For over 70 years, the Russian government held what many believed to be the oldest Bible in existence: the Codex Sinaiticus. Thought to be the archaeological discovery of a generation, they surprisingly sold it in 1933. New evidence indicates that they may have discovered something suspicious about it.

Some readers will be familiar with the research by author and linguist David W Daniels into the origins and dating of the Sinaiticus and the Vaticanus. In his books on the subject he details the storm of suspicions at the time of their discovery.

Suspicions Ignored

Even though serious concerns were raised at the time when these two texts were “discovered,” in the 19th century, they went on to be the primary source documents for all of the modern versions based on the Wescott and Hort Greek texts. This caused the modern bibles to have significant differences from the historically preserved texts supporting the authorized King James version.

Daniels’ interest was first aroused several years ago when a researcher called to his attention questions about the authenticity of the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. Intrigued, Daniels went on to discover additional evidence supporting this suspicion.

And the evidence continues to pile up.

When Constantin Tischendorf discovered the Sinaiticus manuscript on the Sinai Peninsula in the mid-1800s, that final expedition was financed by Russian royalty. As a result, the document ultimately was owned by Russia where it resided for about 70 years.

Recently, Daniels was made aware of a document written by a Russian official who had personally examined the Sinaiticus while it was still in Russian hands. The official, Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov, a brilliant scientist and scholar born in 1854, was highly experienced in examining old manuscripts along with other areas of scientific expertise.

The newly discovered document written by Morozov had been published in 1914. In it he describes his examination of the Sinaiticus which he found to be remarkably well preserved. “The parchment sheets…were not at all frayed, not dirty or soiled by fingers,” he wrote. “When we deal with documents that have really lain for a thousand years… often at the slightest touch their sheets break into tiny pieces…” However, the Sinaiticus still had sheets that “are very thin, beautifully crafted and, what is most amazing, have retained their flexibility and have not become fragile at all!”

Morozov went on to compare the Sinaiticus to the Vaticanus. He noted that it also had very flexible, fresh-looking pages not at all like a millennium-old text. He pointed out that the Vaticanus first appeared in Vatican catalogs no earlier than the late 15th century. He concluded that the “The legend about its age is collapsing.” He even argued that nothing prevented a skilled scribe from producing a high-quality replica of the Codex. In other words, the manuscript could be a very nice, high-quality fake. This is exactly the same conclusion that Daniels came to about the Sinaiticus in his earlier research.

Evidence Ignored

Morozov published his findings in 1914, casting doubt on the accepted ages of both Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. However, despite his professional accolades, his insights were largely ignored by the scholarly community.

But in 1932 Morozov was made an honorary member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. We have no further record of Russia's handling of Sinaiticus. However, one year later the Sinaiticus, which was considered one of the most valuable ancient documents in the world, was quietly sold to the British Museum for a mere 100,000 British pounds.

Validates Earlier Research

Daniels suggests that this further validates his conclusion from years of research that both the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus are fake documents that Satan has used in a monstrous plot against God's preserved words. The Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus, along with a few other Alexandrian documents, became the backbone for Westcott and Hort's Greek text relied upon by most modern translations.

There are thousands of differences in these Alexandrian texts from the thousands of time-honored manuscripts relied upon by the King James translators. These discrepancies are reflected in our modern versions and are creating widespread doubt and confusion about the truth of God's word.

No Historical Proof

The Received Texts used to translate the King James are historically traceable back within a few decades of those written by the apostles. Neither Vaticanus nor Sinaiticus can be traced back more than a few hundred years at best.

The Vaticanus first appeared in the Vatican library in the late 1400s. Sinaiticus has no history prior to the mid-1800s when Tischendorf “discovered” it. In fact, Daniels’ research has turned up strong evidence that the Sinaiticus is, indeed, a “very nice, high quality fake.”

In the series of books that Daniels has written while researching this plot he describes how scholars in the 19th century were deeply enamored with the new field of science. Satan appears to have used that to switch their attention from historically verifying the authenticity of ancient manuscripts to relying on a questionable new “scientific” approach called paleography.

And as time goes on, however, it appears that Westcott and Hort and their collaborators made a colossal mistake. But the Bible societies and their publishers saw an opportunity to produce copyrightable Bible versions by changing substantial parts of the text. This was accomplished by accepting the counterfeit Vaticanus and Sinaiticus documents prepared by the Alexandrian scholars who had injected their own unbiblical belief systems.

It is a tangled web that took David Daniels two decades to unravel. But this new information from the Russian official only adds to the other suspicions. Meanwhile, there is a river of doubt in their Bibles running through the churches that have accepted the modern translations.

Most Christian homes in the Western World have more than one Bible but very few can articulate a truly biblical worldview. Scripture memorization has been largely abandoned for lack of a commonly accepted version.

Find out more about the fascinating discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus by ordering your copy of Is The World’s Oldest Bible a Fake? and Who Faked the“World’s Oldest Bible”? Also be sure to watch the full vlog where David shares his findings here: Why Was Russia so Anxious to Get Rid of Sinaiticus?