Now we come to the most controversial part:
my theory of what actually happened in the 1800s and 1900s.
Are you ready? Fasten your safety belts.
Hi, I'm David Daniels from Chick Publications
After JL Hugg's book claiming Vaticanus was oldest and best,
the carefully-prepared paleographers bought the Vaticanus
and other Egyptian Bibles hook, line and thinker.
Vaticanus had to be one of the oldest and best,
if not the oldest and best. If it was,
we needed to change all our Bibles to match it.
Vaticanus became the prize to seek. Everyone who was anyone
wanted to get a look at it.
But who had control over it? The Vatican.
So anyone who wanted to see it had to make nice with Rome,
and not say anything or do anything that would upset them,
in hopes of seeing Vaticanus.
It was a race. And everything went to Rome!
Now you have to be nice to the pope. So none of these guys are going to
try to rescue any Catholics from their bondage to Rome,
say the pope is Antichrist, preach or teach
against Rome in any way. Ironically, they have to act
better than Catholics if they want to be allowed
a glance at what they now believed was "oldest and best,"
Codex Vaticanus.
One guy, who I've talked about for months,
was totally into that Catholic French monk
Montfaucon and his science of paleography,
"deciphering ancient manuscripts." That guy was anxious to see
the "oldest and best," and admitted that he wanted money,
a good position, and the highest praises of man.
That guy was Constantin Tischendorf.
There were three main Egyptian manuscripts,
according to the scholars: Alexandrinus, Ephraemi Rescriptus
and Vaticanus.
Tischendorf was too late to study the Alexandrinus.
That had been done already.
He needed something new to put his name on.
The Catholics sponsored him to spend 2 years
working on the Ephraemi Rescriptus,
an erased and rewritten over codex. They awarded him for that.
And he got some scholarly recognition.
But the public still didn't know who he was.
It wasn't enough.
Tischendorf also spent a few years doing favors for
various Catholic leaders, deciphering Greek documents.
Then he asked them to write letters to the pope,
for the pope to let Tischendorf see the Vaticanus,
the goal of his life.
But as the 1800s went on, scholars started to see
that it wasn't enough to have just Vaticanus.
They needed something else to justify the unusual readings in it,
the things that were missing and the things that were changed.
Then, as if by magic, POOF!
In 1844 suddenly the Sinaiticus appears.
It has no provenance, no history of any kind.
It has no chain of custody. It just showed up in a monastery
that 29 years earlier in 1815, only said it had 3 Bibles.
Now they suddenly said that they had FOUR.
Sinaiticus was the magical fourth.
I've spent a lot of time building up facts.
But I haven't simply spilled the beans of what I think really happened.
So this is my opinion, based on my research,
at this point in time.
I think Tischendorf was set up. From his favorite teacher in college,
they picked him out. They knew
what sort of person he was. They saw his pride, his ambition,
and they decided to make it work for them.
So they gave him the plumb of the Ephraemi Rescriptus.
Then they rewarded him for his work.
Then in 1843 Tischendorf was granted
an audience with the pope. He was mostly silent about it,
but there are a lot of details coming out now in books
from many different sources, including Catholic ones,
about what happened.
I think Tischendorf got to see the Vaticanus,
then got to see Jesuit Cardinal Mai's personal work on Vaticanus,
before it was published. He might have taken something of it
home with him. Regardless, he learned about
certain unusual readings, and he was now
on the lookout for them in any manuscripts he would find.
Remember, Tischendorf is credited
as having "found" more manuscripts than almost anyone else.
I wonder how many of them were really fake?
I think that in that papal audience, his visit to the pope,
they told him he should go to the East
to find manuscripts. But after this,
he raised money and made a beeline to Cairo, Egypt,
then to St. Catherine's monastery. I think they "tipped him off"
that there was something to be found there.
I think the Catholics paid for monks
who were up in northern Greece, in Mount Athos,
to prepare a special text. But for some reason
it was a rush job. They worked with many manuscripts,
to blend them together into one big book,
but they also had to have certain readings in them.
I think those were set up for Tischendorf to find.
That's why we have found some of them only at
Mount Athos.
They had worked up Tischendorf's reputation.
They had taught him what to look for
to judge a manuscript as "ancient." He was totally set up for this.
I think they made-to-order a manuscript
for Tischendorf to find.
They started with the Old Testament, then moved to the New at the last.
We only know for sure it was finished
in the form we see today by 1845. They could have moved down
to St. Catherine's and tried to finish stuff up
in the last year or so. I say that because
scraps of Sinaiticus were tossed into
a little hidden chamber and only found in 1975.
I think it was taking too long to make it,
so they made some short cuts.
They cut out huge chunks of the Bible
that didn't have major doctrinal stuff
or many alternate readings.
Many monks were paid good money to come up with
ancient Greek manuscripts after the fall of Constantinople
in 1453, and there are only
so many to go around. So there were many counterfeiters.
I think Constantine Simonides was one of them.
I think he was employed by the Catholics,
through whatever intermediaries, to work in this team of people.
That way he, and his friends --who knows?
Benedict? And maybe Kallinikos? A number of counterfeiters
worked on this rush job of a text to get down to the monastery
in the Egyptian desert for Tischendorf to find.
If Tischendorf got his finances together for his trip
really fast, it would make it necessary
to get the manuscript down there even faster.
That could force some short cuts.
I mentioned mistakes. There are many.
They would put up texts to copy, but they would have to go
from single column most likely, in the "original,"
and copy into four columns. That is very tricky.
So they'd set down one manuscript and turn to another, and keep writing. They don't have
time to read it. That's how they skipped from Chronicles to Ezra
and kept on writing. Not till later
did someone catch it and write a couple of creative notes.
But all these mistakes actually worked for Rome.
There were so many layers, paleographers could read Sinaiticus
for a lifetime and never run out of theories.
And they'd be indebted to Rome for it all!
And did anyone notice, they abandoned the preserved Bible
for all this?
I think Protestant scholars had a vested interest in believing
Tischendorf's date of 350 AD. And then
they could teach it to their students on down to today,
deceiving Christians into thinking that God didn't actually
preserve His words. They think that
we have to have priests ---I mean textual scholars---
to tell us which words might be God's,
and which words might not be.
I think Tischendorf didn't know he was being duped
at first. He may have seen the book
(yes, book, just like it was clearly described
the next year, in 1845) and cut out two portions,
just like an ordinary thief, thinking he got away with something.
He didn't know he was falling into Rome's plan.
Then Tischendorf didn't let people
get too close to the pages he removed.
They had such errors! So he just wrote out his own
Codex Friderico Augustanus, CFA, printing up which Greek
he thought belonged in the text. Then he put all the other stuff
into end notes and then told why he thought
they didn't belong. People didn't see the CFA.
They only saw Tischendorf's book. So they simply read it,
and believed Tischendorf.
Rome was delighted! They awarded him
and every paleographer who agreed that these were indeed
"ancient manuscripts."
I read a bit of a letter he wrote before going back to the monastery
in 1853. He knew it was a whole Bible
and wanted it for himself. He was willing to get Russian help
to do it, since Russia
was over the monastery.
Okay, I have to skip a lot here. So let's jump to the third visit,
in 1859.
I think he thought he had a great find, maybe through the 1840s.
But at the latest date, when he got the Sinaiticus to Cairo
in 1859, he figured out it was a fake.
Maybe before, but at least by then.
It was too new. It was supple.
And it was...white!
So he came upon a plan. He darkened Sinaiticus with,
maybe lemon juice, like Simonides' friend
says he did.
I have to say, if Simonides made it all up,
and his friends are imaginary, it is amazing that they said stuff
that I only discovered starting in 2014,
and people in general could only check starting in 2009.
I think Simonides was a very good con and liar.
He would admit the truth, only when he had no other option.
When Tischendorf claimed he had the "oldest and best"
Codex Sinaiticus in 1862, Simonides was forced,
bit by bit, to admit a little of the truth.
So Simonides or one of his friends
saw Tischendorf claim he was "cleaning" the pages.
But actually, he was aging them to look older,
before he went to Russia with Sinaiticus,
and people could see it up close.
Tischendorf and Simonides knew each other.
There's more to that story. And there is an accusation
that after Simonides disappeared, he and Tischendorf
pulled off another con, maybe in Russia.
Simonides didn't want Tischendorf taking away his glory.
He'd worked on it himself! So he came out and brazenly said
he was the author of the Sinaiticus, and it wasn't old,
it was a special project and gift for
the protector of the monasteries. A bunch of half truths.
Later he modified the story to say it was more of a draft copy.
Another half-truth. I'd still say "rush job."
I think they wanted it to be the one and only copy,
but they were rushed by someone and were sloppy.
Again, I think that fit into Rome's plans.
Tischendorf went into one rage after another.
Simonides pushed all his buttons.
I think Simonides had an amazing ability
to divide any group into two opposing parts,
or take any critic and get him to say
at least ONE manuscript was real, even if all the others were fakes.
He was that good of a con.
He disappeared as fast as he appeared
in 1867, and with yet another story
to make nobody want to look for him, saying he died among lepers.
Tischendorf's analysis and date were pretty much accepted
by the scholars. Sinaiticus was now
the "oldest and best." He got award after award.
He got some money, some position, and he got to spend more time
with (drum roll, please)
Vaticanus!
In 1867 he published Vaticanus,
his prize.
That was just what Westcott and Hort needed.
They took both Sinaiticus and Vaticanus
and made them the determiner of their magical
"oldest and best" Greek Text.
Despite all the protesting about changes,
Westcott and Hort's text is still pretty much the same as
the newest one you find out today.
That became the Revised Version, and the Bible version mill
was started, which still churns out
new, disagreeing Bibles, to this day.
What does Rome get out of all this?
They want people believing
the Alexandrian texts are the best. Alexandrian texts
have the Apocrypha. So the "oldest and best texts,"
they say, have the Apocrypha.
A Bible with the Apocrypha switches you to a Bible
with so many contradictions that you
MUST TRUST YOUR PRIEST.
That sets the stage for the one world Bible.
The one world Bible will have:
1) An Alexandrian critical Greek text, 2) A Critical Hebrew text modified by
other "ancient discoveries," including Septuagint readings.
And the Hebrew Masoretic text will be put down
and maybe taught to be worse than the Septuagint!
And 3) it will have the Apocrypha, with the contradictory,
unscriptural doctrines that are so important
to Roman Catholicism.
By the way, that is already happening,
right now.
So the stage will be set. That's why it was so important
in 1966 for the United Bible Societies
to require that any new Bible translation project
in the world can be stopped and the Apocrypha added,
simply by Catholics in the area asking for it.
Satan got what he wanted. "But it's a Bible!"
Yes, but it's not GOD's Bible. It's man's Bible.
Satan has gotten all but the stick in the mud,
jot and tittle King James Bible people
(and a few other translations in other languages like this)
to come over to Rome's Bible.
Satan doesn't care what Bible you read in English,
as long as it isn't the King James Bible.
To add insult to injury, Satan has started pushing
the King James Apocrypha, giving it false importance,
and pushing it on King James Bible believers,
to get them to accept the Apocrypha.
Anything to get them away from God's words,
to lower God's words, and to lift up man's words.
This is a conspiracy. The Catholic system
and the text critics have conspired to take down a king,
the King James Bible. They ridicule anyone
who trusts the King James, and are happy to
try to destroy their reputations if they ever turn from
the so-called Critical Text.
The goal is to get everyone
to let go of the King James Bible. They want them to
accept a contradictory and confusing text.
They want you so confused that you have to ask a scholar
--or a priest-- to tell you which to believe
and which to doubt.
Ultimately, they want you to accept a new Bible
that is coming, a Bible that
all the scholars will agree on, complete with Apocrypha:
One world Bible for one world religion.
That's my theory.
God bless you, and have a wonderful day.