Sometimes the simplest questions give us the most interesting answers!
Codex Sinaiticus is the Greek text that tipped the balance
of the world's Bible text scholars away from the King James
and Bibles like it, to something called "the critical text."
It became one of the most important
and most studied manuscripts of all time.
Look! It even has its own web page!
So we should be able to ask simple questions
and get simple answers.
Right?
Let's find out! Here's a child's question:
What color is Sinaiticus?
The answer will bring you an embarrassing surprise.
Hi, I'm David Daniels from Chick Publications.
First, I've got to thank Jack McElroy, author of the amazing book,
Which Bible Would Jesus Use? for sending me his own
Sinaiticus facsimile to check out for myself.
I've got to thank Steven Avery for his great research,
we're doing a lot together, and Mark Michie
for his work with the graphics.
I am so amazed with what I am going to show you.
But let me tell you a story.
Back in the 1800s, there was a guy named
Constantin Tischendorf. He went out
to discover ancient Bibles. The guy who helped
pay for the trip was King Frederick of Saxony.
So Tischendorf went down to the St. Catherine's monastery
in the Sinai Peninsula, and brought back two sections,
43 leaves, that he grabbed or
cut out of an Old Testament. Then he gave those as a present
to King Frederick, and named them after him.
People who finance your trip expect things like that.
Right around that time, 1844-45,
a couple of guys, including a religious guy
named Porfiry Uspensky, saw the rest of the document and
described it as "white," and he took a few leaves back with him.
And people went to Germany and again saw Frederick's leaves
for themselves: snow white!
15 years later, Tischendorf came back
with 347 other leaves. He held onto them
a couple of months in Cairo while he and a couple unnamed guys
helped him.
Now, in the 19th century, people were really into
finding ancient documents. Sometimes they paid
good money for them. So you can bet that
faking documents to make them look ancient
was a huge business. They'd stain the documents
to make them look darker, and change the ink
so it would look lighter. Then they'd rough up the paper
or parchment, and voila! A brand-new "ancient document!"
Well, after those 2 months with Tischendorf in Cairo,
he let others see this Sinaiticus. And guess what?
It wasn't snow white anymore! It was stained and darkened,
and the ink was lightened, and the whole thing looked old now.
What happened to the color?
But that's not all. There are also sheets of Sinaiticus
that are kept in libraries in the Egyptian peninsula,
in Russia, in Germany,
and 347 in England, as well.
But a few years ago, a number of scientists
decided to use the internet to bring them all together,
as complete a Sinaiticus as anyone has ever seen,
with high-definition photos. They even used color bars
to calibrate the pictures, so they are color-accurate.
I got all 822 pictures on a single photo. Want to take a look?
Even at this size, I bet you can tell
the pages that are Frederick's apart from Tischendorf's.
Now that's regular color.
I added some shadow. See if you can see that better.
Can you see the parts That are King Frederick's?
How about if I added a little shine to it, in addition?
Does that make it clearer?
Yeah. That's quite a difference, isn't it?
See? Someone is being dishonest.
But there's more. If you spend about $500 to $800
you can get a huge book with all the discovered pages
of Sinaiticus.
In fact, it says, "The images,
taken according to agreed technical standards,
were processed to represent faithfully
the actual appearance of the pages..."
And then they were reduced by about 5%.
It said they also made "sensitive adjustments,
since the appearance of the parchment and ink
varied somewhat between the leaves
of the four libraries."
Okay?
So let me show you what they
say Sinaiticus looks like.
Ready?
There. You see it? Do you see the difference?
Neither do I. See, these pages
look the same.
It doesn't matter where I look.
So let me ask you a really important question.
What color IS Sinaiticus?
If the scientists with their color bars are right...
... those same two pages I just showed you?
This is with the color bars.
If the scientists with the color bars are right,
then there are some major color differences.
But if they're right, then the publisher of that big book
just might have Photoshopped the color,
so that it was all the same, pretty much.
You just saw it with your own eyes.
And if Frederick's pages are right, then Tischendorf's 347 sheets
were intentionally stained to make the papers and the ink
look old.
Ink: lighter. Page: darker.
One guy on the internet said, "No, you're wrong.
The Sinaiticus has been tested by hundreds of people!"
Nope. Not a single test has been done
on the age of the parchment or of the ink.
They were set to test it in April of 2015.
Then they changed the guy over the project, and
suddenly the testing was cancelled.
Why? What are they afraid they would find?
Not the scientists, I mean. The powers-that-be.
What are they afraid of finding out? That the Sinaiticus is actually
not an ancient document after all? That it was a modern forgery
that was faked to make it look old?
That would explain why it's never been mentioned
in any clear way, anywhere, until 1844.
But Sinaiticus is the reason we took out the second "yet"
in John 7:8, making Jesus a liar.
Sinaiticus tipped the balance so we'd have the blind man
believing in the "Son of man," not the "Son of God."
It also took out the words, "Lord, I believe,
and he worshipped him" in John 9:38,
taking away that Jesus is God, to be worshiped.
Not even Vaticanus removes that.
And of course, Sinaiticus is the reason that we have
these warning notes in the last 12 verses
of most copies of the Gospel of Mark, including King James Bibles
(Check out my Ryrie, for instance), saying we can't believe them.
I'll have to give Mark 16 its own vlog.
Don't worry about that.
But could it be that they were afraid
that we would find out they "colored the truth"
all this time?
Let me make this plain.
The evidence shows me, right now, 2016,
that Sinaiticus, no matter its age,
was snow white with dark lettering.
But that doesn't look as old as men want.
So men aged it. And the publishers of
this very expensive book over here also changed the color of the pages
so that they would all match.
I cannot think of a single godly reason
why they would change it.
So it's forcing me to think that the Sinaiticus is a sham,
a modern counterfeit. And it is part of an agenda.
Don't believe me -- go look at the evidence yourself!
Watch this video over again. Check me out!
I don't believe Sinaiticus anyway. I have no horse in this race.
I've got nothing to lose by finding out.
But there are people who have a great deal to lose.
They translate, produce, and print almost every Bible in the world,
and they teach that the Sinaiticus was
"a real, ancient Bible."
And of course, it's also a big part of
the coming one world Bible for one world religion.
I have so much more to say on this. But it's not hopeless.
There is a bright light!
You can trust ONE Bible -- in English it is
the King James Bible. 400+ years
tried, tested and proved. And it was never "found,"
because it was never lost in the first place.
God kept His promise to preserve His words.
I trust it with all my heart. I hope you will, too.
God bless you, and have a wonderful day.