Origin of the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus Manuscripts

We'll open up in a word of prayer here and then we'll let Brother Sorensen get started here this morning.

And hopefully you brought your notebook and something to write on.

If you need something to write on, there should be some notepad stuff at the back there and an ink pen.

I encourage you to take a few notes or write down a question.

You know, sometimes when things come up, you begin to question of what and the whys or something didn't make sense.

I want to encourage you to write that down.

And maybe it will get answered a little clearer later.

But if not, that way you can go back.

Because if you're like me, if you don't write it down, you'll say, I had a question about that, but now I can't remember the question.

And so if you write it down, that will be beneficial for you.

And take notes of other things along the way and be able to reference back.

But let's go ahead and we'll open in a word of prayer.

And then we'll turn the rest of the time here for our Sunday school hour over to Brother Sorensen.

And so let's go ahead and go to the Lord in prayer here this morning.

Heavenly Father, as we come once again, Lord, we're just thankful for the opportunity.

Lord, we're thankful that you loved us enough to send Jesus as our Savior.

Lord, to pay the price that we could not pay.

But Lord, we're thankful for the word of God that declares the truth that we might know and understand.

The living word of God.

Lord, we pray just have your hand upon the things that are said and done here this morning.

Lord, your people be encouraged.

Lord, that we'd understand the importance of this topic.

That it's not just a preference.

It's not just something that just makes for convenience.

But Lord, there's a reason.

And it's reason behind in the things that you have preserved for us that we might know not only how to be saved.

But Lord, how you want us to live in those things that are to come.

The promises of what you've given to us.

And Lord, we just give you all the praise in Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right.

Brother Sorensen, we'll go ahead and turn the rest of the hour over to you, brother.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

The controversy today is which is the right Bible.

And you can go to the religious bookstore and there'll be a whole wall of shelves of all these various different translations.

Over here are the pastors.

I didn't bring these on the airplane, but there's seven or eight different translations here, folks.

There are scores.

I'm not exaggerating.

There are scores of modern language translations.

The issue is not, well, I like this translation better than that translation.

Or this translation is easier to read than that translation.

That's not the issue, folks.

There are two different Greek texts.

And most people don't know that.

There is, and we'll get into this here shortly, what's called the modern critical text.

And there are a number of flavors and manifestations of it.

And there is the traditional received text.

The King James Bible is based on the traditional received text.

The modern critical text has been around 150 years, 140 years, something like that.

And it is different.

Now, all these modern Bibles are based on this modern critical text.

In the modern critical text, they have deleted almost 8,000 words.

There are 16 entire verses that have been deleted out of the modern critical text,

and they're deleted in those modern Bibles.

There are about 256 verses that have significant portions changed, altered, or omitted.

There are differences, folks.

And here's the sad thing is, many of these differences pertain to the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In diminishing the Lordship of Christ, the deity of Christ, the creative work of Christ.

We're going to get into these more particularly probably Tuesday night.

So there are two different lines of Bibles today.

And don't be swayed by this business.

Well, this translation is easier to read than that translation.

And let me just pause for a second to say the King James Bible is not hard to read.

But the marketing people of these publishing companies have led people to believe that.

There are about 756,000 words in the King James Bible.

About roughly 750 of them are archaic.

Do the arithmetic.

I mean, just a tiny fraction of the words in the King James Bible are archaic.

That means old-fashioned or difficult to read.

And we live in a high-tech society, folks.

You come across a word that you don't understand,

you can go here right now and pop into Google in about five seconds and get a word definition.

I mean, we are so lazy in America today.

And I mean, you used to use an old-fashioned dictionary.

But don't believe the business.

That's too hard to understand.

We'll get into that more in a later message.

But today I want to talk to you about the foundational principles.

What we have been told, and I say collectively, we, the Christianity for the last 150 or so years,

is that all these Bibles are based on the oldest and best manuscripts.

How many have ever heard that?

Numbers of you have.

The oldest and best manuscripts.

And those oldest and best manuscripts are two.

They don't tell you there's just two, but there's two of them.

One is called Codex.

That word Codex means, it's a Latin word, which means volume,

a book that's bound on the left side.

That's what we commonly think of a book today.

But prior to that, in ancient times, books were scrolls,

particularly in the Old Testament era.

But anyway, Codex Sinaiticus.

It was a book found at the Mount Sinai.

We're going to get into that here this morning.

And the other is called Codex Vaticanus.

I'll just call them Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.

Those are big, highfalutin words.

One just means the Book of the Sinai.

The other means the Book of the Vatican.

That ought to put a red flag up.

The Book of the Vatican.

And those two manuscripts, almost time for more medicine.

Those two manuscripts comprise about 98% of the modern critical text.

And so where we're going to go this morning is that those two manuscripts really aren't old.

We were told, and we have been told, I say that collectively and editorially,

we have been told for 140, 150 years that they go back to the 4th century.

That would be about 330 A.D. to 350 A.D.

And that they're the oldest, largely complete manuscripts of the New Testament.

And the theory is that the oldest manuscripts are closer to the original, it's called the autographs,

which no longer exist.

And I think God in his wisdoms have seen to it that they do not, because people would worship them as religious relics and religious artifacts, icons.

And so those that presumably, allegedly, are closer to the date-wise to the originals must be the closest representation of the New Testament.

And we're touching here on another issue, and that is preservation.

I believe God has preserved his word.

Jesus said, heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words, plural, shall not pass away.

These people do not believe that God has preserved his word, or his words particularly.

Well, anyway, this idea of the oldest and best, it's been part of fundamentalism, and still is in some segments of fundamentalism today.

The fundamentalist institutions over the past century bought into this notion, Bob Jones University, still does to this day, by the way.

Tennessee Temple University, my alma mater, the old Pillsbury Baptist Bible College, the GERB schools, there's Faith Baptist College there in Ankeny, Iowa.

Central Baptist Seminary, men such as John R. Rice, Richard V. Clearwaters, Northland University, Calvary Seminary, Detroit Seminary.

These are all fundamental Baptist institutions.

And the prevailing wisdom up until about 50 years ago was, we have to go to the oldest and best manuscripts.

But folks, little by little, by the mid-20th century, going back, let's see, it's what, 2024, we go back about 75 years ago.

By the middle of the 20th century, serious Bible students are starting to examine this critical text stuff, and we're going to do that, and saying, something's rotten in Denmark.

Can Shakespeare say that?

Something's not right.

Something doesn't add up here.

And back in the middle of the 20th century, and even earlier, back into the end of the 19th century, a man by the name of Dean John Bergon wrote several massive works saying that this critical text stuff is not right.

And a great proponent of the traditional received text.

And by the way, the common term is received text.

We'll explain more about this in a later message.

I prefer the term traditional text, because the text of the New Testament existed before the term received text ever came to pass.

But the traditional text, received text, textus receptus, which is Latin for received text, and then they abbreviate that to TR.

They all refer to the same thing, the traditional text of the New Testament, from which the King James Bible is based.

But men started studying this issue.

Middle of the 20th century, a man by the name of Edward Hills, graduate of Harvard University.

David Otis Fuller, Duke Fuller out of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

He wrote a book entitled Which Bible, which I read back in the early 1980s.

Folks, it changed my life.

I mean, I had gone to Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minneapolis, and though in many ways was a good school, they were wrong on the text issue.

And they basically had the philosophy, you know, pick and choose whichever Bible you like.

It's kind of like going to the old-fashioned smorgasbord or buffet-type restaurants, you know, pick and choose whatever you want.

And the Bible du jour then, the Bible of the day that they were pushing with the New American Standard.

And I even used that a little bit early in my ministry.

But I read a book by David Otis Fuller back in about 18...1983.

And which Bible?

We're going to get into the essence of that book on Tuesday night.

You don't want to miss that.

Men like Theodore Letus, Del Johnson, myself began writing books on this issue.

Incidentally, on the table back there, I'm looking...

Folks will say, well, I'll come back Tuesday night and buy books.

Folks, they may be gone by Tuesday night.

I say that just from experience because we're in churches all the time and have about the same amount of books put out.

But there's four books back there on the table.

I'll say more about each of them.

But on this basic issue of the Bible issue, and we're going to talk of one particularly in this hour here today,

the neither oldest nor best.

But there were winds developing within our fundamentalist movement back at the end of the 20th century.

And there were fundamental Baptist Bible colleges and fundamental colleges that adhered to the critical text, folks.

They are fading away.

Now, that's not true out in the broad evangelical world, but I'm talking within the fundamentalism.

Hillsborough Baptist Bible College, my alma mater, is no longer.

Clearwater Christian College, which, though not Baptist, was a fundamentalist institution, they're no longer.

Calvary Seminary out in Pennsylvania, no longer.

Tennessee Temple, no longer.

Northland University, no longer.

Folks, God does not bless this critical text.

And we're going to see why in the next several sessions.

And schools that have stood on the received text in the King James Bible continue to be strong and flourish,

whether it's West Coast Baptist College or Pensacola Christian College or Fairhaven College or Ambassador College,

Dayspring College in northern Illinois.

They're flourishing.

God blesses a school that upholds His Word.

Well, anyway, to get back to what we want to talk about today, neither oldest nor best.

Again, the theory behind all these Bibles is that they're based on a text that is based on the oldest manuscripts, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus.

So let me tell you the story here of what's going on here just recently.

Back in the 1840s, 50s, 60s, things happened that were largely swept under the rug,

but high-definition digital photography on the Internet today, which has been available for only about 10 years,

as that Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, you can look at it yourself.

You don't have to know Greek.

You can see there are problems.

And so I wrote a book about eight years ago entitled Neither Oldest Nor Best,

and the book documents that Sinaiticus is not old, produced in about 1840.

Folks, that's not old as far as Bible history is concerned.

Another book or manuscript, Vaticanus, was probably produced in about 1435.

That's not old by Bible standards.

And the whole theory, the whole idea that all these modern Bibles are based on the oldest and best manuscripts,

it's a false theory.

And this book documents neither oldest nor best.

We cannot keep this book in print.

And by the way, I only brought one of these along because I only have two left.

But the good news is the shipment's coming in probably on Friday this week.

And we'll have lots more.

And so you'll want to order this.

You can see Pam, she'll have you fill out a yellow slip back there.

And we'll get these in the mail first thing next week.

But this book documents the whole story.

We're just going to briefly go through it.

And it gets a little complicated at times.

But why those primary manuscripts are not old.

And it's a fascinating story.

Well, and so again, the basic theory of the critical text is these manuscripts are allegedly the oldest

and therefore closest to the originals.

But let's follow the story today.

Here is the conventional wisdom.

Here is what I was taught in seminary 60 years ago, 55 years ago.

And that is back in about 1843, a man by the name of Tischendorf.

Now on Tuesday night, we're going to get into the matter of German rationalism.

That is just a fancy name for liberalism.

Theological liberalism.

Theological liberalism does not believe in the deity of Christ.

It does not believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible.

It does not believe in a literal hell.

It does not believe in the miracles of the Bible.

If anything is not rational, they reject it.

And that's largely the liberal line to this day.

The National Council of Churches in America is liberal.

I mean, they deny or doubt or dispute anything miraculous.

Well, anyway, so in 1843, a man by the name of Tischendorf,

who was a German rationalist, a liberal, liberal Lutheran,

began with the premise that the basic documents of the New Testament

have been lost to antiquity.

That is, we don't have them anymore, and that's true.

And so he did not believe that God had preserved his very words.

So he set out on a mission, on a quest,

to find the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament,

and maybe then we could find out what the Bible really says.

Folks, I don't need to find an old manuscript,

because it's right here.

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words, plural, shall not pass away.

We'll get into that particularly on Wednesday night.

And so Tischendorf went to two places in the Mediterranean world

that were reputed to have ancient manuscripts.

One was a Greek Orthodox, some call it a convent, some a monastery,

but it was at the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt.

And indeed, it was quite a repository.

We'd call it a library of ancient manuscripts.

And so Tischendorf went there.

Now here's the conventional story.

Here's the conventional wisdom that I was taught.

Tischendorf went there, and there in the monastery,

he saw in a wastebasket an old manuscript

that was laying there and being used as kindling,

because in the winter it gets cold in the desert in Egypt,

and they had a little wood stove there,

and they were using the leaves of this manuscript

to kindle the fire to keep the place warm.

And he and his nobility rescued this ancient manuscript

and took a part of it back.

It went first to Germany and then several other places in Europe.

And he came back about ten years later

and asked if he could get the rest of the manuscript.

Well, the fact is he stole it the first time,

and the officials there at that monastery

would not give him the rest of it.

And so in 1859 he came back again

and went over their heads

and had gone to the higher authorities in Cairo, Egypt,

and said, I'd like to borrow the rest of that manuscript

and I'll bring it back someday.

He never did.

But he went over their heads,

and so he quote-unquote borrowed it.

And that part he took in 1843

and the part he took in 1859,

put them together,

and made a crude,

they call it facsimile,

it's a crude copy.

And it ever since has been called Codex Sinaticus.

That word Sinaticus,

the Book of the Sinai.

And that copy,

not the actual documents,

but the copy,

made its way to London, England,

and there were two well-known British scholars there.

One of the names starts with a W,

one of the stars with an H,

and some of you are nodding your head,

you know what I'm talking about.

Two British scholars,

one by the name of Dr. Westcott,

and another by the name of Dr. Hort.

Hort.

Bruce, or Bruce Fenton Westcott,

and Fenton Anthony,

John Fenton Anthony Hort.

They had several middle names.

Just Westcott and Hort.

And that Sinaticus copy,

or the copy of Sinaticus,

made its way to London, England,

to Dr. Westcott and Hort.

Now remember that name,

because it's going to come up here

many times here as we move along.

Meanwhile,

again back in 1843,

Tischendorf went to the other

major repository of documents,

in the Mediterranean world,

and that was the Vatican.

Now, this was a time in history,

and I'm old enough to remember this,

when there was hostility

between the Catholics and the Protestants.

There was no ecumenical spirit.

There was no cooperative spirit.

Today, Rome is trying to entice

the Protestants to come back to Rome

by being nice to them.

Back then, there was no niceness.

There was persecution and hostility

and animosity.

But anyway,

Tischendorf,

curiously,

the Vatican cooperated with him.

And they took him into the Vatican library

and showed him a place called

shelf 1209,

an old manuscript,

or a seemingly old manuscript.

And Tischendorf was allowed

over some negotiation

to copy the New Testament.

And he called the original thing

Vaticanus,

the Book of the Vatican.

And that copy there from the Vatican

made its way to London, England,

to Dr. Westcott and Hort.

And again,

this is the conventional wisdom,

and much of it is true,

but some of the details were altered,

and they collated those two together

into what became,

and this is an old copy

of Westcott and Hort's

Greek text here.

The book is falling apart.

They collated that into

a new Greek text,

which became the granddaddy

of all these.

And in this new Greek text,

like I say,

in fact,

the last 16 verses of John,

or Mark,

are not there,

plus 16 other verses

have been deleted.

8,000 words have been deleted

compared to the traditional text.

256 verses have had major changes,

and it's morphed

and developed

over the last 150 years

into this,

from which all these

modern Bibles come from.

And again,

the theory is

Vaticanus and Sinaiticus

are the oldest.

Now,

let me tell you

what really happened.

I'm out for some medicine.

And by the way,

if you go home

and look on the label

on this root beer,

there will be an ingredient

in here,

if I can read it

with these glasses.

It's called...

Anyway,

it's on there.

I can't read it.

And so I had a nurse,

I was preaching in Alaska

last summer,

and the nurse went home

and looked this stuff up,

and it said,

this thing here

is a root extract,

which has medicinal properties

for throat issues.

And all the doctors

couldn't figure that out,

so pardon me.

Here's what really happened.

Back in the year 1830,

1838,

by the way,

this is Sunday school,

so we're going to give you

a test on all these

names and dates.

Not really.

But back in 1838,

in Greece,

there is a place

south of Thessalonica,

some Americans

call it Thessalonica,

but the Greeks

call it Thessalonica,

called Mount Athos.

It's a little peninsula

sticking out in the Aegean Sea,

and on that peninsula

were many Greek

Orthodox monasteries,

and numbers of them

had scriptoriums.

A scriptorium is a place

where they copied manuscripts.

Now today we think

of printing,

but prior to 1440,

when the printing press

was invented,

every copy of the scripture

was hand copied,

manually scripted,

manuscript.

And anyway,

so on this place

called Mount Athos

was a particular monastery,

and there was a,

the leader of the monastery

wanted to produce

a copy of the Old Testament,

of the New Testament,

in the old style

of Greek writing

that the New Testament

largely was written in,

called Uncial Letters.

That's neither here nor there.

And his motive

in producing this old,

this new old copy

of the New Testament

was to bind it up nicely

and send it

to the Tsar of Russia,

or the Greek Orthodox

and the Russian Orthodox

have close connections,

send it to the Tsar of Russia

with the hope

that the Tsar of Russia

would send money

back to their little monastery

so they could buy

a printing press.

And so that's the idea

that we're going to make

a copy of the New Testament

in the old-fashioned style

of writing.

And his nephew,

and here's another name

to remember,

Simonides.

This book talks

about Simonides.

His nephew,

who had grown up

as a Greek

in the monastery,

I mean Greek with his life,

he knew ancient Greek,

he knew modern Greek.

He was a skilled

paleographer,

that means studying

the old letter forms

and word forms.

And he was a skilled

calligrapher,

that means being able

to copy and write

you know fancy.

And so this,

this head of the monastery,

a guy by the name

of Benedict,

asked his nephew,

Simonides,

to do this project,

to make a copy

of the New Testament

on a blank manuscript

and we're going to then

bind it up nicely

and send it to the Tsar of Russia

and hope he'll send us

some money.

Simonides was 18 years old

and though he was competent

to the task,

his heart was not in it.

But to satisfy his uncle,

he did it.

He copied,

in fact,

not just the New Testament,

the whole Bible.

But in his haste,

he made many mistakes.

And after it was all done,

his uncle,

who of course knew Greek,

went back and looked

at his work

and found a lot of mistakes.

He did it in haste.

And so they knew

they couldn't send it

to the Tsar

and meanwhile the uncle

scratched out all the mistakes

and another scribe or two

there at the monastery

and scratched out the mistakes

and overrode it.

And they deemed

it was not worthy

to send to Russia

so what they did

is packaged it up

and sent it to the monastery

at Mount Sinai.

Let's say Mount Sinai.

St. Catherine's,

I'm trying to say,

at Mount Sinai.

That's the real story.

And we're going to see here

the controversy.

Well, three years later,

Tischendorf showed up

and found it

and he claimed that

it was being used

for kindling.

But folks,

here's the problem.

It was produced

on parchment.

Parchment

is a type

of very thin leather.

And many ancient manuscripts

were in fact,

I mean,

paper as we know it

did not exist

in biblical times.

And so to make this thing

realistic for the Tsar,

they did it on

old-fashioned parchment.

Parchment does not

readily burn.

You can light a match to it

and it'll just smolder.

It's not something

you use to kindle

a fire with.

Now,

if you get a hot,

roaring fire going,

it'll burn.

But this whole idea

that he used,

that Tischendorf

found these leaves

of the manuscript

being used to kindle

a fire is just false.

I mean,

you don't start a fire

with parchment.

Well,

anyway,

so about 20 years passed

and by now,

Simonides,

the guy,

the calligrapher,

the paleographer,

had become a businessman

and he collected manuscripts

across the Mediterranean world

and he'd travel across Europe

and sell these manuscripts.

He'd go to museums,

to libraries,

and universities

and he was reputed

a very knowledgeable man

on this subject.

and he went to England

and in 1860,

somebody showed him

this copy of Sinaiticus

that had got to Westcott and Hork

and it was being proclaimed

in the religious press

and the religious world

as the oldest copy

of the Bible in the world.

Simonides said,

hold the phone,

stop the press.

That's in the Greek,

by the way.

He said,

hey,

wait a minute,

I did that 20 years ago.

That is not an old manuscript.

I did it.

Well,

it turned into

a big controversy.

The British media,

they didn't call it media,

then they just called it the press.

The British press

got wind of this

and it became

front page news

in major British newspapers

and certainly

in the religious newspapers

there in England.

This Greek guy,

Simonides,

said that Sinaiticus

isn't old,

that he did it

and Tischendorf,

the German rationalist,

said,

no, no, no, no, no.

It really is old

and it became

a major controversy.

Front page news

and the liberal press,

and by the way,

there were liberals

back then, folks,

said,

Simonides is making

this all up.

He forged it.

He is a hoaxer.

If you go and Google

Simonides this afternoon

pretty soon,

you'll find the word

hoaxer

and his character

has been assassinated

ever since.

But the fact is

Simonides was telling

the truth.

He did produce it

and I want to give you

three powerful reasons

of evidence

that I think will stand

in a court of law.

First of all,

what time am I supposed

to be done?

Three o'clock

this afternoon?

Three strong evidences

that prove

Simonides was telling

the truth,

that he in fact

had done this.

First of all,

there were several

witnesses to the project.

The Bible says,

in the mouth of two

or three witnesses

shall every word

be established.

He said that he did it.

His uncle,

Benedict,

put him up to doing it.

Another Greek scholar

back then,

a guy by the name

of Kalinikos,

witnessed it

and he even wrote

to the newspapers

in London and said,

look, Simonides

is telling the truth.

He actually did

this project.

And so, folks,

that in itself,

in a court of law,

you get two or three

eyewitnesses.

That's powerful testimony.

And yet the other side

has tried to say,

no,

Simonides is just

a con man.

He's just trying

to make money off this.

And Tischendorf

was the guy

who was making the money.

He became the famous

guy in Europe

who found

these oldest Bibles.

And he toured Europe

and lecture circuits

and he was given

in German

the title of

von,

which would be

like sir in English.

It was a title

of nobility,

an honorary title.

He was called

now von Tischendorf.

He became well-known

and frankly wealthy

from producing

these oldest Bibles.

Tischendorf or Simonides,

the Greek,

had nothing to gain by it.

His character

and his reputation

was assassinated.

But there were three

that witnessed it.

And there is,

the book goes into

all the details

and we're just

hitting the high points.

The book tells you

the story of the witnesses.

And even in the newspapers

in the Greek,

Turkish world,

that validated

what Simonides said.

All right,

the second thing

is the,

I call it the forensic evidence

or the physical evidence.

When Tischendorf

took the first portion

away from Mount Sinai

and he said

that he rescued it.

The fact is

that the librarian there

was sick and in bed

and so he stole it.

And when he came back later

and promised

he would borrow it

and bring it back,

he never did.

In fact,

there was documentation

proving he never intended to.

But anyway,

that first batch

of 43 leaves

was sent

to the University

of Leipzig

in Germany,

which was

Tischendorf's alma mater.

It's there to this day.

And

particularly

these first 43 leaves

have been shown,

I will take you

to a page

in the book here.

If you like

books with pictures,

you'll like this book.

You probably can't see it

out there very well.

But there are pictures

of old manuscripts here.

There's a picture here

called Codex Bizet.

There's no dispute.

It's dated to the 5th century AD.

That's about 100 years after

allegedly Sinaiticus was done.

And if you can tell out there,

it's kind of bronzed and tan.

You see an ancient document,

something that's 1,500 years old,

folks.

It looks tan.

It looks bronzed.

It's been oxidized

by time.

Another,

Codex Alex Andrinus,

5th century AD.

It's bronze.

It's tan.

And there's others here

in the bottom of the page

of their old documents.

There's no question

about their antiquity.

But here in the middle

is Sinaiticus.

These pictures are

digital representations.

They have not been altered.

They've not been photoshopped.

This is a digital photograph

of Sinaiticus.

If you can see it,

it's basically white.

A document that is 1,500 years old

is not white.

In fact,

it's a little dirty white now

because 150 years have passed.

In fact,

it's getting closer

to 180 years.

But something of that age

will age a little.

Here,

it's white.

And there were several scholars

who were aware

of all this controversy.

One was a Scottish scholar.

One was a German scholar.

One was a Russian scholar.

They went to the University

of Leipzig

and looked at it

and their report was

that this ancient document

is snow white.

I mean,

that's verifiable history.

Something that's 1,500 years

or older

is not snow white, folks.

And so there is the evidence

of the copy itself.

Simonides,

when he did the project,

put little,

what they call anagrams,

or basically little marks,

almost like initials

in several places

in the manuscript

which identified him

as the author.

And so in the 1860s,

he challenged Tischendorf

to debate.

He said,

you bring the document

and I'll show you

my marks that I put in there

that prove that I did it.

Well, A,

Tischendorf refused

to debate him

and bring the document.

And two,

later,

when it became available,

the pages

that Tischendorf said

he put his,

or Simonides said

he put his little marks on,

guess what?

They're gone.

Part of the page

has been cut out.

It's been mutilated.

And you can go

to the British Library website

this afternoon

and look up

Codex Sinaiticus

and they,

with high definition

digital photography,

have taken a picture

of every page

in Sinaiticus,

both the Leipzig part

and the other part

wound up going to Russia.

And you'll notice

some pages

have been mutilated.

A few cases,

it looks like

someone took a straight edge

and cut off a bottom of a page

or took a straight edge

and cut off a side of a page.

Well, surprise, surprise,

those are the places

that Simonides said

he put his identifying marks.

It's amazing.

There are wormholes.

Now, there is such a thing

as bookworms.

And they like parchment

because it was animal skin.

They've been, of course,

cleaned and tanned

and prepared,

but nevertheless.

But there are wormholes

in Sinaiticus,

but they don't go

through the text.

The text goes around

the wormholes.

Think about that.

It says simply

that somebody wrote

this thing

in relatively recent times

around the wormholes.

And the wormholes

don't go through the text.

I know one scholar

and he said,

that settles it for me.

Not only that,

the portion of 43 leaves

went to Leipzig.

The greater quantity

eventually wound up

going to St. Petersburg, Russia.

And that portion

has been doctored.

It appears that

someone took

maybe a coffee

and a sponge

and sponged it

across the pages

to make them look tan,

make them look older

in that other section.

The Jesuits

were skilled

at doing that

and producing fake documents,

but that's another story.

The book gets into that

quite a bit

on how to fake a document.

Back when I was

working on this book,

I contacted

the British Library

and said,

I have interest

in Sinaiticus.

I have a doctor's degree.

I would like to come

and look at it.

And I got sent

all these forms.

I got to jump through

all these hopes.

I'd have a couple

other PhDs sign off

and refer me

and recommend me

and all this sort of stuff.

And I sent it all over

to the British Library.

And they wrote back

and said,

oh, I'm sorry.

This document is so old

and so fragile

we just don't let people

look at it anymore.

Well,

in the year 2011,

which was the 400th anniversary

of the King James Bible,

the British Broadcasting Corporation,

the BBC,

went to the British Library

and it just shows

that they really

didn't know

what they talked about.

They thought that Sinaiticus

had something to do

with the King James Bible,

which of course it doesn't.

But anyway,

there with the cameras running

of a news reporter,

a librarian or a docent

as they sometimes call them,

there at the British Museum

took out Sinaiticus

and was flipping the pages

like you'd flip through

an old-fashioned telephone book.

I mean,

you can see it

on YouTube.

I mean,

if this thing truly

is 1,500,

1,700 years old,

you're not flipping through

the pages

like you go through

an old telephone book.

The thing was

fairly supple

and flexible,

which all goes to say

it's not old.

And so,

number one,

there is the evidence

of the witnesses.

There were three guys

who said,

we saw this happen

with our eyes,

eyewitnesses.

Number two is

the physical evidence,

the coloration

of the pages

that have been doctored,

the wormholes

that the text goes

around the wormholes,

the suppleness

of the pages.

It all says

that this thing

is not old.

Here is the third

area of evidence.

After Simonides

had died

and toward the end

of the 19th century,

there was a scholar

in England

by the name

of Sir James Donaldson.

He was entitled

or given the title

Sir,

which was a title

of nobility

in England.

It was an honorary degree

by the King of England

because he was thought

to be the greatest

literary expert

in the British Empire.

And so,

long after the controversy

had died down,

about 30 years later,

this scholar,

Dr. Sir James Donaldson,

examined Sinaiticus.

He knew Greek

very, very well.

And here is what

he came up with.

He said in the

overall manuscript,

that was New Testament,

Old Testament,

and some of the

apocryphal books

were all combined.

In this document,

there were

modern Greek words.

words that were

unknown back in,

say,

300,

400 A.D.

Let me give you

an illustration.

Let's say that

someone gives you

a copy of Shakespeare

and you find the word

telephone in the book.

Or internet.

Those are modern words

that Shakespeare

knew nothing about.

and Donaldson

found words

in Sinaiticus

that were

modern Greek words

that are not

found,

that were unknown

in the era

that it's alleged

to have come from.

And so,

the evidence here

collectively says

Sinaiticus is not

old.

And the whole theory,

the critical text

from which all these

Bibles come from

is they're built

on the oldest manuscripts.

Now,

briefly,

and I know our time

is running

because the pastor

told me I can actually

go to 2 o'clock.

But briefly,

what about

Vaticanus,

the other twin,

it's not actually

a twin,

it has far greater

significance

than Sinaiticus,

but it's the other

major pillar

of the critical text.

And again,

Tischendorf was allowed

to go and copy it

there at the Vatican

Library.

But here are the

problems.

And again,

thanks to high

definition digital

photography,

you can go home

this afternoon

and look up

Codex Vaticanus

and the Vatican

has it online,

you can look at it

page by page by page.

And at the beginning

of each Biblical book,

first letter

of each Biblical book

is a,

what's called

a drop cap.

How many know

what a drop cap is?

Nobody.

Okay.

Well,

in my Bible here,

and it's not as fancy

as you think,

I just opened up

randomly here

to Ezekiel 32,

the first letter

of the first chapter

of Ezekiel 32,

the first word

is and,

the first letter

is about three times

the size of the other

letters.

It's just a big letter.

It's just text art.

Now this is a

Schofield Bible,

and it may not be

in your Bible.

In my book,

we did this

in various pages.

It's just called text art

at the beginning

of a chapter.

The first letter

would be larger

than the rest.

It's just routinely

done in books,

just to make it

a little more decorative.

And those drop caps,

or it's sometimes

called text art,

in Vaticanus

are not only

in ink,

they are full color,

blue and green

and red.

And you look at

medieval text art,

and you'll often,

or text work,

text manuscripts,

you'll often see

this text art,

drop caps.

But here's the issue.

This whole business

of drop caps

was not invented

until the Middle Ages.

I mean,

that's a smoking gun,

folks.

It says Vaticanus

is not old.

And a scholar

by the name of Erasmus,

we'll get into him

more later this week,

said that in fact,

Vaticanus was produced

in 1435.

There is no record

of it in the Vatican

Library until 1475.

Nobody even referenced

it until sometime

shortly after,

when Erasmus

wanted to investigate it.

The evidence

is powerful,

simply by the drop caps,

which you can see

if you go online

and look at it,

that it's not.

Drop caps weren't invented.

And I had a master's degree

in art history

tell me categorically

those are medieval.

That is not ancient.

Text work,

text art.

There are other problems

that are quite visible

in Vaticanus.

There are clear modifications

over writing of the text

where it's been scratched out

and written over.

Well, that's not something

that is a pristine manuscript.

The last 12 verses of Mark

are gone in Vaticanus

and Sinaiticus.

And,

by the way,

what are the last 12 verses

of Mark about?

The resurrection.

And they're the only two manuscripts

out there

that have the last 12 verses gone.

And the book goes into detail.

I won't take the time

to get into all here.

But the only one

who had the ability

to do that to Vaticanus

was the Catholics.

They wouldn't hardly let anybody

look at it or touch it.

And other scholars said,

in fact,

that the same scholar

that did Vaticanus

did Sinaiticus,

at least changed

that portion in Mark,

which also the Vatican

has its fingerprints

all over this.

And so,

the bottom line is this.

Vaticanus,

Sinaiticus,

the basic pillars

of the modern critical text

that started with

Westcott and Hort.

They put it together

into one collated manuscript,

which has evolved somewhat.

We'll get into this

on Tuesday night.

Into this,

the modern critical text.

It's all based on

Vaticanus and Sinaiticus,

largely.

Now, today,

they've added a few things more,

and we'll get into that

Tuesday night.

But the whole idea

of it being based

on the oldest

and best manuscript

is false.

I mean,

you ever hear of fake news?

Well, the fake news

is that the oldest

and best manuscripts

are here.

It's just not true.

And it's the foundation

on which all these Bibles

are based.

And there are problems.

We're going to get into these

particularly on tomorrow night

and Tuesday night.

And the simple conclusion

of the matter is, folks,

we just stay with

the traditional received text

which has given us

the King James Bible.

And we're going to get

into the history of that

on Wednesday night.

And a fascinating story.

There's a whole book

back there about it.

So anyway,

I only have one copy

and somebody's already

spoken for this one.

But you can order it

and probably by next week

we'll be able to ship them out.

And I believe the evidence

in this book will stand

in a court of law.

And it's readable.

I mean, I realize

this is technical,

historical stuff.

But I think probably

anybody with a high school

education can wade through

this and understand it.

When I write a book,

I try to put it on a shelf

where everybody can reach it.

And I think you'll find

it a fascinating reading.

All right, brother,

let's close.

Father, thank you

for the opportunity

to explain some of the