Spurious text: Revelation 20:5
In other Bibles, Revelation 20:5 reads:
‘The rest of the dead didn’t come to life until the end of the thousand years.
This is the first resurrection.’
This familiar description of the resurrection has been quoted for years and used as a basis for many religious doctrines. However, the words shown in bold above aren’t found in the Bible’s oldest Greek manuscript of the Revelation, the Codex Sinaiticus. Nor are they found in the oldest Aramaic manuscript, the Khabouris Codex.
Therefore, they appear to be a later, spurious addition to the Bible, perhaps added a few centuries after the original text was written, and this is why we have chosen to gray them out. They’re probably some ancient preacher’s personal notes which he had written between the lines; they were likely moved into the main text by later copyists who couldn’t tell if they were part of the original text or not.
- See its entry in our list of spurious texts