Do you realize that in the 1800s, pretty much everybody --
except the ivory tower theologians and so-called scholars--
trusted just one Bible in English?
It's like the joke about when Eve looked over at Adam,
and said, "Adam, do you love me?"
Adam looked back at her and said, "Who else?"
There was no other Bible to run to.
People had the "Big Black Book."
That was it.
It was God's words in English.
And there was no debating it.
Can you imagine that?
It was the norm!
So how did we get from everyone having just one Bible
to the place where you will be ridiculed left and right
--and even kicked out of your church--
if you believe in that exact same
King James Bible your great-great-grandparents did?
How did we get to this point?
You want to see some amazing coincidences?
Hi, I'm David Daniels from Chick Publications.
If you have a modern Bible, you have missing or changed
words, phrases and verses, compared to the King James Bible.
Or else your Bible likely has footnotes claiming
that the "best manuscripts" don't have those words.
That's mainly because of one Greek text,
the Codex Sinaiticus, which supposedly shows
the oldest available readings of what should be in the Bible.
As many of you know, in the beginning of December, 2015,
I started researching the Sinaiticus and began a vlog series
about Sinaiticus.
I thought it was just going to be a couple of videos, tops.
What more could there be?
But seven months later, I had learned a whole mess of things
I thought were unbelievable before.
But some of you didn't watch the
30-something videos, so I want to catch you up.
For the rest of you, this will be a refresher,
before I tell you more.
In April 1944 an occultist
who hobnobbed with world leaders, Manly P. Hall,
admitted to his followers that, as he put it
"we" have been trying to put out a Bible
"for the last 100 years" that was "reasonably correct" --
according to this occultist.
The purpose, he admitted, was to get people away from
believing every "jot and tittle" of the King James Version!
Why only get people away from believing the King James?
But then that set me to thinking.
100 years before Hall's admission was 1844.
And the only Bible-related major event of 1844 was
Tischendorf's discovery of the supposedly "oldest-and-best"
Greek Codex Sinaiticus in a desert monastery
in the Egyptian peninsula.
So was there something funny about Sinaiticus?
I had thought the Sinaiticus was an old perversion
of the scriptures, but didn't seriously consider
that it could have been a modern fake,
made to get people away from the King James,
like Manly P. Hall wanted.
I had a number of questions that had to be answered first.
Let me pick some important ones.
The testimony about the Sinaiticus being a modern document
hinges on 3 people and 2 places.
1) There was a Greek calligrapher/copyist
accused of being a forger, named Constantine Simonides.
2) There supposedly was a monk named Kallinikos.
He was the guy who "spilled the beans" and
backed Simonides' story of creating the Sinaiticus.
He called Tischendorf a liar and a thief.
Kallinikos had actually seen Tischendorf aging the Sinaiticus
with lemon juice.
3) There was, supposedly, another monk, named Benedict.
He was the head guy at a monastery said to be
on Mount Athos in Greece.
He asked his nephew Simonides to create the Sinaiticus
as a gift
to Tsar Nicholas I of Russia to get him to pay for a printing press
for Benedict's monastery, since the Tsar was the guy
who financially supported the monastery.
4) That monastery was on Mt. Athos.
And it was called Panteleimon [pan te LAY moan].
5) And that monastery was supposed to be connected
to another monastery in the Egyptian peninsula,
called "St. Catherine's."
It's next to what the Catholics claim is Mt. Sinai.
You know, that's the place where
Tischendorf claimed that he "discovered" the Sinaiticus.
So a whole string of people, places and events had to be factual
before we could even consider the idea that
Sinaiticus is not ancient, but actually a modern fake.
This isn't as hard as it looks, if we take it apart
one piece at a time.
Are you ready to take it apart with me?
Way back in 1863, a literary journal in England
debated all the details of this different story
about the origin of the Sinaiticus.
As I look at this again today, they raised some
really good questions.
You can download copies of the issues of this journal
from the Internet Archive yourself.
It's the JSL, The Journal of Sacred Literature,
from April, 1863, starting on page 210.
In it are some very good points.
I'll go over them with you.
Was there a Kallinikos?
On page 211 of the JSL, the editor wrote first,
"...the evidence of the writer of the letter
is simply worthless until we know
who the writer himself is."
That's totally fair.
Is Kallinikos a real guy, or did Simonides make him up
somehow?
The editor wrote second, that Kallinikos' letter
"is a very suspicious echo of Simonides' own statements."
So if Simonides says "I made the Sinaiticus,"
and Kallinikos says "Simonides made the Sinaiticus,"
and their whole testimony is identical,
that would be suspicious.
And the editor wrote third, "We do not recognize the name of
the monastery at Athos, Panteleimon."
You mean this?
Or this?
That's funny, because it's been on Mt. Athos
since the 11th century.
When so-called "experts" pooh-pooh something,
it doesn't mean they have really researched the facts.
Sometimes they just say it because it's what they heard
from someone else.
And they hope you will believe them
without checking any further.
Just because somebody says something doesn't exist,
doesn't mean it isn't there.
And just because we don't have the answer, right now,
doesn't mean there isn't one.
So here are some other facts I found out, when I DID check.
One) Kallinikos is a real guy.
As I showed you in the Sinaiticus series,
Kallinikos was documented
by historian Spyridon Paulou Lampros
in his 1900 Catalogue of the Greek Manuscripts
on Mount Athos as being on Mt. Athos,
in the Panteleimon monastery, on March 27, 1841.
And Kallinikos was working on a project with ...
Constantine Simonides!
Ah!
So the guy did exist.
For that matter, Benedict was a real guy, too.
Take a look at all these places in Lampros's 1900 Catalogue
that show Benedict's name.
Two) Kallinikos' testimony is not exactly identical
with Simonides'.
There are some differences, which real testimonies have.
However, I have been able to reconcile them.
But: Three) Kallinikos clearly knew
way back then specific facts about the Sinaiticus
that I only found out in the last few years,
using modern research tools.
First, the Sinaiticus was darkened, sometime between 1851 and 1859.
Kallinikos was the only other guy to note that.
Even major scholars for over 150 years
missed that.
On page 214 of the Journal it records Simonides' claim that
the Sinaiticus was altered, which he saw
when he visited St. Catherine's.
Simonides said
"I examined the MS., and found it much altered,
having an older appearance than it ought to have.
Then Simonides added:
The dedication to the Emperor Nicholas,
placed at the beginning of the book, had been removed."
Kallinikos' words were also very specific on this.
On page 212 of the JSL, it quotes Kallinikos' letter, saying
"And I know yet further, that the codex also
was cleaned with lemon-juice,
professedly for the purpose of cleaning its parchments,
but in reality in order to
weaken the freshness of the letters,
as was actually the case."
In other words, to make it look older!
Second, Tischendorf stole the Sinaiticus.
As the editor stated in that same article:
"The letter of Kallinikos charges Tischendorf with theft."
And Tischendorf did steal parts of the Sinaiticus.
That's just history.
I went over this carefully in the
"Something Funny About Sinaiticus"
vlog playlist.
You are welcome to see the overwhelming evidence yourself.
So far, Kallinikos is batting 1.000.
Then the 1863 JSL editor nailed it.
He rightly pointed out that we should be:
"Taking into consideration
the remarkable coincidence
between the letter of Kallinikos
and the story it is intended to corroborate,
the extreme improbability
of his having been on the spot
at such critical moments
in the history of the MS., ..."
He's right.
There's a lot you can read for yourself
in Kallinikos' testimony, but I'll summarize.
In 1841, on March 27, Kallinikos was on Mt. Athos,
in Panteleimon monastery, with Simonides,
working on an Easter poem by John of Damascus.
Two years later, in February of 1843,
Kallinikos was on Mt. Athos, in Panteleimon monastery,
and described Simonides working on the Sinaiticus.
After that the Patriarch Constantius sent the Sinaiticus to St. Catherine's,
to have another monk, Callistratus, compare it with other documents,
then send it to Simonides for final copying.
Then it was supposed to be sent to the Tsar,
Nicholas I of Russia.
But Simonides was busy and didn't get down
to St. Catherine's.
If you watched "The Smoking Gun" video,
you know where Simonides was.
He was across the Aegean Sea in Smyrna, Turkey,
comparing the same Epistle of Barnabas
that he had written in the Sinaiticus, with seven other
Greek editions of Barnabas that were to be found on Mt. Athos.
Simonides was validating the text that he was
putting into the Sinaiticus, before it got sent to the Tsar!
Simonides didn't forget about Sinaiticus
in 1843.
He was busy validating its Greek Epistle of Barnabas!
He wrote a whole book about it and published that
in Smyrna, Turkey.
Then Kallinikos showed up traveling with
the Patriarch Constantius to St. Catherine's,
without Simonides, in 1843,
bringing the Sinaiticus.
He went again the next year in 1844,
when Tischendorf came to St. Catherine's
and "discovered" the Sinaiticus.
He might also have been there in 1853, when Tischendorf returned.
And he was there in 1859, when Tischendorf
brought the Russian delegation to grab Sinaiticus.
Here from page 212 of the JSL are Kallinikos' own words:
"And last of all, coming again
to the same monastery,
he [Tischendorf] obtained also
the remaining portion of it through the Russian Consul,
in exchange for hyperbolical promises,
never, in my judgment, likely to be fulfilled."
(Those were Tischendorf's promises to return the Sinaiticus,
which Kallinikos is right, he didn't.
Kallinikos continues.)
"All these things I know,
having been on the spot.
And I declare them now openly
for the sake of truth."
So we cannot believe the "experts"
when they say things are true or false, can we?
No.
We have to check for ourselves.
Because look at what we learned from
all this other evidence, from these independent sources:
Simonides was a real Greek text scholar.
Kallinikos was a real monk.
They worked together.
Benedict was a real head monk.
He was Simonides' uncle.
Panteleimon is a real monastery on Mt. Athos.
It's been there since the 1000s AD.
Russico--Panteleimon-- By the way,
Panteleimon's other name is Russico--
the only Russian monastery on Mt. Athos.
Russico (Panteleimon) and St. Catherine's
were both under the Russian Tsar.
And Kallinikos recorded facts that almost no one in the world
either noticed, or witnessed.
He was clearly there, in all those places,
at all those times.
They all really, verifiably, happened.
They ARE remarkable coincidences.
Or maybe they're not coincidences.
Maybe there is a bigger mind that planned for this to happen.
But I'll get more into that... in the next video.
God bless you, and have a wonderful day.