Look at the Sinaiticus. I never could in Bible college
or at Fuller Seminary in the 1980s. Almost no one could,
just about anywhere, until these last few years.
The Codex Sinaiticus was the book that tipped the balance
away from the historical, preserved Bible and
changed hundreds of scriptures in crucial places.
Yeah. I know...
Codex Sinaiticus is the reason for hundreds of
Bible-doubting footnotes.
So please, take a good look at it. Go to www.codexsinaiticus.org,
click "see the manuscript," and look at it!
And when you look at it, look carefully.
Notice all those corrections, the missing words, phrases, verses --
not in the New Testament only -- but also in the Old Testament.
It's all over the place!
Don't take my word for it. Don't just trust me.
Don't trust your professors, either.
Look at the pictures yourself. Click from page to page,
book to book. See it for yourself.
This is the first time non-scholars have been able to.
And you have no idea how long it's gonna last.
And then, when you have spent some time
doing that, ask yourself this:
"Did the copyists believe they had the words of God?"
How could they? They were marking it up and
correcting it all over the place!
So if they didn't believe they had the words of God,
then why should I?
Sometimes simple questions lead to powerful answers.
Want to ask some questions with me?
Hi, I'm David Daniels from Chick Publications.
When you were growing up, did you ever say,
"If I were king..."?
Well, what if you were the head of a giant empire?
And what if that empire had pagans and Jewish people and
a bunch of different groups called Christians?
How would you unite your empire?
Well, I can tell you what Constantine wanted.
He wanted to unite the Roman Empire
in the early 300s AD.
As emperor, he was the Pontifex Maximus,
the guy who sets the religious calendar.
That made him the guy who had the empire united
in its national holidays and sacrifice schedule.
Then, he had himself declared to be "the Bishop of Bishops,"
basically the first pope. That meant he could try to
unite these Christian groups, as well.
In 324 AD, Constantine laid the plans
for a new capital city for his empire.
He picked Byzantium, the border city
at the northwestern part of Turkey, on the east side of his empire.
And he named it after himself, Constantinople.
6 years later, in 330 AD, Constantine finished it
and moved his stuff from Rome to Constantinople.
The next year in 331 AD, he summoned
Eusebius of Caesarea, his lapdog,
and commanded him to get together 50 Bibles,
as I read to you a few vlogs ago. Listen again to Constantine's words:
"We make known to you that you are to commission
fifty volumes which are to be bound in leather,
easy to read and (for convenience) portable.
They are to be written by craftsmen who are both calligraphers
and used to working accurately.
They are to be copies of the divine Scriptures,
which you well know must be available
for reading in church."
And then Eusebius wrote,
"... we sent him threes and fours in curiously worked bindings."
What did Constantine want?
How many of you think Constantine wanted 50
different, disagreeable Bibles?
Think about it. That story is still around today.
Some of you have professors in Bible college or seminary,
like I did, who will tell you
that Sinaiticus and Vaticanus were likely two of
Constantine's 50 Bibles.
Look here: Even the
"Fifty Bibles of Constantine" Wikipedia page
shows what images? Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.
Check it for yourself.
Ask yourself.
Was this Constantine's grand scheme
to unite his empire?
With 50 Bibles that didn't agree with each other?
Does that story, that professors tell to this day,
even make sense?
Remember, Constantine said: "They are to be copies of
the divine Scriptures..."
I think he just wanted 50 copies of the same Bible.
It makes sense.
If I were king --emperor, and 50 different Bibles
were sent to me, I'd say, "You had just one job..."
and then I'd fire them.
I would say, "So which one is the right one?
Which one do I trust? Which one is
the one God promised?"
And if they said, "All of them," I'd say,
"You mean your God can't give me
just one single copy of the word of God
that I, the emperor, can totally trust?"
Who can I trust, then?
And you know what they would have to say?
A priest, the pope, or a scholar
(or set of scholars).
They'd be telling me to put my trust in man,
that I couldn't just trust in God and His words.
Because if a man convinced me not to trust God,
then all I'd have left to trust in would be that man!
Remember, the Sinaiticus and the Vaticanus
don't agree with each other. They only have
2 basic things in common:
1. They add the Apocrypha and other words of men,
added as if they were scripture. That raises their value,
but it lowers the value of actual scripture.
2. They disagree with the preserved texts
which we find in the King James
and other preserved Bibles.
But they also disagree with each other,
which means you cannot go to them,
or either one of them, as your absolute authority,
no matter how hard you try. I know. I tried for years!
I trusted my professors.
My own doctrines began to change,
and waver, as I became my own textual critic,
"weighing" the various readings.
To my professors it meant
giving more "weight" to what disagrees
with the King James and other preserved Bibles,
and less "weight" to whatever
agrees with the King James, even if there are
a thousand of them!
I read Metzger's discussion points
"A Textual Commentary On the Greek New Testament"
and the committee votes --yes, they decided scripture
by voting on the readings, based on "textual criticism"
and their own prejudices.
If their goal was faith, they failed,
both then and now.
But if their goal was never-ending doubt,
they succeeded.
Remember that quote I gave you from Kirsopp Lake, who said:
"In spite of the claims of Westcott and Hort
and of Von Soden, we do not know
the original form of the Gospels, and it is quite likely
that we never shall."
He wrote that after he had photographed Sinaiticus
starting in 1910! Did the Sinaiticus lead him to faith,
or doubt?
Doubt.
Let's go to another Constantine, Constantine Tischendorf.
His college professor convinced him
that he didn't have God's preserved words.
So he wanted to find them somewhere hidden
in a monastery, in Greek.
He wrote to his fiancee Angelika:
"I am confronted by a sacred task,
the struggle to regain
the original form of the New Testament,"
He believed he had lost God's words!
He said he wanted the "oldest and best."
Instead He found a jumbled mess.
At best he found a draft copy. At worst he found a counterfeit.
And that's only if he did "find" it and didn't
come up with it, himself.
Let's go back to the first Constantine.
Why would the emperor want a bunch of Bibles
that were not the same, that disagreed in important points,
and that had piles of erasing and correcting
and rewriting and notes and excuses?
Does that make sense to you?
If you were the emperor, and wanted to unite your empire,
you wouldn't want 50 disagreeing Bibles.
You'd want 50, carefully prepared,
skillfully executed, identical Bibles,
wouldn't you?
And that's what Constantine the emperor
asked for.
What was Constantine Tischendorf looking for?
What did this Constantine want?
Eusebius wrote
"...we sent him threes and fours in curiously worked bindings."
What could that mean? Threes and fours?
It could mean:
1) sending three or four Bibles at a time
2) three or four books to add up to one Bible --
1 for Law, 1 for Prophets,
1 for Writings and 1 for the New Testament
3) three or four Bibles to a shipping crate, or...
4) written in 3 or 4 columns to a page.
Did Tischendorf invent that view?
He sure made it popular.
I can imagine him thinking:
"Let's see. Vaticanus has 3 columns.
Maybe I can find one with 4 columns!
In my four years of going to monasteries in Europe,
I've found
added or taken away words and phrases
and verses.
And I've written them down.
Maybe I can find another, older Bible that has
those same added to or taken away
words and verses! I'll be famous!"
He really was trying to make
a brand-new Bible, that would make him famous.
Read his biographies. Nobody disputes that fact.
Isn't it amazing that in that jumbled
mess he called the Sinaiticus, he found exactly that?
He found the same unique readings
he had been finding in other manuscripts,
but in ONE --sort of-- Bible!
Imagine that! What a coincidence!
And he found them right after he decided
there had to be one more Bible for him to find,
since the others the Alexandrinus,
the Vaticanus, and the Ephraemi Rescriptus,
that rewritten one that he had just deciphered,
were already well-known! Imagine that!
And he found them in the first place he went
after he saw the pope and
Jesuit Cardinal Mai in the Vatican
the year before, in 1843
--and then raised some money. Imagine that!
And he found them in a place so remote,
that everyone would be forced to believe
his own testimony, since there were no
easy-to-produce witnesses to verify what he said.
Imagine that!
Maybe I should start all over again
and ask:
"If I were a scholar, and I wanted to produce
a fake Bible that would make me famous,
what would I do?"
Maybe that will get me closer to the truth.
What did Constantine want?
I am so glad I don't have to worry about
whether Tischendorf was deluded, a liar, a con,
or incredibly naive.
I'm glad I don't have to search the ends of the earth
to find the words of God hidden somewhere..
God made sure His words
were right here in front of me.
Proverbs 17:24 "Wisdom is before him
that hath understanding; but the eyes of a fool
are in the ends of the earth" --or maybe a monastery.
God bless you, and have a wonderful day.