SECTION III
Chapter 3 - Discovery of the Fourth Century AD New Testament Bibles

  In this chapter, we shall explore the historical setting within which
the oldest New Testament bibles were discovered/made public--and how theologians
and scholars have attempted to reconcile differences in them with their current 
Bibles. (Footnote:  This section relies heavily on  James Bentley's SECRETS OF 
MOUNT SINAI--THE STORY OF FINDING THE WORLD'S OLDEST BIBLE--CODEX SINAITICUS, 
Orbis Publishing Limited, London 1985)

The Search for Ancient "Authentic" version of the Bible--
and How Gibbon's DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE set off the "Search".

  As noted in Chapter 1, the modern search for the historical Jesus has
its roots during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries during the
Enlightenment, when scholars began applying the scientific methods towards
history--including the gospel stories.

  The accuracy of the NEW TESTAMENT writings had been seriously questioned
in Gibbon's famous work, the DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1776-88)
In it, Edward Gibbon asserted that the early Church fathers had used FORGED
TESTIMONIES in order to take hold over the Jewish and pagan religions of
their time. He insisted that "rash and sacrilegious hands" of the Church
father had edited scriptures in the New Testament, to bring them in line
with their doctrine.  As proof, he focused on the first Epistle of John 5:7
which first defines the Trinity as follows:

  'There are three which bear witness, the spirit and the water and the
  blood, and the three are one AND THESE THREE ARE ONE IN CHRIST JESUS;
  AND THERE ARE THREE WHO BEAR WITNESS IN HEAVEN, THE FATHER, THE WORD
  AND THE SPIRT, AND THESE THREE ARE ONE.'

  Gibbon argued that the last section (italicized above) was an insertion
by some later Christian writer. Gibbon charged that Christian scholars such
as Erasmus had suspected the passage was false, but kept them anyway out
of "prudence".  Gibbon concluded that later Christian theologians had
stuck to this spurious (ie "false") phrase out of "honest bigotry."

   Gibbon's charge brought on a uproar, that resulted in scholars rushing
to either defend or attack Gibbon's claims.  Some religious scholars for
example argued that the attacked passages HAD to be true, because of their
importance to orthodox Christian doctrine.

   To their dismay, Gibbon's claim that spurious verses had crept into the
New Testament was soon vindicated due to the efforts of a brilliant scholar
(when sober), named Richard Porson. Richard Porson was a known skeptic
when it came to belief in the Trinity. Indeed once, while discussing his
doubts on the doctrine of the Trinity to a friend, they both looked up,
and saw a buggy passing by them with three men in it.  "There" said Porson's
friend, "is an illustration of the Trinity".  Porson shot back, "No, you
must show me one man in THREE buggies, if you can".

   Richard Porson set out to test Gibbon's claims, by grouping all the
known old texts of the bibles into groups or "families"--a technique now used
by virtually all textual scholars. All the texts that shared common errors,
misspellings, alterations, etc were grouped into the similar families. In
this way, he was able to build a family tree of texts, discovering at what
stage a text had undergone an alteration or mistake. His goal was to locate
the oldest, and therefore the most pure version of the New Testament.

   What Porson found was that NONE of the OLDEST existing Greek manuscripts
of the Bible contained the "spurious" verse attacked by Gibbon.  None
of the early Church fathers had ever quoted or cited this verse.  This
verse first showed up in Latin manuscripts around the year 400 AD. It was
later copied into later manuscripts, and in 1516 Erasmus included it in
his Greek Bible.

   Gibbon was overjoyed that his attack on the passage had been so powerfully
vindicated. Some scholars set out to refute Porson's work by trying to find
old Greek manuscripts that DID contain the disputed verse.  None were ever
discovered.  Today, no modern version of the Bible contains the old epistle
John 5:7 passage.

   Religious scholars were forced to admit with this defeat, that possibly
there were other interpolations and errors in the bible.  Erasmus, it
appeared, had based his Greek version of the New Testament using poor
manuscripts.  This faulty text was later used as the basis of all New
Testament translations --- by both Catholics and Protestants.  For example,
when Martin Luther translated the whole bible into German in 1520, he
translated the New Testament directly from Erasmus' Greek version.

    A small inner-circle of scholars and clergymen had known of some
translation errors prior to Gibbon's book. There are clear cases where
the religious authorities attempted to downplay any publication on
this whenever possible.  However, with the publicity of Gibbon's and
Porson's research, suddenly the general public was now aware that there
were some inaccuracies, in what was previously considered divinely inspired,
and therefore inerrant writings.

   Figuratively speaking, "all hell broke out" in scholar circles. There was
a backlash of writings by learned scholars that began questioning the
authenticity and therefore authority of Christianity in general. In the LIFE
OF JESUS which was written by David Strauss in 1839, Strauss argued that
ordinary historical events surrounding a man named Jesus had been interpreted
in purely mythical terms. (This view cost Strauss his job at the University
of Tubingen in Germany. ) His book was translated into English from its
original German by George Eliot, the American author of SILAS MARNER and
ADAM BEDE.  (See Section X, Chapter 6 on George Eliot).

  Other works came out, such as Ernest Renan's LIFE OF JESUS, that suggested
that all the miracles were based on deceit and fraud.  Other works would
question whether Jesus had even been a real historical person, insinuating
that he was a concoction of purely mythical elements. There was such an
activity of critical writings during this time, especially in Germany, that
one Oxford scholar publicly expressed the wish that all of the German critics
would drop off into the ocean.

Constantin Tischendorf and the Discovery of Codex Sinaiticus

  Against this background, the great scholar Constantin Tischendorf, who
feared that possibly the reputation of all Christendom was at stake, set out
to find the true, pure text of the New Testament. He wrote at this time,
"I am confronted by a sacred task, the struggle to regain the original form
of the New Testament".

  In another letter, he wrote, "several learned men have, quite recently,
written works on the life of Jesus, purporting to prove that He whom
Christendom claims as her Lord did not really live the life that the
Gospels record of him... If we are in error in believing in the person of
Christ as taught us in the Gospels, then the Church herself is in error,
and must be given up as a deception."

   During this time, the oldest known manuscript of the bible was the Codex
Vaticanus in Rome, dating from around the fourth century A.D. The problem
was that Vatican officials had refused to allow anyone to see it. Tischendorf's
search lead him to Palestine itself, in search of old manuscripts.  While
staying at St. Catherine's monastery on Mount Sinai, he made the momentous
discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus--a text dated to be from the fourth
century AD.  He brought back the text with him. (According to the Mt Sinai
monks, though there were bad feelings, and claims that Tischendorf had
"stolen" the manuscript.)

   Tischendorf believed he had found in the Codex Sinaiticus, a witness
to the pure, uncorrupted text of the New Testament--and that the original
texts were indeed written by the Apostles themselves.  However, after the
copy and recopy process that had taken place over fifteen centuries,
original words had "in many passages undergone such serious modifications
of meaning as to leave us in painful uncertainty as to what the Apostles
had actually written."

  Some scholars today believe the Codex Sinaiticus was one of the books
prepared by the Roman Emperor Constantine in the year 331 A.D., when he
ordered fifty manuscripts of the Bible to be produced. It is even possibly
older and therefore closer to the original, than the Codex Vaticanus.

(footnote: Because Codex Sinaiticus contains a series of numbers (in the
same handwriting as one of the scribes who copied it) that were devised by
Eusebius of Caesara for referencing parallel gospel passages--it is
generally believed that the Sinaiticus CAN NOT predate Eusebius. Eusebius
died around 340 AD.  Because the Emperor Constantine ordered fifty manuscripts
of the Bible to be produced in 331 AD  "written legibly on fine parchment...
by professional scribes"--some have speculated that Sinaiticus and Vaticanus
were two of the bibles created from this great effort.  Based on an analysis
of handwriting in both bibles, Tischendorf believed that one of the scribes
who worked on Codex Sinaiticus also worked on Vaticanus. (The interested
reader is recommended to read all of James Bentley's fascinating book,
SECRETS OF MOUNT SINAI, where he also talks on errors made by the scribes,
quotes on pedigrees left by the scribes attesting to the authenticity of the
great bible, and the other books included in these bibles).

    Scholars can detect three distinctly different handwritings in the
Codex Sinaiticus, indicating that the bible was the work of three scribes.
Some of the books must have been dictated to them, because two of the three
scribes made several PHONETIC spelling errors (one of them was a terrible
speller). Tischendorf had such keen insight, he spotted, what has since been
confirmed to be a later addition to the last verse of St John's Gospel
(John 21:25).  The verse reads, "There were many other things that Jesus did;
and if all were written down, the world itself, I suppose, would not hold
all the books that would have to be written."

  Tishendorf noticed that the lettering of this verse was slightly different
than the rest, and that the color of the ink was slightly different there than 
anywhere else in the whole manuscript. Tregelles, a prominent religious scholar 
disagreed that this verse was an addition. He felt that it was more likely 
that a scribe had merely taken a fresh dip of ink. Tischendorf had a bitter 
feud with Tregelles over the issue, and later wrote to a friend that "it is 
simply impossible for me to be wrong on this matter."  After his death, 
Tischendorf was vindicated when the codex was examined under ultra violet 
light, and it was seen that there had been two additions at the end of John: 
The first had added the phrase, 'The Gospel according to John', but another 
person had erased this and written verse John 21:25 over it.

  In 1867, Tischendorf received permission from the Vatican to examine the
Codex Vaticanus.  During this time he surreptiously copied the Latin Vaticanus
manuscript, and published his own translation of it (ie before the official
Vatican version was published). The translations of the two oldest known
bibles were well received by most scholars and theologians.  Tischendorf
received great fame and was pleased that he had found in the Codex
Sinaiticus what he believed was close to "the original text as it came
from the hands of the Apostle". In a rallying cry against those detractors
of the Christian faith he continued, "Do not then, let yourself be disturbed
by their clamour, but rather hold that you have, the more firmly because
others assail it."

Omissions in the Codex Sinaiticus or Codex Vaticanes

    But now the question was asked, how should one treat biblical passages 
that NEVER APPEAR IN THE CODEX SINAITICUS OR CODEX VATICANES? That is, 
OMISSIONS of familiar stories in the oldest biblical texts were in some ways, 
more intriguing than what was in them.

  For example, in the eighth chapter of the gospel of John, is a story of
a woman who was about to be stoned to death for her adultery.  Jesus
intercedes with the now famous line, "he that is without sin among you,
let him cast the first stone." One by one, the accusers, after pondering
the statement, quietly leave the scene.  This story does not appear
ANYWHERE in either the Codex Sinaiticus or the Codex Vaticanus.

    Other cherished passages are missing too. In the Lord's Prayer (Luke's
version, chapter 11, 2-4. The portions highlighted below are missing in Codex
Sinaiticus:

  Our Father WHICH ART IN HEAVEN
  Hallowed be thy name
  Thy Kingdom come
  THY WILL BE DONE,AS IN HEAVEN, SO IN EARTH (missing only in Vaticanus)
  Give us day by day our daily bread,
  And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one
   that is indebted to us.
  And lead us not into temptation; BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL.

Even Matthew's ending to the Lord's prayer, "FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM,
AND THE POWER, AND THE GLORY, FOR EVER, AMEN" is absent from both the
Codex Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. (James Bentley, SECRETS OF MOUNT SINAI,
pp 129-30)

    Codex Sinaiticus has a different twist to the parable of the prodigal
son (Luke 15). In the parable, Jesus tells of a young man who asks for
his inheritance early, but then squanders it, and is penniless. He repents
of his actions, and returns home, saying to his father, "I have sinned
against heaven and in your sight.  I am no more worthy to be called your
son."  Nevertheless, the father forgives his son, and rejoices that he has
returned home. The version in Sinaiticus has a very different ending--Instead,
the son implores his father to "Make me like one of your hired servants".
And in Sinaiticus, this is precisely what his father does!

    Tischendorf and other religious scholars saw the discrepancies, but
had faith that their research would uncover the divine truth remaining
in the texts themselves.  As for the additions and alterations, they
for the most part believed these were accidents that occurred from scribes
mishearing what was called out to them; or from a copier trying to reconcile
differences between two of the gospels for the readers. Even today, "additions"
to these texts are NOT generally believed to be examples of deliberate fraud.--
After all, the religious copyists did not perceive the gospel stories as
historical documents--but instead as theological writings. Consequently when
they would come across certain passages, which they felt were unclear or
contradictory, they saw it as their Christian duty to "correct" these.

Other omissions in the Codex Sinaiticus include the following:

*  The introduction to Mark reads "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus 
   Christ, the Son of God." In Codex Sinaiticus, the phrase "the Son of God" 
   does not appear.

* Missing in Codex Sinaiticus is the sentence in Luke 11, "You know
  not  what manner of spirit you are of.  For the son of man is come not to
  destroy men's lives, but to save them."

*  In chapter 17 of Matthew, the disciples of Jesus fail to cast out the
   devil from a possessed (epileptic) man.  In verse 21, Jesus explains that 
   this requires much prayer and fasting. This explanation does NOT appear 
   in the Codex Sinaiticus.

*  In Mark 9, the writer describes hell as a place 'where the worm dies
   not, and the fire is not quenched' (a phrase taken out of Isaiah).
   This description does not appear in Sinaiticus.

*  In Luke 24:51 we are told how Jesus left his disciples following the
   resurrection. He blessed them, was parted from them, "and was carried
   up into heaven".  This last phrase "and was carried up into heaven"
   does not appear in Sinaiticus. (According to the textual critic C.S.C. 
   Williams, if this omission is correct, then "there is no reference at all 
   to the Ascension in the original text of the Gospels".
   (James Bentley, SECRETS OF MOUNT SINAI, p 131)

*  In John 5, we are told how Jesus came across a pool with many sick
   people lying in it.  The following verse however is missing from Codex
   Sinaiticus "for an angel went down at a certain season into the pool
   and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of
   the water stepped in was made whole of whatever disease he had."

*  Even more important, the last twelve verses of the gospel of St. Mark
   which describes all of Jesus' appearances to his followers, are missing
   from the Codex Sinaiticus. The Sinaiticus version of Mark ends with the
   account of the three women who visit Jesus' tomb: After seeing a youth
   in a white robe, the women "went out and ran away from the tomb, beside
   themselves with terror.  They said nothing to anybody for they were
   afraid."

  This last item has been the most controversial. As James H. Charlesworth
(Professor of New Testament Language and Literature, Princeton
Theological Seminary) has written on the subject:

  "Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Syriacus, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Bobiensis
   do not contain the last twelve verses of the Gospel of Mark.  This is
   a notable omission: it is these verses only which contain the
   description of Jesus' resurrection appearance.  Since Mark's account
   seems to be not only the earliest but also that on which Matthew and
   Luke based their accounts, a question arises:  What is the basis for
   the accounts of Jesus' bodily resurrection according to Matthew, Luke
   and John?"

There were some interesting phrases in the Codex Sinaiticus that might
have been edited over by later Christians (Although some scholars have
argued eloquently that these might have happened innocently too):

*  In Mark 1, a leper asks Jesus, 'If you will, you can make me clean.'
   The Codex Sinaiticus version continues that Jesus, "angry, stretched
   out his hand and touched him, and said, "I will; be clean". The later
   versions replaced the word "angry"  with "moved with compassion".

*  Matthew 24 tries to answer those who ask when the day of judgment will
   be:  "of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels of heaven,
   neither the Son, but the Father only." In Sinaiticus (and other ancient
   manuscripts too), the phrase "neither the Son" is omitted in later
   editions.  (Some scholars have suggested a theologically motivated reason
   for suppressing these words "neither the Son" as it was no doubt
   unacceptable to some later Christians that Jesus might not be on the same
   level with the Father.) (Ibid, p 133)

    The scribes placed dots beside "controversial" passages, to probably
indicate that these verses should be omitted.  These series of dots can
be clearly seen beside passages in the Codex Sinaiticus, which have
been omitted in the Codex Vaticanus.  For example, these dots appear in the
Sinaiticus version of Luke's account of the temptation , "there appeared unto
(Jesus) an angel from heaven, strengthening him.  And being in agony, he
prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became as it were great drops of
blood falling down upon the ground". This passage does not appear in the
Codex Vaticanus.  (The controversy is probably over that it indicated Jesus
needed the support of an angel.) It can be seen where a later scribe has
carefully attempted to erase these dots. (Ibid, p 134)

  The scribes of both Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus were no doubt
struggling with producing the most accurate Bible possible.  However
because of all the tampering, it is difficult to know today which words
were authentic and which were not.

  Some references would indicate that this tampering of holy scriptures
was significant.  For example, in the second century AD, Origen (185-254 AD)
complained how the Scriptures were being tampered with during his day:
"Men add to them or leave out, as seems good to them". Around 170 AD,
Dionysius of Corinth commented that it was no wonder his own writings
were tampered with, seeing that others presumed to debase the Word of
God in a similar manner. Irenaeus (a contemporary) likewise complained of
a corrupted text.

  This editing and re-editing by Christian scholars continued many
centuries after Origen.  Tischendorf believed he detected as many as
14,800 corrections made by as many as nine later individuals to the
Codex Sinaiticus (ie AFTER the fourth century AD).(Ibid, p 120)

  In defense, some religious scholars have argued that possibly it was
the Codex Sinaiticus that was in "error" and that the later Bibles were
copied from a more "pure" version of the Bible.  The problem with this
view, is that (in addition to the example of the "dots" mentioned above
in controversial passages) there would be a clear incentive for a Christian
scholar to "correct" a verse to present Jesus in a STRONGER, or more
LOVING light.  That is, there is NO incentive for a BELIEVING Christian to 
edit the Bibles to make Jesus appear SLIGHTLY weaker!

   Some conservative writers have invoked the powers of Satan, in explaining 
he altered or missing verses in the Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.  As we 
have seen in earlier chapters, the problem with this view is that--logically 
speaking, one would then also have to invoke Satan to explain the large number 
of discrepancies that remain in more modern versions of the Bible.  And, of 
course once one treads this path, the problem becomes--"Which passages are 
from God, and which ones are from Satan?"

Canonized Books of the Bible--Protestant vs Catholic versions

  Early Bibles (such as the Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) contain
books that were not later given canonical status.  The earliest tabulated
list of twenty-seven books of the New Testament (which later became the
official list) was put together by the Patriarch Athanasius of Alexandria
in the year 367 AD. (It was another 400 years before the Churches in the East
agreed to accept the controversial book of Revelations as divinely inspired.)

  The early Christian church based their old Testament primarily on the
Septuagint version of the Old Testament. However, when Martin Luther
translated the first edition of his Protestant bible (1534), he made the
decision to keep only the same books as were in the Jewish Old Testament.
Books excluded from Jewish canon, were grouped under a special section
entitled "Apocrypha" meaning "hidden". Apocrypha was defined as those "books
which are not held equal to the Sacred Scriptures but nevertheless are
useful and good to read."

  Protestants also found doctrinal bases for excluding these books from
Protestant canon--For example the books of Maccabbees touched on the
topics of Purgatory and Masses for the Dead (which were not accepted as
part of Protestant theology).

 During the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the Catholic Church kept many
books of the Apocrypha into their version of the bible. Responding to
Protestant criticism that everyone should have access to the Bible, the
Council of Trent (1546) promulgated that only the church had been given
divine ordination to interpret passages of the Bible. Some of the variant
passages in the Latin Vulgate Bible were also discussed--including the
various versions on the ending of the Gospel of Mark, the story in John's
gospel (see John 8:1-11) on a woman taken into adultery, and "the Johannine
Comma".  In regards to the Apocrypha, those books that were accepted as
divine by the early Christian church, but rejected by Jewish scholars during
the first and second century AD, the decision was made to exclude them from
the Catholic bible. The Eastern Christian church also included many of the
apocryphal works in their version of the bible. (based on the Trullan
Council in Constantinople in 692 and the Jerusalem Council in 1672)

   In the sixteenth century, popes Sixtus V and Clement VIII used a
variety of ancient manuscripts including the CODEX VATICANUS (not made
available to the public until the nineteenth century), to produce a
revised Catholic bible--known as the Clementine Bible. This was declared
to be the official Roman Catholic bible after 1592--despite the fact that some
scholars believed it also deviated from some of the ancient manuscripts on
a number of details.  (There were now divisions within the Catholic Church
over which Bible translations were to be considered authoritative.  Even the
Latin Vulgate Bible--translated by Jerome into Latin in the fourth century AD--
existed in a large number of variations. The authoritative version of it was
standardized and printed in 1528.)

  In 1904, Pope Pius X, responded to some of these criticism by establishing
the International Committee for the Revision of the Vulgate which has continued
this effort to this day.