3674 — The Rest of the Dead
By Editor
Is it true, as a certain writer claims, that the expression, "But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished," is spurious, and is not found in the oldest and most reliable Greek manuscripts,—the Sinaitic, the Vatican Nos. 1209 and 1160, nor the Syriac manuscript? W. H. B. See "Questions and Answers," page 15. In the first place, one of the oldest manuscripts, the Vatican No. 1209, known as the Codex Vaticanus, does not contain the Revelation at all. The Sinaitic manuscript evidently contained the whole Bible, but some parts are missing now. But the Codex Alexandrinus, of about the same age, contains the whole Bible, and the clause in question. The Syriac omits the passage, and so does the Vatican manuscript 1160, of the eleventh century. The Emphatic Diaglott, based on Griesbach's text, has the following foot-note on the first part of Rev. 20:5: "These words were probably omitted by oversight in Vatican manuscript No. 1160, as they are found in A, B, C, tho not in the Syriac." By "A" is meant Codex Alexandrinus; "B," Codex Vaticanus, No. 2066, of the seventh or eighth century; and "C," Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus—a very early manuscript, which contains about two thirds of the New Testament. The best Greek text, that of Westcott and Hort, contains the passage; and neither of the revised versions or any of the critics, so far as we know, even question it. The revisers adopted for their revision the text "for which the evidence is decidedly preponderating;" and when that differed from the Greek text "from which the Authorized Version was made, the alteration be expressed in the margin." (See preface to Revised New Testament.) But there is not even an indication of doubt over Rev. 20:5. That is considered spurious only by those who have a doctrine to prove which the text condemns.