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The Evidence
The Missing Sixteen
“And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.”Revelation 22:19
Sixteen whole verses, carried in the English Bible for four hundred years, are gone from the text of the NIV and the ESV. Not retranslated. Gone. The verse numbers remain, stepping over the empty places. This wall is built from those empty places.
“Yea, hath God said all of these? The oldest and best manuscripts know nothing of them. Careless scribes slipped them in. Take them out; no doctrine is affected.”The claim printed in a thousand footnotes
“No doctrine is affected” is a claim, and a claim can be tested. Below are all sixteen excisions. Each one is shown the way a modern reader meets it: the verse before it and the verse after it still standing, and between them a number the text steps over. Touch one and the King James verse returns to its place between them. Under each restored verse you will find what went with it. Fasting. Hell. Forgiveness. A fulfilled prophecy. The confession before baptism. Grace. Then decide for yourself whether nothing was affected, and who it was that decided these were expendable.
The wall of sixteen.
Every whole verse the modern text lets fall, in the order the Book gives them. The gold is not added back. It was always there. It was only hidden from you.
Sixteen verses. Four versions. The same verdicts every time. The knife is one knife.
20…and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
21“Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.”
22And while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them, The…
What went with itThe Lord’s own prescription for the hardest cases: prayer and fasting. Its twin in Mark 9:29 loses “and fasting” as well.
10…do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.
11“For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.”
12How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them…
What went with itWhy he came. The Son of man’s own mission statement, cut out of Matthew.
13…neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
14“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.”
15Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye…
What went with itThe greater damnation: the Lord’s woe on religious men who devour widows’ houses and perform prayers for show.
15…which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.
16“If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.”
17And when he was entered into the house from the people, his…
What went with itThe Lord’s own summons to hear him, spoken to the whole multitude he had called unto him.
43…into the fire that never shall be quenched:
44“Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”
45And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for…
What went with itHell, described by the Lord Jesus himself: the worm that dieth not, the fire that is not quenched.
45…into the fire that never shall be quenched:
46“Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”
47And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for…
What went with itThe same warning, cut a second time. He gave it three times in one passage; the modern text lets him say it once, at verse 48.
25…also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
26“But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.”
27And they come again to Jerusalem: and as he was walking in…
What went with itThe other half of forgiveness: what stands between you and your Father if ye do not forgive.
27…the one on his right hand, and the other on his left.
28“And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, And he was numbered with the transgressors.”
29And they that passed by railed on him, wagging their heads…
What went with itA prophecy of Isaiah 53:12 fulfilled at the cross, removed together with the record that it was fulfilled.
35…the one shall be taken, and the other left.
36“Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.”
37And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said…
What went with itThe dividing of the second coming reaches the field: one taken, the other left.
Who kept itCodex Bezae, a fifth century Greek codex, with the Old Latin, the Latin Vulgate and the Syriac.
16I will therefore chastise him, and release him.
17“(For of necessity he must release one unto them at the feast.)”
18And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this…
What went with itThe passover release: the reason Barabbas could be offered in his place at all.
3…halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.
4“For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.”
5And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty…
What went with itThe troubling of the water. Verse 7 still speaks of it, and without verse 4 the impotent man's answer points to something the page never explains.
36…here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?
37“And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”
38And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went…
What went with itThe confession before baptism: believe with all thine heart first, then the water. The clearest single verse on that order, gone whole.
Who kept itIrenaeus quoted the eunuch’s confession about AD 180, and Cyprian about AD 250, both before Vaticanus or Sinaiticus was copied. The Old Latin carried it, and so do Greek copies from Codex Laudianus, about AD 500, onward.
33…were let go in peace from the brethren unto the apostles.
34“Notwithstanding it pleased Silas to abide there still.”
35Paul also and Barnabas continued in Antioch, teaching and…
What went with itSilas stays at Antioch. Cut it, and verse 33 sends him home to Jerusalem, yet verse 40 has Paul choosing him at Antioch.
Who kept itTwo great fifth century Greek codices, Ephraemi and Bezae, with Greek copies such as 33, 614 and 1739, the Old Latin, the Harclean Syriac and the Sahidic Coptic.
6…and would have judged according to our law.
7“But the chief captain Lysias came upon us, and with great violence took him away out of our hands,”
8Commanding his accusers to come unto thee: by examining of…
What went with itLysias and his violence. Without this passage, the one Felix is told to examine in verse 8 is no longer Lysias but Paul.
28…is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it.
29“And when he had said these words, the Jews departed, and had great reasoning among themselves.”
30And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and…
What went with itThe aftermath of Paul’s last recorded sermon to Israel: the hearers depart, still reasoning among themselves.
23…chamberlain of the city saluteth you, and Quartus a brother.
24“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.”
25Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my…
What went with itA benediction. Of the sixteen, the last to fall under the knife is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
“The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.”
Psalm 12:6–7
All sixteen stand. They never fell; they were only hidden from you.
Check any of them yourself. Open an NIV to Matthew 17 and watch the text run 20, then 22. Then open a King James Bible and find every stone in this wall exactly where it has always been.
The text testifies of its own wounds.
A clean cut leaves no scar. These cuts are not clean, because the surrounding verses keep quoting what the knife took. In John 5, the impotent man still explains that he has no man to put him into the pool when the water is troubled, but the verse that troubled the water is gone. In Acts 24, Tertullus still tells Felix to examine the man who made the arrest, but the verse naming Lysias and his violence is gone, so the sentence points at the wrong man. In Acts 15, Paul chooses Silas at Antioch five verses after the modern text sent Silas home to Jerusalem. In Mark 9, the Lord's warning stands at verse 48 in every version, which is a strange thing to keep if the same words two verses earlier were never Scripture.
This is the internal evidence: the pages themselves remember the verses they lost. And the external evidence is arithmetic. The footnote says “the earliest and most reliable manuscripts” lack these verses. It means, overwhelmingly, two: Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, set against the thousands of Greek copies that carry most of these verses. And where the Greek majority is thin, as with Acts 8:37, the witnesses are older than either codex: Irenaeus quoted the eunuch’s confession about AD 180, a century and a half before Vaticanus was copied. Who crowned those two, and why, is a case of its own.
What saith the Scripture
It is written.
“Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.”Deuteronomy 4:2
“...he cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth, until all the roll was consumed... Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah... Take thee again another roll, and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll, which Jehoiakim the king of Judah hath burned.”Jeremiah 36:23, 27–28
“Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.”Luke 21:33
A king with a penknife is not a new problem. Jehoiakim cut the words of God out of the roll and burned them, and God's answer was not a shrug about manuscripts. It was another roll, with all the former words. The penknife is quieter now. It works in committee, and it leaves a footnote where the fire used to be. But the outcome has not changed since Jeremiah: the words come back, and the wall above is where you watched them do it.
Before you go
“What must I do to be saved?”
And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.Acts 16:31 Read the Gospel