Which Bible, Which Version?
To segue from the previous installment in this series, allow me to repeat the last sentence.
Before I close this section, which has been meant to familiarize you with Codex Aleph, I want to discuss what is perhaps one of the strongest threats to the Christian faith, which could result from following Bibles of the Westcott-Hort variety. Because of all the omissions in the Sinaiticus, this one is perhaps the most cunning.
As usual, in all my quotations from other sources, unless otherwise noted, all emphases and comments within [brackets] are mine.
Author James Bentley, in his Secrets of Mt. Sinai, says that especially in this one point,
QUOTE “20th century theologians have found the witness of Codex Sinaiticus extremely disturbing indeed. The issue concerns the central doctrine of the Christian faith itself, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. END QUOTE
Now, remember how I mentioned that Tischendorf was all of his life obsessed with the idea of finding absolute 100% proof of the accuracy of the New Testament. And with his looting of Codex Aleph there from St. Catherine’s monastery, he felt that he had done it. He felt that he had found 100% accurate text.
Bentley writes, QUOTE: But here arose an extraordinary paradox. The Codex Sinaiticus, the manuscript which in Tischendorf’s view approached most nearly to the text of the Gospels as they were originally written, revealed an extraordinary omission.
According to Sinaiticus, the Gospel according to Mark, unlike the other three Gospels, contains no account of the appearance of Jesus to his disciples after his resurrection. END QUOTE
So let us examine Mark 16, beginning in verse 9 through the end of the chapter. All of this is left out in Codex Sinaiticus! It just is not there.
KJV Mark 16:9 Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils.
10 And she went and told them that had been with him, as they mourned and wept.
11 And they, when they had heard that he was alive, and had been seen of her, believed not.
12 After that he appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country.
13 And they went and told it unto the residue: neither believed they them.
14 Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen. {at meat: or, together}
15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.
17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;
18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
19 So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.
20 And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen.
So, that’s the passage left out of the gospel of Mark in Sinaiticus. But the average Christian might say, “Well, so what if this account is missing in the Westcott-Hort text, which underlies most Bible versions? What’s the big deal? There’s no question about the reality of Christ’s physical flesh and bone resurrection from the dead since all three of the other gospels record it. Why are you so upset because it’s missing in Mark?”
Ah, but here, my average Christian friend, I see that you have not been keeping up with the latest discoveries of the higher critics, have you?
You see, all reputable scholars now know that Matthew did not write the first gospel, even though the church has believed this from the very beginning.
No, indeed. We scholars have discovered by brilliant textual analysis that the gospel of Mark was written first, and that Matthew, Luke, and John then merely copied from Mark and kind of give it their own spin, you might say.
So that means, if the passage purporting to tell of the physical resurrection of Christ from the grave was not in Mark’s gospel, as Codex Aleph and Codex Vaticanus prove, then we must, of course, delete those passages from all three of the other gospels as well. After all, my dear Christian friend, we are looking for the truth, aren’t we?
Now, don’t you worry about Dean John Burgon and prebendary Frederick Scrivener and Dr. David Otis Fuller and Pickering and Hodges and Edwin Hills and all those bizarre idiots who think that the majority text is correct? These men are simply fanatics. And we, sophisticated intellectuals, why, we simply ignore that kind of riffraff.
I trust my sarcasm is evident. But do you now see how such devils as Westcott and Hort and their ilk can be so deceiving?
First, they claim that the original gospel account of Mark did not have this crucial passage because the oldest and best manuscripts, Vatican and Sinai, did not have it, and then some decades later, the higher critics claim to have brilliantly discovered that Matthew and Luke and John all copied their information from Mark.
And so therefore, all the post-resurrection appearances of Christ do not belong in the gospels at all. So where does that leave your faith now?
But you say, “Well, it’s still in the first chapter of the book of Acts.”
Ah, but remember, who wrote the book of Acts? It was Luke, and he was just copying from Mark. We must remove it from the book of Acts, too.
So, so very cunningly, the higher critics are attempting to destroy the very foundations of true Bible Christianity.
“For if Christ be not risen, we are of all men most miserable,” said Paul. If there is no resurrection, we should all just hang it up. Forget it. Leave Christianity because it’s an empty shell. It means nothing if we don’t have the resurrection.
It’s the salami strategy being used here. They don’t try to cut out the foundational passages all at once. No, cutting off one slice at a time will eventually cause you to lose the whole salami, won’t it?
And so this passage of Mark, chapter 16, verses 9 to 20, may still be in your NIV this year. But it may not be too many more years when it will just be relegated to a footnote mention.
And then perhaps some years after that, in a newer revised edition of the NIV, which is, of course, endorsed and promoted by Billy Graham, even that footnote will disappear.
This may take a generation or two to accomplish, but then how many average, “Christians” of that day will ever question the matter?
They won’t have any evidence that any such passage was ever there in the Gospel of Mark, or in Matthew, or in Luke, or in John, or in the book of the Acts.
Once again, though, do you see how the higher critics in their scholarly investigations lean on their own understanding?
And by subjecting the Word of God to their theories, they not only deny their own faith, but they help to destroy the faith of countless others who follow their lead like sheep to the slaughter.
As I was reading about the process of how these great scholarly higher critics have determined that Mark wrote his Gospel first, I was reading it carefully, and I didn’t get it. I did not understand it. It sounded like a bunch of gobbledygook to me. So, I read it again, and it still didn’t make sense. So I thought, am I that dumb, or what?
So I read it again, and it still didn’t make sense, and then it dawned on me, I’m not that dumb, it is gobbledygook!
But even if we take the position that I am so dull, that I just don’t get it, and that Mark really did write his Gospel first, then we must still point out to these pathetic higher critics the fallacy of their theory.
And that is, that even if Mark wrote the first Gospel, my friends, who is the real author of the Gospel of Mark? God. The Holy Spirit. And who authored the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and John? The Holy Spirit.
So, even if Codex Aleph were correct in its omission of the resurrection account, then the Holy Spirit saw to it that this most pivotal tenet of the entire Christian faith, the resurrection—that the Holy Spirit saw to it that it was to be found in Matthew and Luke and John.
The fallacy of the higher critics is that they clearly believe that the Gospels were merely men’s accounts, one writer copying from another. The critics have no room for the Holy Spirit’s authorship in their scheme of things.
Oh, they will say they do, if you ask them. “Of course, we’re Christians. Of course we believe in the Holy Spirit.”
But in practice, they deny him and deny the power thereof. Their fruit betrays them.
(To be continued.)
~END~
