One of the most controversial passages in the New Testament in connection with the discussion about the person of Jesus is John 1,18. The reason for this is the Codex Sinaiticus, a copy of the Holy Scriptures, which was discovered by Constantin von Tischendorf, a German theologian, in the St. Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai. He discovered the first part in 1844 and the second part in 1859. The most striking difference from other manuscripts is John 1,18, where instead of "the only-begotten Son" the phrase "the only-begotten GOD" appears. This fact has since given rise to massive controversy over the question of which of the two translations is the true or original. The Codex Sinaiticus contains the complete Old and New Testament as well as apocryphal writings such as Esdras, Tobit, Judith, I and IV Maccabees, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus as well as some pseudepigraphia, such as the so-called “Letter of Barnabas” and the “Shepherd of Hermas”.

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In total there are more than 23,000 corrections in the Codex Sinaiticus. This was the result of an extensive investigation by H.J.M. Milne and T.C. Skeat from the British Museum, which was published in Scribes and Correctors of Codex Sinaiticus, London, 1938. In addition, there are 3,036 textual variations between Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. Tischendorf identified a total of four different scribes who were involved in writing the original text. On almost every page of the manuscript there are corrections and revisions made by ten different people. Tischendorf said he counted a total of 14,800 changes and corrections in the Sinaiticus. In addition, renovations were carried out again and again, most of them in the 6th and 7th centuries.

According to Tischendorf's own assessment, the copying and correction of the New Testament would have been very careless. In many cases 10, 20, 30, 40 words would have been left out. Letters, words and even entire sentences would often be written twice or started and immediately stopped. This gross error occurs no less than 115 times in the New Testament alone, suggesting that the scribes who copied the Codex Sinaiticus were not faithful men of GOD who treated the Holy Scriptures with the utmost reverence. Passages such as Mark 16,9-20 are completely omitted from the Codex Sinaiticus, even though this passage was originally present.

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In 1844, on a trip under the patronage of Frederick Augustus, King of Saxony, Tischendorf reached the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai in search of manuscripts. There he saw some old looking documents in a basket full of papers. He took them out and discovered that they were forty-three parchment leaves of the Septuagint Version (LXX) of the Holy Scriptures. John Burgon is considered an eyewitness to this find. Apparently the Orthodox monks decided long ago that the numerous omissions and changes had rendered the manuscript unusable, so they stored it in a cupboard where it remained unused for centuries.

Despite its sufficient shortcomings, Tischendorf promoted his find extensively and vigorously, claiming that it represented a more accurate text than the thousands of manuscripts that supported the previously favored standard text. However, Tischendorf never found any actual evidence for his claim that the text came from the fourth century. Westcott and Hort corrected the King James Bible (1881 NT and 1884 AT), and replaced the Textus Receptus with Codex Sinaiticus / Vaticanus. The modified version from 1885 was given the suffix “Revised Version”. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the Codex Sinaiticus / Vaticanus has served as the basis for almost all modern Bible translations.

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Several of the so-called “Church Fathers” of the third to fourth centuries, who themselves believed that Jesus was GOD, quote both versions of the text in their letters. This in itself is not proof that the Codex Sinaiticus is actually as old as Tischendorf claimed. Rather, this shows that falsifications of the basic biblical text were already in circulation at that time, which could be due either to a copyist's copying error or to conscious forgers. The origin of the Codex Sinaiticus is said to have been the city of Alexandria, which was a mystical-spiritual center of fallen Christians. This would suggest that the Codex Sinaiticus could be an early (Gnostic) forgery.

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The manuscript evidence for "only begotten GOD" is mainly found in only one of the five manuscript families, namely the Alexandrian one - whereas the phrase "only begotten Son" is found in all of them. "GOD" (Old Greek: theos) is probably a misspelling because of the similarities between the short forms of this word and the word "son" (Old Greek: huios). In the pre-Nicaea period, Alexandria, Egypt, was the center of the Roman Empire's belief that Jesus was completely GOD. Thus, unprofessional copyists who lived in Alexandria may have intentionally replaced Son with GOD because of their Christology. "In the bosom of the father" is a Semitic saying that reflects the child-father relationship and suggests son. “The Son in the Father” ties in with the recurring father-son motif and their mutual indwelling (John 10,38 / John 14,10 f. + 20).

The expression "only-begotten GOD" does not fit the purpose with which this gospel was written (John 20,31). Another theme of John is that the Son proclaims, explains and makes known the Father by speaking and acting in His name (John 3,11-13 / John 5,19 / John 14,9-11 / John 15,15). The expression "only-begotten GOD" appears nowhere else in the New Testament. In addition, "the only begotten son" fits better with the Johannine usage (John 3,16 + 18 / 1st John 4,9).

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