By David W. Daniels

If you go online, you can Google “World’s oldest Bible.” What will pop up? “Codex Sinaiticus” just like I was taught in Bible college in the early 1980s. Since then I searched for decades for a copy of this “world’s oldest Bible” —Codex Sinaiticus. Most books actually only showed me one single page of Sinaiticus —John 21.

But in 2009, Codex Sinaiticus came online with high-quality photographs available on codexsinaiticus.org. I have learned way more by examining it for myself than all the lectures, legends and lies I have heard about it from professors, preachers and book authors.

Let’s consider a fun question. Never mind that Codex Sinaiticus is the most accepted, but never actually scientifically tested book in history. Why don’t we see a Bible based solely upon the Sinaiticus?

Let me tell you why you haven’t, and probably never will, see one. When we finally got a look at the whole Codex Sinaiticus, we find that it is missing 12 entire books and most of 6 more. That’s over one fourth of the 66 Bible books, more than a third of the 39 Old Testament books.

But in addition, it has six books of the Apocrypha folktales. The reality is, we just don’t have enough to make a real Old Testament. So much for that idea.

But what about the New Testament? “Aha!” says the New Testament scholar. “The Sinaiticus has an absolutely complete New Testament!” Great! So why don’t we have a Sinaiticus New Testament?

There are a few reasons. How about Luke 1:26? The King James reads simply: “And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,” Mary and Joseph are from Nazareth, in Galilee. Everybody knows that except the Sinaiticus.  The Sinaiticus reads “Eis polin tis Ioudaias he onoma Nazaret” (unto a city of Judea, named Nazareth.)

Even Sunday school kids know that’s wrong! But Tischendorf didn’t admit it. Not even in a note.

Let’s kick it up a bit. John 7:53 to 8:11, the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery, is completely missing from Sinaiticus as well as Mark 16:9-20.

What about the important words of Luke 24:51? “And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.” The words, “And [was] carried up into heaven” are actually not in the original Sinaiticus.

That means that there is no mention of Jesus’ bodily resurrection in the Sinaiticus Gospels at all, Mark 16 or Luke 24. So the only mention in Sinaiticus of Jesus’ bodily ascension into heaven is in Acts 1, verses 2, 10 and 11. Scholars have used this to argue that Jesus didn’t actually ascend at all, but that these verses were added to the Gospels later.

Then Sinaiticus Mark 1:1 doesn’t say Jesus was “the Son of God.” So Bible “scholars” propagate the lie that Jesus was only a man, but God adopted Him at His water baptism.

As you can see, a Bible based solely on the “oldest and best” Sinaiticus would be missing some serious stuff. No wonder your local LifeWay Christian bookstore doesn’t sell one.

Modern research proves that Codex Sinaiticus is a FAKE, and a FRAUD. Over the past year I’ve learned that it was actually created between 1839-1840, and it was probably edited up through 1843. To see what I learned from studying the Sinaiticus, and why we know know it is a fake, see this YouTube playlist, Something Funny About Sinaiticus.

And remember, when you hand out a Chick tract you can be confident that the scriptures in it are from the preserved scriptures in English, the Authorized King James Bible.