Points to note
There are seven points to note.
First, the entire manuscript is written on parchment that is largely unoxidised, supple and certainly not as ancient as is claimed, and whose collagen is virtually undecayed. Parchment becomes heavily oxidised after only a few centuries. We have 13th-century copies of Magna Carta which at 800 years are not half the age that is claimed for Sinaiticus, but which are so heavily oxidised that they are sealed in special frames. No one is allowed to handle them, they are now so fragile, and the oxidisation means that the writing on them can only be read with difficulty. Yet the pages of Sinaiticus are barely oxidised, if at all, and on those pages that have escaped the deliberate fading of the text by the forger’s hand, the ink and letters are so crisp and clear that they might have been written yesterday. Try as they might, forgers have always found it impossible to fake oxidisation.
Likewise, parchment contains a protein called collagen which decays after not many centuries, leaving the parchment shrivelled, cracked and brittle so that it can no longer be handled without serious damage occurring. The collagen of Sinaiticus, however, is largely undecayed, which is why its pages can be handled and turned with no real danger of damage. They would not enjoy this state of freshness if they were anywhere near the 1700 years that are claimed for them. Indeed, their freshness, lack of decay and time-related damage is something that surprised the British Library's technicians when they were allowed to examine them.
Secondly, almost every page of the manuscript bears telltale signs of forgery, mostly involving fading the text and discolouring the page in a most amateurish attempt to make it look much older than it truly is. Whoever did this work used an applicator (probably a ball of cloth) soaked with lemon juice or some such agent, and wiped it over the pages so hurriedly and carelessly that the agent has dried in very noticeable streaks across the page. lt truly would not fool a two-year-old. How it comes to fool our top scholars is not explained.
Likewise, some pages have suffered severe water damage. whereas the pages either side of them display no water damage at all, but have remained bone dry and unaffected. That would not - that could not - happen in nature. But it does happen in the world of forgery.
Thirdly, certain pages are unnaturally and inexplicably mutilated. That this was again deliberate is seen in the straight lines and cuts that occur on pages where the forger’s work was not completed. Again, it wouldn’t have fooled a two-year-old.
Fourthly, almost comically, some pages display square wormholes which the forger forgot to finish. Others display ‘normal’ wormholes aplenty, yet there are no lines of ingress that a real worm would have made in eating its way through the pages. There are also no matching wormholes in the immediately adjacent pages to account for them. When a real worm burrows its way through a book, it is easy to follow its track, because the holes match on every page that it burrows through. Yet a fingertip search through every ‘worm-eaten’ page of Sinaiticus reveals no such tracking. Every such page is a mismatch to the one next to it.
Fifth, the Codex contains a text of the Epistle of Barnabas which is written in essentially modern Greek and contains many grammatical and vocabularic evidences of having been translated into Greek from a late Latin (medieval) recension.
It is written, moreover, in the same hand - ‘Scribe A’ - as most of the codex. lt also complies with many of the scholarly emendations of the Latin text that had been suggested and recommended by scholars who lived and worked during the 18th and 19th centuries; and its text, moreover, is identical to that printed by Simonides in 1843, sixteen years before Tischendorf found it nestling inside Sinaiticus.
But could this obviously 19th-century version of Barnabas not have been bound into a 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus? No, it couldn`t, and for this reason. We see that column 1 of page Q91-f.2r of the codex contains the explicitus or ending of John’s Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation. Yet, written in the same hand and in the same ink as John’s Apocalypse, the Epistle of Barnabas begins in the very next column of that page (see attached image) in other words, whenever John’s Apocalypse was written into the codex. it was written at the same time and by the same person as its Epistle of Barnabas.
Indeed, the two texts share the same hand, ink and vellum as the rest of Codex Sinaiticus (except where certain pages of the codex have been substituted), which tells us that if the Epistle of Barnabas’ text is of 19th century origin - which it is, containing as it does many Greek words first coined by Simonides - then so is the rest of the codex of 19th century origin. There is no other conclusion which can be drawn.
Sixth, the Codex also contains a text of the Shepherd of Hermas which is again in modern Greek and contains many grammatical and vocabularic evidences of having been translated into Greek from a late Latin recension, most likely the Palatine. Its text is also identical to that printed by Simonides (through Leipzig University) in 1856, some three years before Tischendorf found it nestling within the pages of Sinaiticus. Together, Barnabas and Hermas put an indelible 19th century date-stamp on the codex.
But the seventh point is the most distressing of all. It involves the removal of the last twelve verses of Mark’s Gospel. The reason for their removal was to enforce the claim that was later to be made that Mark’s was the first Gospel to be written, and yet it contained (allegedly) no account of our Lord’s Resurrection. This, had it been true, would have meant that the other Gospel writers must have added the ‘tale’ to their own accounts, or that their accounts of the Resurrection were added generations later - a claim still made today. The ramifications of such a conclusion, which it was hoped the public would receive, are indescribably great, and would be entirely destructive of the Christian faith. And therein lies the motive for the removal of Mark 16:9-20.
Many modern Bibles have a note to the effect that Mark 16:9-20 does not appear in the ‘earliest and best’ manuscripts, meaning, of course, Codex Sinaiticus and its sister volume, Codex Vaticanus, which also omits these verses. But what they forget to tell their readers is the following startling fact...
Quire 77 of Codex Sinaiticus, which contains the omission of Mark 16:9-20, is written in a different hand to that of the rest of the codex.
That hand is referred to by scholars as the hand of ‘Scribe D’. ln other words, the quire that did contain the missing verses was removed from the binding, and another which omitted the verses was put in its place.
But that is not all, for the hand known as Scribe D in Sinaiticus, is identical to the hand of Scribe B where Vaticanus also omits Mark 16:9-20, meaning that the substitution in both was very l clearly carried out by the same person. Interestingly, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are the only two ‘authorities’ that omit Mark 16:9:20.
Yet this act of fraud, this deliberate deception, has shipwrecked the faith of millions who have been and are still being - convinced by it that the New Testament is not, after all, the Word of God. lt is a deception of truly Satanic proportions, and we are aghast at the fact that our scholars, who have known about this all along, are dedicated to perpetuating such a disgraceful and destructive fraud.
We know that they have known about it all along for it was pointed out to them by none other than Tischendorf himself no less than three times. They cannot therefore claim ignorance of the fact. lt has been, and is, notorious among themselves, but they have systematically prevented that knowledge from ever reaching the public. There are no superlatives that can sufficiently convey the enormity of what they have done. lt is damnable in the extreme.