Miniscule 2427
Can You Trust ‘Oldest and Best’?
When you see in your New King James Bible (NKJV) or even in some notes in the
KJV that Mark 16:9-20 is not in the “oldest and best manuscripts, the Sinaiticus
and Vaticanus,” do you ever ask: “Who says??” Obviously, those notes were not in
the original written by Mark. So who put them there and are they right?
Using modern research methods, linguist and author David W. Daniels has
attempted to shed some light on that vital question. In an upcoming book on his
research on the Sinaiticus, he relates a story that demonstrates the process of
verifying the age of old manuscripts.
It seems that there is an old book of the Gospel of Mark that surfaced in the
early 1900s. For want of a better name it is called Codex 2427 by paleographers
(the scholars who claim expertise in dating old books and manuscripts.)
The history of 2427 was obscure but after “careful” examination, it was declared
quite old and authentic —maybe more than 500 years— and put in the top category
of Bible source manuscripts. It was presented as possibly closer to the original
than anything else available. This reputation got it included as evidence in
scholarly journals and text books.
Though wrinkled with age, it had little, painted illustrations. These piqued the
interest of some other scientists who specialized in scientifically dating
original art. They subjected the pigments of the ink to scientific analysis and
discovered that the artist had used Prussian blue which was not invented until
1704. Further analysis discovered other pigments not known until the late 1800s.
Next, a search was
made to find which document it had been copied from. This kind of analysis
involves identifying missing words, lines or other copying mistakes. In 2005 the
entire copy of 2427 was posted on line and noticed by researcher Stephen
Carlson. He found three verses: Mark 6:2; 8:11; and 14:14 where whole lines of
text were missing. From the length of the lines, Carlson suspected that 2427 had
been copied from a recent book instead of from the supposedly older Vaticanus,
which was written in narrower columns.
Following his theory, he searched a number of libraries containing manuscripts
of Mark. Finally he found a match in a translation of a copy of the Vaticanus by
Philipp Buttmann in 1860. The line length matched the missing words from 2427.
In addition, Buttmann had taken some liberty in his translation making some
“personal choices” in his copy. These also showed up in 2427 confirming that
Carlson had found the source document for 2427.
So, 2427 was not an early 14th century “Category 1” manuscript, but the product
of some enterprising forger late in the 19th century. Yet, the best of the
elite, modern “text scholars” had bought into the fake and included it in
official journals and text books. Some publishers have, to date, neglected to
remove the reference.
Daniels uses this story to illustrate the detective work necessary to validate
“oldest and best” manuscripts.
Oddly enough, neither Vaticanus nor Sinaiticus have been subjected to these
rigorous tests. In fact, Daniels discovered in his research that someone was
poised to do exactly these kinds of tests on the Sinaiticus in April, 2015, but
was mysteriously pulled off the project and reassigned to something else. There
are no records of any further attempts, adding to Daniels’ conviction that text
scholar Constantin Tischendorf’s claim that the Sinaiticus is “oldest” is highly
suspect.
You can see why Daniels cautions Bible readers to take the notes in their Bibles
with a grain of salt. They are not part of the preserved scripture, but the
flawed opinions of uninspired men.
How glad that we have a whole, preserved Bible in the KJV, but we must be careful to put our faith in nothing but the Bible. When you distribute Chick tracts, you can be confident that you are delivering powerful scriptures from the Bible preserved by Christ’s promise in Matt. 24:35.