The BBC is having a right old field day with the discovery of more parts of the Codex Sinaiticus. In particular it has to say this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7651105.stm
For those who believe the Bible is the inerrant, unaltered word of God, there will be some very uncomfortable questions to answer. It shows there have been thousands of alterations to today's bible.
The Codex, probably the oldest Bible we have, also has books which are missing from the Authorised Version that most Christians are familiar with today - and it does not have crucial verses relating to the Resurrection.
Great... it totally makes Christianity look stupid... until you do the research.
Firstly the place where this was discovered bothers me. Not so much because it was found at Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in Egypt which was a Greek Orthodox Monastery, but rather what else had been at the site.
The Monastery has in its possession, a document purportedly signed by Muhammad himself. In the Charter of Privileges, the Prophet Muhammad gave his protection to the monastery. A Fatimid mosque was built within the walls of the monastery, but has never been used since it is not correctly oriented towards Mecca. Now considering that a Mosque was in posession of a Codex, there would be more than a serious possibility that they would want to alter it.
Secondly, the document doesn't appear to be as old as purportedly made out. For a document supposedly made in 350AD it doesn't quite fit. The chap who discovered the Codex, Constantin von Tischendorf noted in 1863 that "the the leaves were in "suspiciously good condition" for something found in the trash." What sort of document is this then? If scholars don't agree that this document itself was genuine, then why hold to up to be genuine within the same breath? Make up your minds please.
At any rate a document produced in 350 falls 150 years after the general adoption of New Testament canon which was fairly well normalised by about 200. Certainly both Origen of Alexandria in 203 and almost certainly by the time of the First Council of Nicaea in 325, the same 27 books we find were pretty well much accepted and debated even though not "officially" adopted until the Synod of Hippo of 393. Virtually all of the bible exists several times over in Papyri which was made between 100 and 200 anyway.
As far as documentary evidence does, the amount of document which exists is quite immense compared to other contemporary documents. Thousands of fragments dating from before the end of the first century were even found at Oxyrhynchus which was a giant 6th century rubbish dump.
My general query with people finding problems with the bible is that for a document that is under so much scrutiny you'd have to ask "why". No-one for instance has a problem with the Histories of Herodotus or the Pliny the Elder. In fact it is really only the Bible itself which sees such scrutiny at all; this is because of the critical claims it makes.
What other religion claims that its principle died and rose again? Although Muhammad* supposedly ascended to heaven, Muslims still believe that he returned... and still died on June 8, 632AD. You still have a dead prophet unable to save himself. Likewise, Gautama Buddha also died but scholars can't even decide when he lived, let alone when he died - either way we're still left with a dead prophet unable to save himself.
The Bible by its very nature presents a difficult problem which is that a man died and rose again. Find me any other religion which claims that.
*If you really want something odd, Islamic tradition holds that Muhammad married a 9 year old girl, which by definition is pedophilia - that's really quick ick.
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