147 Simonides in his letter to The Guardian claimed to have used as his text the Moscow edition of the Bible (which for the New Testament was Textus Receptus) that Benedict had collated 'with the ancient ones and cleared it of many errors'. Subsequently, Simonides specified these as three ancient copies, plus Codex Alexandrinus, and a Syriac version. He still could not have produced the text of Codex Sinaiticus from these, but what tricks was was 'learned Benedict' up to tinkering with the Scriptures on behalf of the monastery? And more pointedly, in the article to which the Panteleimon monastery were responding, the argument by Tischendorf against Simonides' claimed provenance had been set out, which indicated the gross indecency of sending such a codex as a present to the Tsar as the defender of Orthodoxy, since due to the thousands of changes from the Textus Receptus, the resulting text of Codex Sinaiticus would appear to the Tsar as promoting 'gross heresies', which could not but reflect very badly on the monastery. - p. 64