Simonides in England: A Forger's Progress - Pasquale Massimo Pinto

Steven Avery

Steven Avery

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The last point on which I wish to comment is Simonides’ friendship with John
Eliot Hodgkin, probably the closest friend that he had during the last years of his
English stay. It was Hodgkin who supplied Simonides with practical and fi-
nancial support and, above all, acted as mediator with a wide network of anti-
quarians and bibliophiles, amateur scholars, New Testament specialists, pub-
lishers and booksellers, and with the press. It is thanks to Hodgkin’s commit-
ment and care that the documents today gathered in the British Library
Additional 42502AB survive.

48 More details on the friendship and collaboration between Simonides and Hodgkin can be
found in Canfora 2010.
 
Last edited:
Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
The career of Simonides as a papyrologist was somehow overshadowed by the
scandal concerning the codex Sinaiticus that he triggered in the columns of The
Guardian in September 1862 by stating that he had actually written the venerable
manuscript of the Bible recovered by Tischendorf at St Catherine’s Monastery. A
clever move, that ensured the forger would leave his mark in Victorian England
and entrust his name to posterity. The whole affair has been best recounted in the
1982 book by James K. Elliott, from which a clear idea of Simonides’ pervading
presence in the British press during the 1860s can also be obtained.38
 
Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
37
In the first years of the 20th century, when Farrer was writing, the Mayer papyri could still be
seen in the Liverpool Free Public Museum, together with the tracings taken by Simonides for
his lithographed facsimiles, see Farrer 1907,56. For an updated survey see Capponi 2008 and
Maraglino 2008.
 
Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
38
An attempt to portray Simonides* role in the affair as honest has recently been made, from a Christian fundamentalist point of view, in a conspiracy-theory movie (Tares among the Wheat, 2012).
 
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