When experts analyze a person's statement of
what he or she witnessed or did,
the experts say that the simple sentence
is more likely a true one.
"I didn't eat the cookie."
Subject - verb - object.
When people try to cloud the truth or lie,
they often say a lot more than "subject-verb-object."
"How dare you say I ate the cookie!
I would never do that!
How rude can you get!"
Experts say he very possibly ate the cookie.
When the statement is longer or more complex,
it is the added words that often give them away.
It is much harder on people with a conscience,
if they lie while stating a simple sentence.
So when I am searching for what really happened in the 1800s
regarding the creation of Codex Sinaiticus,
I am looking for the simple statements.
I want to find as many simple statements as I can,
and then do what I can in the present day to verify them.
First, I'll list for you the 4 levels of certainty and
the 4 guidelines that I used while looking for the truth.
Then I'll summarize what Constantine Simonides said
was the history of his great uncle Benedict.
And I'll tell you what I found to verify it
or cast doubt on that history.
Then I'll show you where I found that information,
so you can check for yourselves.
After that, I will add the facts together to create an hypothesis about
what I think were Uncle Benedict's real reasons
for creating the codex Sinaiticus.
You may want subtitles on.
There's a lot of data here.
Hi, I'm David Daniels from Chick Publications.
For a century and a half, books and teachers have
said that Constantin Tischendorf found the "world's oldest Bible"
in an orthodox monastery in the desert of Egypt.
Tischendorf named it Codex Sinaiticus.
But one man, Constantine Simonides, said, "NO!
I made that Bible.
I created it for my Uncle Benedict!"
But why would a Byzantine Orthodox monk like Benedict
create an anti-Orthodox, Alexandrian Bible?
For over 150 years scholars and textbooks have dismissed Simonides' claim as lies.
They claimed that Constantine Simonides made up people and events.
That's what I once thought.
But I had to know where he lied.
Did he ever tell the truth?
How would I find out, over 150 years later?
When a person makes up dates, names, places, events, and people,
that's a lot of details.
They could easily make mistakes.
Why don't we look for Simonides' mistakes, then?
And if he lied, where did he lie?
But if we find out he told the truth, then we really should admit it.
In this video I want to see if I can verify what Simonides said
about his great uncle Benedict.
To do this, I have four levels of certainty
and four guidelines.
Here are my four levels of certainty:
1.
Historically verified.
I have other evidence that reasonably proves
the events happened the way they were described.
2.
Historically justified.
The evidence doesn't prove that the events happened that way,
but that it makes perfect sense that they would have.
3.
Historically probable.
It is reasonable and maybe likely that the events could have happened
in that or a similar way, but there's not enough information
to say it's what happened.
4.
Historically possible.
It was not impossible that it happened, but there isn't enough evidence
to lead you to any conclusion.
There are four guidelines I use on what Simonides (or whoever) testified:
1.
Corroborating Witness.
If I find an eyewitness who was there, or an institution
with good historical information, that agrees that an event happened,
then that is a testimony in, say Simonides', favor.
2.
Detailed Knowledge.
If I find that Simonides had detailed information
about a place or event, that most people
likely would not have, that is an indication that
either Simonides was there, or that information came from
someone who was there.
3.
Time-Specific Knowledge.
If I find that Simonides lists events that happened
for a limited amount of time, within a narrow timeframe,
and the story lists specifics that were not common knowledge,
that indicates that either Simonides was there at that time,
or that information came from someone who was there,
in that limited timeframe.
4.
Consistent Actions or Events.
If someone's story tells about a person doing something
that I can historically find him doing in another place around that time,
then we can say that this event is consistent with his behavior,
and therefore plausible.
The higher up the list we are able to go, the more probable or
the more certain we will be, as far as we are able to tell in 2018.
Why is this important?
Realize that most of our professors, Bible teachers and ministers
were taught to believe the lies about Tischendorf.
We were expected to believe the story about "the Great Tischendorf
and his discovery of the Sinaiticus, the world's oldest and best Bible."
It can get you ridiculed or even fired from some positions
to even question it.
I am not telling you that your professor is wrong,
and you must believe me.
I am telling you that your professor was taught wrong--
and proving it.
We are building a foundation for a body of evidence,
to get to the truth.
I will quote what Simonides wrote.
I'll show you what I found when I looked it up.
And I'll show you where I found it, right on your screen.
Constantine Simonides, on January 21st, 1863
wrote to the Guardian newspaper, largely responding to a man
named William Aldis Wright.
(He's another story entirely.)
Wright copied down a summary of Simonides' statements
about his great-uncle Benedict and himself.
It's filled with statements that Simonides wants the reader
to believe are facts.
Are they?
Let's find out.
Various parts of Simonides' letter were reprinted in two places:
The Christian Remembrancer and The Journal of Sacred Literature
and Biblical Record.
When I first read Simonides' story a number of years ago,
I thought he was making up the names, dates and places.
After all, who could verify what Simonides said?
Many of the people were dead.
Cities were destroyed.
Evidence would have been hard to find, to see whether he told the truth.
Another thing: what reason would I have
to doubt WA Wright?
I have some of his books on the King James.
Then there's Frederick Scrivener.
He published a Greek text to go with the King James.
And his books said Simonides was a con man.
These guys couldn't be wrong about Simonides, could they?
How could I find out whether he really was a con man, or not?
Remember these principles:
Liars lie, even when they have nothing to lose by telling the truth.
Honest people tell the truth, even if they've got lots to gain by lying.
It would take something pretty big to get a generally honest person to lie.
So which is Simonides?
Let's take Simonides' words as we read them in English,
in the Christian Remembrancer.
Ready?
"First, that my uncle Benedict, being by profession a theologian,
and versed in twelve languages,
intending to publish both the Old and New Testaments,
and the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, with exegetic scholia
of the ancient commentators, and specially to reply to
what had been written against the Septuagint,
began this work while Professor in the College of Cydon,
in the year 1784."
Let's take this apart.
Is Simonides telling the truth?
If he were making things up, it would be easy to mix up
his dates, places, events, and people.
It turned out that I was wrong about Simonides.
1.There really was a College of Cydon, or Cydoniae, or Ayvalik, or Aibali.
It was started in 1780 as a smaller school, in the courtyard of
Virgin of the Orphans church, or Panagia ton Orphanon.
It turns out those buildings were not destroyed in 1821, after all!
The Muslims took them over and still use them today.
A numbers of pictures were either found or taken in 2013
by Dr. Emmanuel Paraschos of Emerson College,
when he was searching for his roots on Aibali.
He actually went to the city and found the places.
This is the school for boys.
The school buildings still exist, but Paraschos noted that
they were enlarged a bit since then.
By 1800 the school had really expanded
under Veniamin Lesvios (Benjamin of Lesbos), this guy.
It was made a full-out academy, with printing press, scientific equipment
and top-notch scholars, and it was moved to the north side of town.
More evidence is in the Encyclopedia of the Hellenic World.
According to the 1827 Monthly Review, the college
"became the most frequented of the East."
And though Cydoniae was in Muslim Ottoman Asia Minor,
"Its inhabitants were entirely Greeks."
2. At this point Simonides told us Benedict's goals, as he knew them:
to publish and Old and New Testament, a Bible, together with the writings
of the Greek so-called Apostolic Church Fathers, with commentary.
That's a huge project.
It would take years to prepare it.
And Simonides told us Benedict's reason:
to prove how good the Greek Septuagint was, to unnamed people
who were writing against the Septuagint.
Who were these unnamed people?
Followers of Orthodox and Catholic religion loved the Septuagint.
The Catholic Latin Vulgate was largely based on the Septuagint.
That's in my Septuagint series and the book Did Jesus Use the Septuagint?
So who was Benedict talking about?
There were two groups that were against the Orthodox Septuagint,
for completely different reasons.
Bible-believing Protestants and Baptists.
They knew the Septuagint isn't God's words.
They: a) trusted the preserved
Hebrew Old Testament, b) were against the
Greek Septuagint and its changed words and added stories,
c) and, of course, they trusted the
preserved Greek New Testament.
But as I showed you in the video "Simonides Betrayed,
Part 4: Raising Rebels," there was another movement.
It was made up of: Greeks and others who were Freemasons,
revolutionaries who wanted to create a new Greek empire,
and so-called Enlightenment thinkers.
They knew that the current Orthodox Septuagint
didn't support their narrative.
They: a) wanted a narrative
of man rising to godhood
b) were against the current Greek Septuagint, which
* shows God becoming a man * shows Jesus as eternally God
But:
c) a bible could be made with Gnostic texts
to teach this man-to-god narrative.
Now, if only there were a manuscript collector
who could create such a Bible.
That could revolutionize (pardon the pun) the whole Orthodox religion!
3. Benedict started teaching in Cydoniae, Ayvalik or Aibali,
in the 4th year of the school, 1784, when he was still a teenager.
This was a regular practice with schools of the day.
While he was younger He would have taught orphan children.
Then he would teach adults when he got older
and became more educated himself. "Adults," meaning teens, high school age and up.
I'll show you Benedict was one of the teachers in a bit--
but under a different name.
4. The Greek schools in Asia Minor were filled with
European Enlightenment thinking, and this thinking got the schools
in hot water with the established Orthodox religion,
in Constantinople.
So if Benedict taught at Cydoniae, then he was teaching
Enlightenment thought, not Orthodox religion.
Now let's continue with what Simonides wrote.
"Having removed to Mount Athos in 1819, for the sake of retirement,
and embraced the monastic life in the Monastery of Esphigmenos,
he was named Benedict (for surely they who adopt
the monastic life ought to change themselves
and their names as well as their lives), having formerly had two names,
Basilaeus and Bessarion."
1.
If Benedict retired in 1819, it means he taught for 35 years.
That's very reasonable.
My mom taught elementary school for 30 years before she retired,
plus practice teaching years, and getting her Bachelor's
and Master's degrees.
This is plausible.
2. It was also plausible to retire to a monastery
like Esphigmenou, because as it said
in the 1827 Monthly Review,
"The monasteries of Mount Athos, and others, formed another substitute
for colleges or seminaries."
So former professors retiring to become monks, and
even teaching on the peninsula called Mount Athos,
were not an unusual event.
But teacher Bessarion retired and took on the monastic name Benedict,
to do more textual studies, not to teach.
And Esphigmenou had a number of mouldering manuscripts
for him to investigate!
3. Note how Simonides said Benedict's two names
before he became a monk were Basilaeus and Bessarion.
The "B" in modern Greek has become a "V,"
so "Bessarion" would be "Vissarion."
According to Simonides' biography by Charles Stewart,
Simonides' mom and her family were from the Isle of Symi,
northeast of the Isle of Rhodes.
And Benedict (Vissarion) was the uncle of Simonides' mother Mary.
That would make him Great-Uncle Benedict.
Now look at the Encyclopedia of the Hellenic world,
same article about Ayvalik (Cydoniae).
It lists the teachers at the school which started in 1780
and was incorporated in 1800.
"In the school, where there was also a library, taught ...
Vissarion of Symi..."
I've found Vissarion of Symi listed in other articles of the Encyclopedia,
and even a Greek blog on the Academy of Cydoniae.
So for 35 years Vissarion of Symi taught, before he retired in 1819, and
became a monk at the monastery of Esphigmenou on Mt. Athos.
And it was just in time, too!
On June 15,1821 the people of Ayvalik / Cydoniae
were massacred by the Muslim Ottomans, trying to squash
the Greek rebellion against their rule.
This was in the first year of the war for Greek independence.
Now let's check the next part of Simonides' statement.
"While at Athos he [that is, Benedict] gave himself up particularly
to the study of the Sacred scriptures.
He collected the most ancient MSS. of both Testaments,
and of their commentators, and at considerable expense
prepared his work for the press."
This is perfectly plausible.
Benedict / Vissarion, was well-known and well-loved.
His retirement was like my professors' retirements have been:
continued study and writing.
So Vissarion, now Benedict, continued to gather manuscripts of the Bible
and ancient Greek so-called "Church Fathers," to make his big life goal come to pass.
He'd have nothing but time.
Except for one thing.
Here's what Simonides said next.
"The Greek Revolution interfered: he withdrew after a little time
to the island of Hydra, thence to Cythera, thence to Patzaris,
and finally to Calaurrea, now Paros, where there is a famous
monastery of the Virgin in which he remained a long time,
teaching theology to twelve Greek youths by command of Capo D'Istrias,
Governor of Greece."
1.
Benedict had been at Esphigmenou monastery since 1819.
The Greek Revolution started under 2 years later on February 22nd, 1821.
It spread quickly.
The Ottomans moved all over to stop the revolt.
2.
The isle of Hydra was a defensive position for the Greeks during the war.
It is perfectly plausible that Benedict would go there for safety.
Remember, he taught ideas in line with the revolutionaries, Masonry
and the so-called Enlightenment.
3.
Kythira is a strategic island and another safe place,
off the south-eastern tip of the Peloponnese peninsula of Greece,
the furthest south of the 6 main Ionian islands.
4. Patzaris must be Spetses, an island that rebelled along with Hydra,
also called "Pityoussa."
They had a naval fleet, just like Hydra.
Benedict taught at Spetses in 1828.
5. Calaurrea is Kalavria.
Paros is Poros.
Kalavria and Poros are sister islands, now just called Poros on maps.
They are on the other side of the peninsula
from Spetses.
They are also south of Aegina Island.
I'll tell you about that in the next video.
6. The monastery Benedict taught at is called "Moni Zoodochou Pigis Kalavrias,"
the Holy Monastery of the Life-Giving Fountain of Kalavria.
This refers to their doctrine that Mary was the "mother
or one who gave birth to God."
7. 12 or 15 Greek youths were taught at the secondary school
started at this monastery, in the eastern wing.
It was the first ecclesiastical secondary school, founded in 1830
by command of Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first governor of Independent Greece.
8. Kapodistrias had used Poros island since at least 1828.
It is said that he "received strength" during the war,
by his devotion to the Mary icon at the Zoodochou Pigis monastery.
Kapodistrias set up the first Greek navy at Poros.
He also used Poros to meet with ambassadors
from Great Britain, France and Russia, to negotiate what the borders
of Independent Greece would be.
In 1830, Simonides' great-uncle Benedict sent a letter to Kapodistrias,
asking that his native Symi and the other Islands
be included in borders of the new independent Greece.
He may have actually handed the letter to Kapodistrias!
It looks like they were in the same building!
But the other nations didn't agree.
So Symi and the other Dodecanese Islands
remained under Ottoman control for another 80 years.
Here's the last section we'll cover of Simonides' 1863 letter.
"After the assassination of the Governor he [Benedict]
again removed to Mount Athos, where he continued until his death."
1. On October 9, 1831, Governor Kapodistrias was assassinated.
The monks disbanded the school, and left Benedict free to leave Poros
and return to Mt. Athos, this time to Panteleimon monastery,
just like Simonides said.
Let me stop right here.
First, please note that I have been able to historically verify,
using the 4 levels of certainty and the four guidelines,
almost every single word Simonides said about his great-uncle.
That says a lot about Simonides' credibility.
Nobody could have looked up all this information
and gotten all these answers.
It took years and generations of people to pick up the pieces and write about events.
It took until today, when we have access to online maps,
photographs, histories, charts, digitized books and testimonies,
not to mention translation software.
Simonides could have made up a good half of all this,
and nobody would have been able to tell until now.
So Simonides had perfect opportunity to lie,
but didn't.
That's not the way liars operate.
Based on what you have just seen, now I will tell you my theory
about the real reason Benedict wrote what we call the Sinaiticus.
Consider the facts:
1.
Benedict (Vissarion) taught at the
Academy of Ayvalik/Cydoniae from 1784-1819 (35 years)
2.
The Academy was a hotbed of Enlightenment thought
3.
Three groups all had the same basic worldview:
a. Enlightenment
b. Masons
c. Revolutionaries
4.
Their worldview had man rising to godhood
5.
The present Bible was not useful to the movement
6.
Benedict/Vissarion wanted to make a new Greek Bible
and include certain Greek "church fathers," including Barnabas and Shepherd of Hermas
7.
Shepherd of Hermas clearly had Jesus being adopted
as God's son at his baptism, so Hermas fit the narrative
8.
Gnosticism was also about man becoming a god
9.
Gnostic New Testament writings lowered Jesus to just another man
10.
If the Bible were rewritten with Gnostic texts,
it would teach man rising to godhood, just like Masonry, Enlightenment,
and revolutionary thought
Where, who and what he taught tells me that Benedict didn't want
a Byzantine, Orthodox Bible.
He wanted a Gnostic Bible
that would support the worldview of the Masons, Enlightenment thinkers,
and revolutionaries.
So Benedict/Vissarion spent 3 decades compiling a Gnostic-type Bible,
from whatever Gnostic manuscripts he could find.
I believe he wanted to present it to the Russian Tsar
as an alternative to their present Orthodox Bible.
I believe Benedict created and compiled Sinaiticus
to aid the revolution with an "enlightened" Greek Bible,
for a new Greek religion, and a new, "enlightened" Greek state.
And that is why the Sinaiticus in Mark 1 says
that Jesus was just a man who confessed his sins,
was baptized by John the Baptist and afterward adopted by God as His son.
Benedict never told his true reasons to Simonides.
Simonides didn't need to know.
He just mentioned the need for a printing press,
so dutiful Simonides would do the work,
copying from ancient manuscripts into one "new" Gnostic Bible,
that Benedict believed would be copied and spread
all over the world.
This is the best theory I can find that fits the facts.
In the next video, I will talk about Simonides' testimony
about his own background.
Then I will show how this project was derailed,
Simonides was betrayed, and someone else got hold of Sinaiticus.
Until then, God bless you, and have a wonderful day.
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