Yes it is.
"Many people believe that the ancient Hebrew text of Scripture was divinely preserved for many centuries, and was ultimately recorded in what we now call the “Masoretic Text”. But what did the Masoretes themselves believe? Did they believe they were perfectly preserving the ancient text? Did they even think they had
received a perfect text to begin with?
History says “no” . . .
Scribal emendations – Tikkune Soferim
Early rabbinic sources, from around 200 CE, mention several passages of Scripture in which the conclusion is inevitable that the ancient reading must have differed from that of the present text. . . . Rabbi Simon ben Pazzi (3rd century) calls these readings “emendations of the Scribes” (tikkune Soferim; Midrash Genesis Rabbah xlix. 7), assuming that the Scribes actually made the changes. This view was adopted by the later Midrash and by the majority of Masoretes.
In other words,
the Masorites themselves felt they had received a partly corrupted text."
Source
Listen, the person who claimed to have forged Sinaiticus, is a proven liar, and forger. There is no way possible for him to have produced Sinaiticus in the time allowed. 4,000,000 lines of text, all written in Greek, in 3 separate writing styles, by a person who his own teachers said barely had a "rudimentary" knowledge of the Greek.
There is a thread in Christian Philosophy and Ethics already on this.
God Bless
Till all are one.
regarding following the masoretic text:
"the Septuagint; Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion; the Vulgate; the Syriac Peshitta; the Targums; and for the Psalms the Juxta Hebraica of Jerome. Readings from these versions were occasionally followed where the Masoretic Text seemed doubtful "
from the NIV preface.
so even if the masorites say it was a corrupted text, one could easily compare to those six sources and weed out any errors.
but that is simply from websites that say that the masorites claimed to recieve a corrupted text, I have not seen any pictures of authentic masorite scrolls that say such things. So it is not proven.
But even it it was, I answer it full above in both situations. True or untrue.
as far as sinaiticus forgery just because someone says a lie once, does not make them a proven liar. Or you would be a proven liar, and none of your posts should be read because you are a proven liar (I assume you have said a lie once or twice). Such reasoning is fallacious because just because we do something or struggle with a sin, does not make us a habitual sinner in that area. Grace and mercy of God show that our sin is forgiven, just not to practice it. And to say he practiced sinning by lying, one should quote several instances where he lied to prove that point. And that was not done. What needs to be understood is his original writings, which I referenced earlier. I will post an eye witness that confirmed Simonides confession that he wrote the sinaiticus. I personally believed he copied large portions of text from existing biblical manuscripts then added text. What was added we don't know, but we do know at least the books of barnabus were added. And this would make it a counterfeit. Due to the fact he was compiling books and claiming they were authentic.
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the ones that are alleged frauds are the Sinaiticus manuscripts (the one's the NIV, ESV, NASB use). The fact that there are whitened leaves, and the ones that are not whitened are not as old as they should be for the 4th century. It looks like there was tampering to say the least, and one guy actually confessed to tampering it: Simonides. Here is an interesting tidbit from another thread on this topic: Before the
Codex Sinaiticus, the first five letters of Barnabas were not known to us, but with the "discovery" of the
Codex Sinaiticus we were able to know what was in them. The
Codex Sinaiticus was found by
Constantin von Tischendorf in
1845. The only problem that we have is that in 1843, a good 2 years before the discovery of the
Codex Sinaiticus, Constantine Simonides had published a book called the "
The Letters of Barnabas" which he even had the first 4 letters that were first found in the
Codex Sinaiticus. They were exactly the same, word for word. So the question lies, doesn't it naturally follow that only two sources at that relative time claimed to have the books, and one source claims to forge the second source? Doesn't that add validity to his claim? There is a second source that claims He forged it:
In
Oct 15, 1862, Kallinikos Hieromachos, wrote a letter, were it stated that
...I do myself declare to all men by this letter, that the Codex of the Old and New Testaments, together with the Epistle of Barnabas and of the Shepherd Hermas, which was abstracted by Dr. Tischendorf from the Greek monastery of Mount Sinai
, is a work of the hands of the unwearied Simonides himself. Inasmuch as I myself saw him in 1843 ... in the month of February writing it in Athos...Dr. Tischendorf, coming to the Greek monastery of Sinai in 1844, in the month of May (if my memory does not deceive me), and remaining there several days, and getting into his hands, by permission of the librarian, the codex we are speaking of, and perusing and re-perusing it frequently, abstracted secretly a small portion of it, but left the largest portion in the place where it was, and departed undisturbed...And I know yet further, that the codex also was cleaned with lemon-juice, professedly for the purpose of cleaning its parchments, but in reality in order to weaken the freshness of the letters, as was actually the case."
this adds validity to the fact that 10% of the manuscript is whiter than the rest of it. It would naturally follow that that was the part that was cleaned with lemon juice.
the textus receptus (text behind NKJV) has no such allegations as to corruptness. They have been trusted for centuries.
