For 35 years I never had reason to doubt that the Greek Codex Sinaiticus was one of the oldest surviving complete Bibles in the world. I had no reason to doubt that Constantin Tischendorf was the discoverer of this ancient manuscript, and that he had gone through hook and crook to get it out of Sinai to Russia, and ultimately, visible for all the world to see. He was lauded as a hero of the faith, and a father of modern Textual Criticism.

From the time of Tischedorf’s publication of this Greek text, Sinaiticus, and its sister text, Vaticanus, people began reevaluating their Bibles. Because Sinaiticus was different in so many places from the traditional text used by Christians for centuries, it demanded a new Bible translation. The result: a whole crop of Bibles with different doctrines and different wordings. Entire words, phrases, and verses were eliminated, and others were changed, all in the name of finding “the oldest and the best text” of the Bible.

But what was its fruit? By the 21st century it left behind a trail of doubters who didn’t any longer believe, as they had in their “youth”, that Jesus didn’t lie, that Jesus didn’t sin; and they started to believe that there were indeed some works to do to get to heaven (of course, this mixed works with their faith), and that Jesus may not have been eternally God at all. And there were doubts as to whether God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit really were “one God.”

This doubt permeated the church, then the world. Only those “clingers,” who held their King James Bibles close to their chests, were not “with the program.”

What happened? Is the Christian faith just like belief in a Santa Claus: it’s okay when you’re little, but eventually you have to grow up and face reality? What WAS reality?

Was there a Bible we can rely on, or, as it soon happened, once Sinaiticus and Vaticanus were made public, was the world made aware that the Bible truly was “just another book”?

Who was right? By asking simple questions and not accepting pat answers, I started to find out that the true Bible was the one preserved for us in English as the King James Bible. The others were a mess of Gnostic cultic belief and changed by men “professing themselves to be wise.”

This book documents that journey. But it doesn’t stop here. We go on to ask the bigger question: If Sinaiticus truly is a fake, who faked Sinaiticus? Bit by bit, the facts, when uncovered, may reveal a much larger plot than anyone in that day could have imagined.

I hope you will enjoy the journey with me to finding the truth. And in the end, I hope you will, with me, hold your King James Bible close to you and say, “I may not understand every word of the King James Bible, but I believe every word of the King James Bible.”

After you read the book, remember to turn the page and look at the complete timeline, to see all the elements in order.

God bless you as you read.

How an Occultist Got Me Thinking

In April 1944 Manly P. Hall, an occultist who hobnobbed with world leaders, admitted to his followers that, (as he put it) “we” have been trying “for the last 100 years” to put out a Bible that was “reasonably correct” —according to this occultist. The purpose, he admitted, was to get people away from believing every “jot and tittle” of the King James Version!

Why get people away from believing only the King James?

That set me to thinking. 100 years before Hall’s admission was 1844. And the only Bible-related major event of 1844 was Tischendorf’s discovery of the supposedly “oldest-and-best” Greek Codex Sinaiticus in a desert monastery in the Egyptian peninsula.

So was there something about the Codex Sinaiticus that occultists of 100 years later would claim for themselves?

The Cast of Characters

I had thought the Sinaiticus was an old perversion of the scriptures but didn’t seriously consider that it could have been a modern fake, made to get people away from the King James, like Manly P. Hall wanted.

I had a number of questions that had to be answered first. Let me pick some important ones. The testimony about the Sinaiticus being a modern document hinges on three people and two places.

The first person was Constantine Simonides, a Greek calligrapher/copyist accused of being a forger.

The second person was allegedly Kallinikos, a monk (or a hieromonk, a priest who became a monk) who went back and forth between monasteries on Orthodox Church business.

The third person was supposedly Benedict, another monk said to have been over a monastery on Mount Athos in Greece. He was also Simonides’ great-uncle.

These three, Simonides, Kallinikos and Benedict, are the central figures in this story. They gave me the information that began to call into question the age of the Sinaiticus.

The two places are two monasteries, one you already know and another less famous —almost a mystery.

You already know St. Catherine’s at the foot of the fake Mt. Sinai. (That’s why the document is named “Sinaiticus.”) The second is Panteleimon [pan te LAY moan] monastery on Mt. Athos in Greece.

Both of these monasteries were said to be under the patronage of the Tsar of Russia. In other words, he was the guy who shelled out the rubles to the monasteries under his care.

So now we have the characters and the settings. What are the facts?

This string of people, places and events would have to be factual before we could even consider the idea that the Sinaiticus is not ancient but actually a modern fake.

The facts aren’t that hard to find —if we take the story apart one piece at a time.

In 1862 Constantin Tischendorf published a typeset copy of the Codex Sinaiticus. At this point he was receiving worldwide fame, telling his story you have now heard about the “discovery” of this “long lost text” of the Bible.

But in 1863, a literary journal in England featured a debate about all the details of a different story about the origin of the Sinaiticus. As I look at this again today, they raised some really good questions.

[End of Excerpt.]