Codex Sinaiticus

[fullywired]

I . came across an article on line about the oldest bible known "Codex Sinaiticus" or the Sinai bible which claimed that there were quote". irrefutable evidence of wilful falsifications in all modern-day Gospels, and a comparison identified a staggering 14,800 later editorial alterations in modern Bibles"

.

With the Sinai Bible, Christian history is traced back as far as it can conceivably go, but it was still written, at best, more than 350 years after the time the Vatican says Jesus Christ walked the sands of Palestine. The ‘Catholic Encyclopedia’ agrees to this extraordinary late composition of the world’s oldest Bible:

’The earliest of the extant manuscripts [relating to Christianity], it is true, do not date back beyond the middle of the fourth century AD’.

(‘Catholic Encyclopedia’, 1909, ‘Gospels’)

I had not heard of this bible previously but that doesn't mean anything because I am not a student of the bible.There is a link to the full bible provided but it is in Greek and no translation(to English Is provided)

Is this common knowledge or is it something that is contested This is the link to the bible but as I said it is in Greek without translation. www.codexsinaiticus.org

The link to the article is http://www.vatileaks.com/_blog/Vati_Leaks/post/A_glaring_omission_in_World%E2%80%99s_oldest_Bible/

[ambelamba]

One thing makes me wonder is about the gospels and epistles that were not approved by the authority after Christianity was legalized. We can only have a glimpse of them through Nag Hammadi documents, and if one early Christian bishop is correct, the there were at least 200 different gospels circulating around. And I bet many of them were very unpalatable to the Church of Rome, which became Catholic Church later.

[Jack Skellington]

What it reveals is scripture in transition. And of course the modern bible we have today is a compilation of a great many, early edits, revisions, and human hands. There can be little doubt that people compiled and constructed what suited them best at the time, and the result was a remarkable collection.

Yes-- re-mark-able. To think that it was not a process is willfully ignorant of how things come to be, or incredibly naive.

[fullywired]

I had not heard of it before and it doesn't look like many have ,What surprised me was that the Vatican seems to have given it's stamp of approval

fullywired

[+Paranoid Android]

The Codex in question is the earliest complete compilation but it's by no means the earliest individual fragments our even whole books. There are literally thousands of manuscripts that predate Codex Sinaiticus, but none of then represent a complete compilation of our current biblical canon.

The fact that there are "wilful falsifications" in modern Bibles is well-known even among Christians, and even highlighted in virtually all modern Bibles. I own several Bibles. At the very least there are footnotes pointing out that the text does not belong - and I say the very least because some (eg, an old Study Bible of mine being one example) includes entire articles written by theologians discussing how the text came to be added. Unfortunately we can't just omit the passages from modern Bibles because that would screw up the chapter-verse reference system (a modern 1 John 5:7-8 would be different to someone reading the KJV, for example - and that would just get difficult for referencing purposes).

So while the Codex Sinaiticus is a valuable document it is not authoritative, and is just one of many reference documents that scholars use when translating the Bible.

[Davros of Skaro]

This guy claims the words "Jesus", "Christ", or "Christian" is not found in this Bible.It' all Greek to me???

[Jack Skellington]

It's absolute hard evidence that the Bible we have today is a product of an evolutionary process. People forget that the Bible is not "a book" but a collection of books and that those various individual parts were brought together by various collectors, then what was collected in various places was in turn brought together by ruling councils and made to agree one with another by including or excluding certain parts that some collectors had and others did not.

It would be worth studying and comparing what is in our present day version that was not in the earlier collection called codex sinaitcus.

[fullywired]

It's this "collection of books " that set me wondering ,How does one know which version is a true.according to the article, the Catholic encyclopedia (seems to me) to be accepting most of what it says about falsifications but on reflection and further reading of the site where I read the article it seems to be a site that is knocking the Catholics and Vatican so it might not be wise to give it a lot of creedence .I will try to find an unbiased source for more information to satisfy myself

fullywired

[DeWitz]

As PA and Jack note, there's really nothing new here. The canon--the official listing of which books would be included in scripture--wasn't finalized for hundreds of years. The canon is different for Eastern Orthodox (who consider their tradition the most ancient, and therefore 'original') as compared to the Roman Catholic version as opposed to most Protestant denominations. When Codex Sinaiticus was discovered, there had been almost 1800 years of editing, editorializing and compiling what would became known as the Bible.

With my own eyes and heart I have seen the faith of several promising young divinity students/seminarians shattered, or at least damaged, by their first exposure to the development of the canon over time, and the continuing disagreements within Christianity as to which books are canonical, apocryphal, pseudepigraphal, pseudonymous--none of which mean spurious or false. Truth, biblically speaking, is not inherent in the written word (much less in English) but in the Spirit who continues to enlighten human hearts through imperfect means of oral and written tradition.

[Bluefinger]

One thing makes me wonder is about the gospels and epistles that were not approved by the authority after Christianity was legalized. We can only have a glimpse of them through Nag Hammadi documents, and if one early Christian bishop is correct, the there were at least 200 different gospels circulating around. And I bet many of them were very unpalatable to the Church of Rome, which became Catholic Church later.

While I'm not defending Roman Catholicism, I will defend Orthodoxy (which is currently represented by three papacies in the world rather than just one, as many are under the impression of.)

The challenge of the 4th century Nicene Church was to determine what gospel was an orthodox gospel. Interestingly enough, the work had already been accomplished in the 2nd and 3rd centuries by the early church fathers. The next task was to reach outside of the Church and expound to the Roman Empire what Orthodox Christianity was; what the true Gospel was. This was done by determining which scriptures were Orthodox and which were heretical; or which reflected the teachings of the true apostles as passed down to them by Jesus and which ones did not. It wasn't about a power grab, as many assert given the history of the Roman papacy. In fact, the Roman papacy did not gain strength until around the 11th century CE, 700 years after the Council of Nicea.

What the dispute was about was to explain to the Roman Empire (the state) what the true teachings of Christ were, as I said above. If you look at many of the Gnostic teachings, they don't insist that Christ is essential for salvation. Rather Christ becomes an illuminated one that points people to secret knowledge that alone can save. So the Gnostic Gospel insists that Christ doesn't save. Gnosis does. That is why Gnosticism was so critically opposed to by Orthodox Christians. The apostolic traditions insisted that Jesus and Him alone was necessary for salvation, restoration, and glorification of all God's creation. As you can see, Gnosticism in all its pompous assertions of knowledge of secret things, does not insist on the supremacy of Christ in the act of salvation.

That is why Gnostic gospels, among others, did not make it into the Bible in the 4th century.