Spurious, not being what it purports to be, false or fake.

Some synonyms:bogus · fake · not genuine · specious · false · factitious · counterfeit · fraudulent · trumped-up · sham · mock · feigned · pretended · contrived · fabricated · manufactured.

Spurious scriptures are those scriptures (verses) which in whole or part have been added to or had words altered or deleted. Does it really matter? In many cases no as the general understanding of the matter under discussion is not altered in any way, but in other cases the entire original meaning has been corrupted and sometimes a contradictory thought has been introduced.

Unfortunately, most Bible translations are sponsored by a particular Church, or a committee of denominations. If a particular translation does not say or at least infer what they want it to, they will reject that translation. This often leads to Bible translators feeling pressured into including words, sentences, verses, and even entire passages that they believe are not in the original text or do not portray the original thought. Often this is because the spurious words have worked their way into Church dogmas as ‘proof texts’, scriptural texts that are relied upon as God given evidence of a fact that they believe.

The list below of spurious biblical texts that have been introduced into many translations of the bible are taken from the notes and study material of a Lobegott Friedrich Constantin (von) Tischendorf (18 January 1815 – 7 December 1874), a German biblical scholar. (shown right)

In 1844, he discovered the world's oldest and most complete bible, dated to around the mid-4th century and called Codex Sinaiticus, after the St. Catherine's Monastery at Mt. Sinai, where Tischendorf discovered it. Tischendorf was made an Honorary Doctor by Oxford University on 16 March 1865, and an Honorary Doctor by Cambridge University on 9 March 1865 following this find of the century. While a student gaining his academic degree in the 1840s, he earned international recognition when he deciphered the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, a 5th-century Greek manuscript of the New Testament.

* Omitted by Sinaitic MS. Those not thus marked are omitted by both the Sinaitic and Vatican MSS. The Epistles to Timothy, the latter part of Hebrews, and all of Revelation, are missing from the Vatican MS. No. 1209, having been lost during the fifteen or more centuries since it was written. The Sinaitic MS. is perfect and complete and is the oldest known copy of the Scriptures, having been written (it is believed) in the year 331 A. D.