In Bible College I was taught the lie
that the scholars of Alexandria were the best in the world.
So their copies of scripture were also the best in the world.
I bet many of you were told that, too.
And we were told that the best examples
of Alexandrian scholarship were the giant ancient books,
Codex Vaticanus and especially Codex Sinaiticus.
Do you realize we were told this, but we were never able
to see Sinaiticus for ourselves? Think about what that means.
It means that not only did we have blind faith in Sinaiticus,
a book we'd never seen... We also had blind faith
in our professors.
Faith in God is one thing, but everyone else?
Remember the scripture:
Romans 3:4 "...yea, let God be true,
but every man a liar...."
Or the paraphrase: In God we trust:
all others pay cash.
I trust God. I want to trust my Bible, too.
Don't you? I only want the words of God.
So if you place your trust in Alexandrian scholars,
here's a heads-up. I'm about to show you
some mistakes in Codex Sinaiticus, not found in 5,700 other manuscripts.
Could Sinaiticus be the draft copy for something else?
Or could it have been a rush job?
Let's look at the evidence.
Shall we get started?
Hi, I'm David Daniels from Chick Publications.
I'm not sure about your experience, but in Bible college,
seminary and about 8 other
colleges and universities, I've found that the intellectuals
were the first people to change things
to suit their own opinions. The average Christians,
who feared God, were way more likely
to make sure they don't change a word of what God said,
When you fear God, you want to please Him
over yourself. Not so with many scholars.
Remember, it was the "scholars" who disputed with Jesus.
"...the common people heard Him gladly" (Mark 12:37).
We were presented the "oldest and best,"
as if they had the right to change the historically preserved scriptures.
And yet, we were not even allowed to see it,
until just a few years ago, 2009, when it came online.
And a word of warning: don't trust the English translation
you find on the Codex Sinaiticus.org website.
I found a clear mistake in it, just yesterday.
So here are some place mistakes.
Jesus came back to Nazareth of Galilee
in Matthew 13:54. "And when he was come
into his own country, he taught them
in their synagogue..."
"Country" in Greek is "patrida."
Sinaiticus changes "patrida" to antipatrida --Antipatris--
46 miles away from Nazareth of Galilee --
in Samaria!
"He was come into his own Antipatris?"
That makes no sense!
Here's Nazareth, and here's Antipatris.
Here's that word "Antipatris" in the codex, right here.
I enhanced the image, here, and drew over the editor's marks
so you can see them better.
Note that another scribe struck through the letters "ANTI"
and marked it with a dot above every letter
that had to be changed. That was one way
that mistakes were noted in the Sinaiticus.
Scribe A had read enough of the New Testament
to remember that the only place you find this word
"Antipatris" is in Acts 23:31, when the Roman soldiers
brought Paul to Antipatris. He must have written these words
from memory, not from a document in front of him.
So here, from here, to here, on the way to Caesarea.
You know, I did the same mistake in my Greek class over 33 years ago,
when I confused "disciple," "mathetes," for Matthew and
confused "John" and "Jordan". But I learned
to pay closer attention after that.
Here's another one, that really is about Samaria.
Acts 8:5 "Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and
preached Christ unto them."
That's obvious. This is the section of Acts
about Samaria. Every manuscript of Acts 8:5
in the world says "Samaria" --except Sinaiticus.
Scribe A of Sinaiticus wrote
"Caesarea," 24 miles away, on the sea coast.
People get on the Book of Mormon
for confusing Jerusalem and Bethlehem,
and that's only 6 miles apart. This is four times as far.
And remember, it's the only place
that mistake has ever been found.
Here's where it is on the Codex. Right here.
And here is a close-up.
As you can see, the corrector was clever.
He put the three dots above the KAI of KAISARIA,
then added a little MA in the middle, SA-MA-RIA, to make SAMARIA.
It's a great editor's mark, but I can tell you as an author --
you don't want editors' marks in your final publication.
It actually happened once, but we fixed it.
I already told you about how it said Nazareth was in Judea
and not in Galilee, 70 miles away.
That was in Vlog 153, "Deleted on Purpose."
So how about something intriguing?
In 2 Timothy 4:10, Paul wrote that
the disciple Crescens had departed to "Galatia."
That agrees with all manuscripts, except for four minuscules
(that means written with lower case letters):
81, 104, 326 and 436, and Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus.
These five, instead of "Galatia," say "Gallia" --meaning Gaul--
right across the English Channel from Britain. That's over 1,200 miles off the mark!
Here's where it gets interesting.
81 had been examined by... Constantin Tischendorf.
And Ephraemi Rescriptus had just been deciphered
for the first time by... Constantin Tischendorf,
in 1840-1843, one year before
coming to St. Catherine's monastery in the Sinai Peninsula.
Tischendorf couldn't have had anything to do with
the making of the fake Codex Sinaiticus, could he?
I tell you, the Sinaiticus is starting to look like
one of two things: a book draft,
or a rush job.
If it were a book draft, the final copy
would have only one Chronicles (one 1 Chronicles, that is), not two,
Ezra wouldn't start in chapter 9, Isaiah wouldn't be all marked up.
Nor would Nehemiah. They would have fixed the folia
from Mark 15 to Luke 1, so the words weren't all either
squeezed in or spread out.
But if it were a book draft, where's the final copy?
They certainly would have time for that in a monastery.
They're supposed to be separated for "the Lord's work."
They'd have nothing but time. Right?
So how come we have never seen
another codex like Sinaiticus, ever? Something that valuable
would certainly have been kept somewhere.
But there is no clear evidence of this book's existence anywhere,
before 1844.
That would leave the second possibility:
a rush job. But a rush job for what?
What were they trying to do? Who would believe
that this horrible mess of a document
is more a reliable and ancient Bible
than the traditional text?
Wait a minute. They DO say
this horrible mess of a document is more reliable
than the traditional text! Almost every Bible in the world
has been changed to match it, along with a few other
Alexandrian-type Bibles they have found over the years.
So it DID work, after all.
It's beginning to look like this document may have
come into existence a short time before 1844,
and maybe 1/4 of the books, from the Old Testament,
weren't removed, because they were
never written at all. Maybe they wrote some,
but ran out of time to copy it all. Just a thought.
Then they would have aged the remaining
Old Testament pieces, to make it look like
the parts were separated or fell apart,
and hide some evidence away, to cover up for
some of their mistakes. But remember,
they got the Apocrypha, which is something they wanted.
I'd love to go further with my theory, but let me leave you with this.
The plot is thickening like hasty pudding.
But I don't mind.
As some of you have already pointed out,
I don't have the problems that so many scholars have.
I have no position to lose at a university or college
for questioning Sinaiticus.
I have no church board that will kick me off
for suspecting it's not genuine, and that the Bibles made from it
or using it are actually defective.
It won't hurt me if Sinaiticus goes down,
along with the Bible-doubting footnotes and
translations of most Bibles all over the world
since the 1880s, even ones being translated
by Wycliffe and SIL and the UBS while I speak.
I don't trust Codex Sinaiticus, or a single reading in it.
I trust what God didn't hide in a corner.
I trust His preserved words through faithful, common Christians,
through the centuries, for us in English
faithfully translated in the King James Bible.
And I think the truth is gonna sink the Titanic --
the Sinaiticus. That Bible-doubting ship,
it's going down.
God bless you, and have a wonderful day.