PART TWO – The Greek New
Testament Text Fraud
Brief Summary
The second part is more like a hastily produced crime
drama, not at all elegant or certain, because the narrative involves the
attempted murder – of the Bible. The evidence abounds but the facts are
disputed, the heroes defamed, and the criminals deified. A young man had a
great future, but his parents died while he was in the university. He had to
drop out. His name was Constantine Tischendorf. He was able to work his way
back into the school by lecturing, but that only served to renew his ambition. As
a young professor, he managed to lay claim on Ephraim Rescriptus, a manuscript
of the Bible overwritten, after being erased, by the little-known Ephraim. Tischendorf
claimed to have unusual eyesight which enabled him to produce the original. The
future events developed slowly, but they were pivotal for the attempt on the
Bible. Tischendorf had a papal audience, very unusual for a German Lutheran,
and saw his ability to travel and make pronouncements increased. He seemed
drawn to a particular location, a monastery called “St. Catherine’s on Mt.
Sinai,” but really a Disney Mt. Sinai, with a long history and fake Biblical
sights to see.
The first evidence of Tischendorf’s criminal attempt is
the fable of his discovery of Codex Sinaiticus (a bound book – codex – found there
– Sinaiticus). He and his family told the same lie, time after time. He found
sheets of parchment loose in a basket, ready to be burned, as many sheets had
before, but he intervened to save them. The monks saved, repaired, and
preserved ancient documents. The oldest and most obscure were valuable to the
monks – and most importantly – to collectors. This was parchment – leather –
and would stink in a fire and not heat anything. Constantine did not save but
stole pages from the bound codex and presented the pages to a Roman Catholic
ruler. He eventually stole the entire volume by promising to have it set in
print in Russia, calling it Aleph, for the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet.
He claimed it was over 15 centuries old and promoted it as the greatest find in
Biblical history. This and his look at Codex Vaticanus made him the hero of 19th
century text criticism, a role which he carefully crafted himself.
Scholars, clergy, and laity may debate the histories and
origins of Sinaiticus (Aleph) and Vaticanus (B). One thing is clear – both
books are barren and have no descendants. Such books would have been read and
copied to death, producing new ones to be used by the faithful. Worn-out
parchment (leather) copies would be burned and the deluxe, costly leather
copies used to produce accurate papyrus (paper) copies.
The apostolic witness of the New Testament was preserved
by the Christian Church and manuscripts in the thousands prove that to be true.
The term Received Text comes from a phrase by Erasmus when he first edited a
Greek New Testament. The 1100 years-old Byzantine Roman Empire - Greek-speaking,
Christian, almost forgotten by historians - preserved the Majority Text, which
is also called the Byzantine Text and the Traditional or Ecclesiastical Text.[1]
Tischendorf promoted his heroics, which appealed to those
who wanted the oldest witnesses to be quite different from the traditional
text. Westcott and Hort took over the job of promotion and created their own
Greek New Testament in secret for use in the 19th century revision
of the KJV. They pushed it upon the groups of KJV revision scholars but did not
publish their Greek text until the new Bible came out. Many were horrified by
the liberties and unvarnished egos of Westcott and Hort, but this approach took
over by the 1930s and now controls all new Bible translations. Their “modern,
scientific, precise” translations are nothing more than cobbled-together, copy
and paste jobs edited by the authority of the Bible book sellers.
[1]
Steven edited the Byzantine Text, so that edition is called the Stephanus,
which I use for all Greek New Testament citations in sermons, articles, and
books.
