When my professors in Bible college
told us about the amazing "oldest and best"
Codex Sinaiticus, I couldn't wait
to see it for myself. They told us that
the text critics had already gotten amazing information off of it
and copied it down for us. But I still wanted
to see what it looked like.
If they're telling you NOT to trust your King James
anymore because of what was
in a book someone found, you kind of want to
look at the book, don't you?
Here is a description of the Sinaiticus
from the 2009 book by Janet Soskice,
The Sisters of Sinai. It's sounds virtually identical
to what my professors said.
"It contained all the books of the Bible
as known to the modern world, and its weight was such
that one man alone could not carry it.
It was clearly the product of
a professional scriptorium of the highest order...."
Then it says,
"No manuscript of the Bible was more complete
or more ancient --the Codex Sinaiticus
(as it came to be called) antedating most known copies
by almost 600 years."
Now those of you who have watched these vlogs
already know it's missing
a good fourth of the Bible, and it has erasures, rewrites,
overwriting, corrections and marginal notes.
And it's not quite as ancient
as people have been led to believe.
But bear with me a minute. Drop back with me
into the 1980s in Bible college.
Where was this magical book? How could I see it?
How could I get one?
I looked it up in any dictionary
or textbook I could find. Take a look at
what we saw of the Sinaiticus. Ready?
Hi, I'm David Daniels from Chick Publications
Here is Introduction to
the History of Christianity. I blew the images up
to make them easier to see.
Here's one. See that?
This one says, "This page from Codex Sinaiticus
contains the last chapter of John's Gospel."
Well, you know that's John 21.
This page right here, I blew it up.
And it says, "Part of the last chapter
of John's Gospel in Greek, from the fourth-century
Codex Sinaiticus."
Notice anything about them? They are both pictures
of the same page!
So far, we have seen John 21,
just one page.
Now look at A General Introduction to the Bible,
the book by Jesuit educated Norman Geisler.
The same illustration is in the 1968 and 1986 editions,
so I'll use the first printing.
See it right here?
It says, "Codex Sinaiticus
opened to John 21:1-25 (British Museum.)
Anyone detecting a pattern?
How about this one? Archaeology in Bible Lands.
What did it say in 1977?
Here it is right here. I blew it up for you.
It says, "Codex Sinaiticus
opened to John 21:1-25 (British Museum)."
What is going on here?
Let me tell you a little story.
Diamonds were once rare and expensive.
But in 1869 a diamond rush started.
People could find them all over.
According to the laws of supply and demand,
diamonds should have been dirt cheap at that point.
But Cecil Rhodes, financed by the Rothschilds,
got a bunch of diamond merchants together
and made the De Beers Group. They stuffed their
heaps of diamonds in a bunch of warehouses,
and only let out a few at a time.
That low supply and high demand
made the price of diamonds stay high.
People wanted it all the more, because they thought they were rare.
But they couldn't have been more wrong.
The Sinaiticus pushers were just like this.
Only they didn't hold back diamonds. They held back pages of Sinaiticus.
So just like me, they heard stories and legends
about the magical Codex Sinaiticus. But they never got
to see it all for themselves. It stayed mysterious
and ran the show from behind the scenes.
Meanwhile, our teachers kept showing us
its "more accurate" words, which slowly destroyed our faith.
And more importantly for the Devil, they pried our hands
off of the King James Bible and sold us a cheap,
faith-destroying knock-off.
So they made it hard to see the Sinaiticus.
We were forced to just trust our teachers
and all the scholars who said it was so great.
Bye bye, Faith. Hello, Doubt.
It wasn't until 2004 that I finally got
my first glimpse of Sinaiticus. And when I did,
it looked like this.
This is an 1862 edition by Tischendorf.
This is Isaiah 1:1-27.
Do you see how neat and orderly that is?
Only that's not the actual codex. This is a "facsimile,"
which in 1860 meant Tischendorf made up letters
for printing that looked like the letters
from the Sinaiticus. And he had them made
in a bunch of different sizes, and quickly printed up
editions of the Sinaiticus-- only they were all cleaned up.
We had no idea they we had a typeset copy
to look at, and not photographs
of the real thing.
So this is the facsimile
And this is the real thing.
See a difference? Here's a close-up.
Honestly, can you call these guys
"scribes of the highest order"?
Holding back pages like this tricked us into trusting our teachers.
For all we knew, they had seen it for themselves.
But maybe they hadn't. Maybe they were tricked
into trusting their teachers, as well!
I made such a huge mistake back then.
I handed over my trust to my teachers.
It should have stayed in my Bible.
I think I was one of the few that had started out
with a King James Bible.
But from the very first day, the King James Bible
was zeroed out and set aside,
in favor of whatever they liked-- that was based on
the Sinaiticus and the Vaticanus, of course.
We students, by trusting our teachers,
also trusted that Sinaiticus was right
when it removed words of the Bible. So we no longer had faith
in verses about:
The story of the woman caught in adultery,
John 7:53 - 8:11 The resurrection appearances
of Jesus in Mark 16:9-20 The three Person Godhead
in 1 John 5:7-8 The need to believe
before being baptized in Acts 8:37
That Jesus is the only-begotten Son
in John 1:18.
Instead we were taught He was an "only-begotten God."
That's what the Jehovah's Witnesses teach!
Little by little our trust in basic Bible verses faded.
That's why I bought all those Greek helps
and critical notes. I could no longer be sure
of what God said. And that wasn't because
the King James doctrine was ever proved wrong.
Not at all! It was because
I trusted my teachers, who said
that the King James was wrong.
I never actually saw the evidence for myself.
But now you can. 147 years later,
after generations of people trusting the lying Sinaiticus,
the evidence was finally made available to the public.
Since 2009, www.codexsinaiticus.org
has been online. We have no idea
how long it will be available. Please take advantage of it.
Check every picture I show you. Do what I could not do
for over 30 years. See whether your professors
and preachers are telling you the truth or not.
That is my purpose in putting out these videos
for you to see.
With all my heart, I want you to have FAITH,
not DOUBT.
If I had it to do all over again, I would NEVER
simply trust my teachers. I would check up
on every claim they made. It is too easy to trust a teacher.
But it is hard to stand on the words of God, especially
(some of you know about this) when you have to do it alone
in a school, Bible college or a church.
But as the Lord Jesus said in Luke 4:4,
"It is written, That man shall not live
by bread alone, but by every word of God."
Guess what? The Sinaiticus also took out
"but by every word of God"! Those guys had no shame.
But I don't have to worry about any of that.
The night I repented on August 24th, 1980,
the Lord changed my life with this verse:
Psalm 118:8 "It is better to trust in the LORD
than to put confidence in man."
I trust every word of God, perfectly preserved
and translated exactly in English in my King James Bible.
Over 400 years it has been tried, tested and proved.
Accept no substitutes.
God bless you, and have a wonderful day.