Oldest known Bible doesn't match the one you'll find in churches today

[sonic21]

full article

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The world's oldest known Christian Bible goes online Monday -- but the 1,600-year-old text doesn't match the one you'll find in churches today.

Discovered in a monastery in the Sinai desert in Egypt more than 160 years ago, the handwritten Codex Sinaiticus includes two books that are not part of the official New Testament and at least seven books that are not in the Old Testament.

The New Testament books are in a different order, and include numerous handwritten corrections -- some made as much as 800 years after the texts were written, according to scholars who worked on the project of putting the Bible online. The changes range from the alteration of a single letter to the insertion of whole sentences.

And some familiar -- very important -- passages are missing, including verses dealing with the resurrection of Jesus, they said.

[Extra Stout]

Well, that's a rather slanted and agenda-driven treatment of the Codex Sinaiticus. The article goes remarkably far out of its way to lead the reader to the conclusion that the Codex somehow proves how the Bible is unreliable. Now somebody might well regard the Bible as unreliable, but they're certainly not going to get that from the evidence of Sinaiticus. To a person (me) who is familiar with lower criticism (the discipline of using the textual evidence to reconstruct the original), the distortions in the article are rather blatant and border on mendacious. But why should I be surprised?

The world's oldest known Christian Bible goes online Monday -- but the 1,600-year-old text doesn't match the one you'll find in churches today.

The texts you will find in churches today are based on one of two textual traditions. Most English Bibles are based upon the Nestle-Aland 23rd edition/United Bible Societies 4th edition eclectic text, or something close to it, which represents the work of a whole bunch of people over a long period looking at a bunch of ancient manuscripts and fragments, and using them to try to reconstruct the originals. A few, like the King James and New King James versions, are based upon the Textus Receptus, which was an early attempt to reconstruct the original Greek text, based upon a handful of late Byzantine manuscripts available in the 16th century.

There is no evidence of any kind of supernatural intervention by God to ensure do entary precision up to modern standards in the preservation of the Bible in early Christianity. Manuscripts differ in many details. Some of these details are so minor as not to impact translation. Some do. Some are spelling errors. The ancients knew about this. It wasn't a big deal to them. Do ents were of merely secondary authority to them anyway. Oral transmission was the big thing to them. Communication of meaning mattered more than repeating the exact same words. The Jewish Masoretic Text tradition, in which such fastidious copying is paramount, is medieval in origin. This elevation of the Bible these days in certain circles, past even the esteem to which the Reformers held it, to The Sole Guide for Anything and Everything Pertaining to Every Part of Life, Which is Fastidiously Perfectly Dictated by God Down to Every Last Word, is a residue of modernity and the esteem we place on the written above the oral.

the handwritten Codex Sinaiticus includes two books that are not part of the official New Testament and at least seven books that are not in the Old Testament.

The article might lead you to believe that the canon is unreliable and Sinaiticus somehow proves it. The Sinaiticus New Testament includes the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas, two orthodox works which were very popular among early Christians, but which ultimately were excluded from the canon because they could not be attributed to the Apostles. They are now included in a secondary collection of early orthodox Christian writings called the Apostolic Fathers.

The seven "extra" books of the Old Testament are not included in Protestant Bibles. They would be familiar to Catholic and Orthodox Christians. Their deletion from Protestant Bibles has to do with decisions the Reformers made in the 16th and 17th centuries about squaring up the Christian Old Testamant canon with the Jewish, and has nothing to do with the consistency of early texts.

The corrections are of several kinds. The first set involve scribes correcting their own work. The second set involve scribes correcting each other's work. The third set involve scribes in later centuries who disagreed with the validity of this or that letter or word, or inclusion or deletion of a sentence found or not found in another manuscript. And the fourth set involves a deliberate effort in medieval times to reconcile the text with the Byzantine textform, which is more like the King James/New King James version.

The text of most of the modern Bible translations (RSV/NRSV/NIV/TNIV/ESV/NASB/NLT) relying on NA23/UBS4 reflects the Alexandrian textform, which would be more like Sinaiticus without the corrections and revisions. Somehow modern conservative Christians manage to tolerate having these versions, with their different NT textforms, sold next to the KJV/NKJV in their bookstores without blowing a gasket. Well, most of them anyway. There is the KJV-only crowd, and they can recite every single difference to you.

And some familiar -- very important -- passages are missing, including verses dealing with the resurrection of Jesus, they said.

Ah! So Codex Sinaiticus calls into doubt the resurrection of Jesus and whether early Christians even believed in it! Well, no. This is referring to the omission of the "long ending" of Mark 16:9-20, which wasn't original. Either the original ending was lost, or Mark simply ended his narrative at the cave with the women at the empty tomb. Again, these newer Bible translations either leave out the text or bracket it as dubious, yet those silly evangelicals go on believing in the Resurrection, since there are whole other huge chunks of text about it.

[ElNono]

Well, that's a rather slanted and agenda-driven treatment of the Codex Sinaiticus. The article goes remarkably far out of its way to lead the reader to the conclusion that the Codex somehow proves how the Bible is unreliable. Now somebody might well regard the Bible as unreliable, but they're certainly not going to get that from the evidence of Sinaiticus. To a person (me) who is familiar with lower criticism (the discipline of using the textual evidence to reconstruct the original), the distortions in the article are rather blatant and border on mendacious. But why should I be surprised?


The texts you will find in churches today are based on one of two textual traditions. Most English Bibles are based upon the Nestle-Aland 23rd edition/United Bible Societies 4th edition eclectic text, or something close to it, which represents the work of a whole bunch of people over a long period looking at a bunch of ancient manuscripts and fragments, and using them to try to reconstruct the originals. A few, like the King James and New King James versions, are based upon the Textus Receptus, which was an early attempt to reconstruct the original Greek text, based upon a handful of late Byzantine manuscripts available in the 16th century.

There is no evidence of any kind of supernatural intervention by God to ensure do entary precision up to modern standards in the preservation of the Bible in early Christianity. Manuscripts differ in many details. Some of these details are so minor as not to impact translation. Some do. Some are spelling errors. The ancients knew about this. It wasn't a big deal to them. Do ents were of merely secondary authority to them anyway. Oral transmission was the big thing to them. Communication of meaning mattered more than repeating the exact same words. The Jewish Masoretic Text tradition, in which such fastidious copying is paramount, is medieval in origin. This elevation of the Bible these days in certain circles, past even the esteem to which the Reformers held it, to The Sole Guide for Anything and Everything Pertaining to Every Part of Life, Which is Fastidiously Perfectly Dictated by God Down to Every Last Word, is a residue of modernity and the esteem we place on the written above the oral.

The article might lead you to believe that the canon is unreliable and Sinaiticus somehow proves it. The Sinaiticus New Testament includes the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas, two orthodox works which were very popular among early Christians, but which ultimately were excluded from the canon because they could not be attributed to the Apostles. They are now included in a secondary collection of early orthodox Christian writings called the Apostolic Fathers.

The seven "extra" books of the Old Testament are not included in Protestant Bibles. They would be familiar to Catholic and Orthodox Christians. Their deletion from Protestant Bibles has to do with decisions the Reformers made in the 16th and 17th centuries about squaring up the Christian Old Testamant canon with the Jewish, and has nothing to do with the consistency of early texts.

The corrections are of several kinds. The first set involve scribes correcting their own work. The second set involve scribes correcting each other's work. The third set involve scribes in later centuries who disagreed with the validity of this or that letter or word, or inclusion or deletion of a sentence found or not found in another manuscript. And the fourth set involves a deliberate effort in medieval times to reconcile the text with the Byzantine textform, which is more like the King James/New King James version.

The text of most of the modern Bible translations (RSV/NRSV/NIV/TNIV/ESV/NASB/NLT) relying on NA23/UBS4 reflects the Alexandrian textform, which would be more like Sinaiticus without the corrections and revisions. Somehow modern conservative Christians manage to tolerate having these versions, with their different NT textforms, sold next to the KJV/NKJV in their bookstores without blowing a gasket. Well, most of them anyway. There is the KJV-only crowd, and they can recite every single difference to you.

Ah! So Codex Sinaiticus calls into doubt the resurrection of Jesus and whether early Christians even believed in it! Well, no. This is referring to the omission of the "long ending" of Mark 16:9-20, which wasn't original. Either the original ending was lost, or Mark simply ended his narrative at the cave with the women at the empty tomb. Again, these newer Bible translations either leave out the text or bracket it as dubious, yet those silly evangelicals go on believing in the Resurrection, since there are whole other huge chunks of text about it.

I'm impressed in your knowledge of the history of this fairy tale. Bravo!

[jacobdrj]

This is news how? Common knowledge that the christian bible as it is now known was canonized a couple hundred years after the events of said bible were said to have taken place.
People were expelled from the Holy Christian Roman Empire when they didn't accept the 'Trinity' doctrine. It is part of how Islam came to be.

[Cry Havoc]

I'm impressed in your knowledge of the history of this fairy tale. Bravo!

That's interesting. So because ES knows more than you about this subject, you can rip him because it doesn't jive with your particular view of the universe?

The Bible, faith in Jesus or not, is one of the most important historical texts in the history of the planet. Now, I know it's really cool to put it down, Mr. Internet Tough Guy, but you basically are laughing at someone for having superior knowledge of an extremely important historical do ent.

To be so candid about your own ignorance is pretty impressive.

[pkbpkb81]

That's interesting. So because ES knows more than you about this subject, you can rip him because it doesn't jive with your particular view of the universe?

The Bible, faith in Jesus or not, is one of the most important historical texts in the history of the planet. Now, I know it's really cool to put it down, Mr. Internet Tough Guy, but you basically are laughing at someone for having superior knowledge of an extremely important historical do ent.

To be so candid about your own ignorance is pretty impressive.

lol good post

[Extra Stout]

This is news how? Common knowledge that the christian bible as it is now known was canonized a couple hundred years after the events of said bible were said to have taken place.
People were expelled from the Holy Christian Roman Empire when they didn't accept the 'Trinity' doctrine. It is part of how Islam came to be.

Well, not exactly. It wasn't that they didn't accept the Trinity doctrine. It was that they didn't accept, in trying to describe how Jesus could be fully man and fully God at the same time, that he had two natures, one human and one divine, combined within a single essence. They preferred to say that he had a single nature, which was both fully human and fully divine, within a single essence. At the Council of Chalcedon in 451, the two-natured definition was declared to be binding, and the combined-nature "miaphysites" were excommunicated, or schismed, depending on which side you listen to.

Now you may be asking yourself, "How could people end up being persecuted over such a tiny and arcane point of theology?" Well, it had much to do with struggles for power and for the relative influence of various patriarchs, and of the emperor, and very little to do with what they believed about Jesus. The council served as a pretext for these power plays; the Patriarch of Constantinople won, and the See of Alexandria lost.

The Eastern emperors attempted to get the excommunicated/schismed miaphysites to submit to the council by force, and persecuted them for more than a century. When the Muslims arrived, submitting to them as dhimmis was a far better option for the non-Chalcedonian Christians than continuing to live under the iron fist of the Empire.

The descendants of those who accepted Chalcedon are the Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants. The descendants of those rejected Chalcedon include the Egyptian Copts, the Armenians, and the Syrian Orthodox, collectively known as the Oriental Orthodox.

In recent times, the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox have agreed that their differences in Christology were very slight and not worth schism, and are discussing reestablishment of communion.

[Extra Stout]

The Christians who didn't accept the "Trinity" doctrine were called Arians. Most of the early Gothic kings of western Europe were Arians. The Empire itself went back and forth in the fourth century between being Nicene and Arian until Theodosius declared for the Nicene camp once and for all in 381, and crushed those whose disagreed.

However, Arianism held on in the West for a few more centuries. To defend against it, Western Catholics added a word, "filioque," to the Nicene Creed to buttress the claim of Jesus' divinity. Catholics and Orthodox spar over this word to this day.

Eventually Arianism fell out of favor. The basic idea behind Arianism re-emerged in modern times in the Jehovah's Witnesses movement.

[antimvp]

arianism is also a loose basis for islam.

[antimvp]

http://arian-catholic.org/

[ElNono]

That's interesting. So because ES knows more than you about this subject, you can rip him because it doesn't jive with your particular view of the universe?

Before you came out from the left field with your grandiose finger pointing, I was sincerely congratulating Extra Stout for his history recap. It takes devotion and genuine interest in your beliefs to go into that amount of detail.

The Bible, faith in Jesus or not, is one of the most important historical texts in the history of the planet. Now, I know it's really cool to put it down, Mr. Internet Tough Guy, but you basically are laughing at someone for having superior knowledge of an extremely important historical do ent.

I doubly congratulate Extra Stout in being able to convey his knowledge without a hint of attempting to forcefully impose his devotion onto somebody else with his prose. Luckily for me, if a God truly exists, he has a complete monopoly on the judgement business, basically rendering your faux superiority complex entirely moot.

To be so candid about your own ignorance is pretty impressive.

I decidedly respect everyone's choice of beliefs. I also expect others to respect mine, you intolerant bag.

[boutons_deux]

Does ES believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible?

[Winehole23]

I know it's really cool to put it down, Mr. Internet Tough Guy, but you basically are laughing at someone for having superior knowledge of an extremely important historical do ent.

In my experience, it's very easy to misjudge the tone of brief posts.

"Fairy tale" at best seems a mischievous stand-in for "the Bible"; so construed it sets off "Bravo!" as a frankly sarcastic salute. But it is possible, even likely, that El Nono intended "fairy tale" as a stand in for the *OP just demolished by ES*. In this case, the tone shifts to open admiration.

Given the brevity of the post and the indefinite reference of the term "fairy tale", the tone could be honestly glossed either way, but only one way will be right.

[ElNono]

In my experience, it's very easy to misjudge the tone of very brief posts, but I can see exactly how it happened.

"Fairy tale" at best seems a mischievous stand-in for "the Bible"; so construed it sets off Bravo! as a frankly sarcastic salute. But it is possible, even likely, that El Nono intended "fairy tale" as a stand in for the *OP just demolished by ES*. In this case, the tone shifts to open admiration.

Given the brevity of the post and the indefinite reference of the term "fairy tale", it could easily cut either way.

I don't intend to offend anybody by stating that my belief is that the Bible is a fairy tale. I actually do respect those that believe otherwise, and quite frankly I felt like congratulating Extra Stout on his post (even if I don't believe in God, I do find the whole historical perspective interesting). I did read his entire post. And the Bravo was genuine and not sarcastic at all.

[Winehole23]

And the Bravo was genuine and not sarcastic at all

That's what I thought, too. I don't think CH saw what you meant, ElNono.

[Winehole23]

OIC.

"Fairy tale" did refer to the bible, but CH got carried away with it, and misconstrued (understandably IMO) your genuinely intended Bravo!

[ElNono]

Well, I guess you could reduce this to wether I should be politically correct and don't hurt somebody's feelings while having to hide what I really think of the story, or simply speak my mind. As I said, I have no problem with people thinking different than me, but I also select the path of expressing myself freely.
Obviously they're within their right to do so too. I just wanted to make clear that my congratulations were genuine and not a mockery.

[Wild Cobra]

I'm impressed in your knowledge of the history of this fairy tale. Bravo!

Fairy tale?

Wow... There are too many accounts of Jesus as a live person during the period. There are too many historical digs that prove the early Bible. When you learn some key words of Chadean, Hebrew, and Greek, you see the english Bible is incorrectly translated.

There is nothing in the Torah that can be reliable said as false. The creation was done over six periods of time. Not six days. Mankind was on the earth for several centuries before the single man named Adam has a story written about him. You see, another old word that sound similar to the proper name Adam, means mankind. The word God is most commonly a plural for of diety, and also means (lost for the right word) a more advanced person. God could have simply been an extraterrestrial. If I'm wrong, I'd like someone to point it out to me.

[Wild Cobra]

Does ES believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible?

I seriously doubt it. I'll bet he believes in the literal interpretation of the Torah, and verifiable old writings however.

[PixelPusher]

Does ES believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible?

Seems pretty clear to me.

There is no evidence of any kind of supernatural intervention by God to ensure do entary precision up to modern standards in the preservation of the Bible in early Christianity.

[whottt]

So so far boutons, El Nono and the absolute stupidest segment of fundamendalist christians believe every aspect of the bible was intended to be taken literally?

Am I right on the scoreboard?

[ElNono]

Fairy tale?

Wow... There are too many accounts of Jesus as a live person during the period. There are too many historical digs that prove the early Bible. When you learn some key words of Chadean, Hebrew, and Greek, you see the english Bible is incorrectly translated.

There is nothing in the Torah that can be reliable said as false. The creation was done over six periods of time. Not six days. Mankind was on the earth for several centuries before the single man named Adam has a story written about him. You see, another old word that sound similar to the proper name Adam, means mankind. The word God is most commonly a plural for of diety, and also means (lost for the right word) a more advanced person. God could have simply been an extraterrestrial. If I'm wrong, I'd like someone to point it out to me.

Yes, a fairy tale. I'm surprised Mr Skeptic 'I need all the facts' himself is here to tell me otherwise. And I certainly don't dispute that there was a dude named Jesus of Nazareth back in the day. There might have been. However, to go from there to claim he's the son of a god, and all the supernatural bs surrounding it is, frankly, a stretch I'm not willing to accept.
If you do, good for you.

[ElNono]

So so far boutons, El Nono and the absolute stupidest segment of fundamendalist christians believe every aspect of the bible was intended to be taken literally?

Am I right on the scoreboard?

Talk about coming out of the left field and being completely wrong.
You need to stick to defending your girlfriend...

[Bender]

I'm hardly a bible scholar, and have extremely limited knowledge about the history of the bible.

But I always thought that there are many other "books" that were not included in the current version of the bible (due to decisions by the catholic church back when the bible was being "assembled"). I thought the catholic church decided to leave out some books that portrayed jesus in a more "human" light.

[whottt]

Talk about coming out of the left field and being completely wrong.
You need to stick to defending your girlfriend...

Well...if it's simply a fairytale then I challenge you to go start breaking every commandment and see how it turns out for you.

I mean hey, it's just a fairytale.

By the way, congrats on being one of the elite to realize the bible isn't 100% historically accurate, my 10 year old nephew just figured that out too...maybe you guys can get together and talk about the experience?

Probably find a kindred spirit on the definition of continent too.