sinaiticus,
much less Barnabas, Simonides had
already published Barnabas.
And I checked it myself.
It has those four missing chapters, just like Sinaiticus!
So Tischendorf wasn't the first.
And guess who DID see Barnabas before Tischendorf "discovered" it?
Simonides had seen it first.
How can we explain it?
Simonides said he made that copy we call Sinaiticus!
There it is.
But that's not all.
What's in that text?
Remember how Simonides said that he made this copy we call Sinaiticus,
then he sent it to monks to correct this first draft?
That marked-up draft is what we call the Codex Sinaiticus.
So, in Codex Sinaiticus, we should find two things:
the original text Simonides said he copied
from that stash, plus those monks' notes
of words to be corrected.
Well, guess what?
Go online to www.codexsinaiticus.org.
All those corrections that we find today online
in those photographs of Sinaiticus?
Simonides had already published a final text with those corrections,
years before Tischendorf ever saw Sinaiticus (Barnabas --1859).
Simonides was telling the truth.
Not only that, but if I look in Simonides' footnotes,
the words from the version Simonides used called "Gaspareos"
have the original Sinaiticus words.
And the words that were changed by the monks,
are there in Simonides' main text.
So like or not, I had to accept that 1) Simonides had information
no one anywhere else had, before anyone else had it.
2) Simonides published that information
before anyone had ever seen the Sinaiticus.
I said it before, and I'll say it again.
Simonides was telling the truth.
So Simonides took all the changes made by the monks
in the Sinaiticus.
And he wrote them in this book, as the main text.
Why?
It's pretty clear.
I think he wanted to copy those corrections
into his next version of Barnabas for his final version of the book
for the Tsar.
There's more to that, but that's not for this video.
Then he took the Gaspareos version,
that matches the Sinaiticus, added the 6 other versions,
right here, of Barnabas from Mt. Athos,
and put them in footnotes.
When he finished, he published the book
no later than April of 1843.
That's the date of the article in The Star of the East
April 26th, 1843, about the book.
And that's just 2 months after Kallinikos last saw Simonides,
with the Sinaiticus.
That's a lot to take in.
But it all fits the timeline.
Reading all this evidence, I was finally willing to take
Simonides' and Kallinikos' testimony at face value.
Based on that, what did Simonides expect
to happen next?
Simonides expected these things: 1) The Sinaiticus would then
go to St. Catherine's and be checked over
by Callistratus and any other monks with him.
2) The fixed-up Barnabas, then, would go into his final draft
of the Sinaiticus, with all the changes in it,
the same as his 1843 book on Barnabas.
3) Then Simonides would make another full Bible,
with whatever other monks were part of that stage of the project.
4) The finished copy would be bound
and sent by Uncle Benedict, who was over the
Russian Orthodox monastery of St. Panteleimon,
as a gift to the Tsar of Russia.
5) The Tsar would be grateful and moved to grant the request
of Benedict and buy them a printing press
for the monastery, maybe to get out printed copies
of all their treasury of manuscripts.
But Spoiler!
It didn't happen that way.
What Simonides expected, he didn't get.
It turns out that Kallinikos had something else
in mind.
And I couldn't believe it when I understood what it was
that Kallinikos really wanted, and what happened to his plans
after that.
But I can't go into all that yet.
That's another story of betrayal and intrigue.
But think about these things first, because I'll show you
that part of the story in the next vlog.
The bottom line is this: Simonides made the Sinaiticus
in the 1800s.
It is not an ancient document.
So all those new Bibles are making changes,
based on a fake, modern text.
God bless you, and have a wonderful day.