However, every claim must be made carefully, because Christians will attack any weak comparison immediately.

In the Van Dyck version, Psalm 144 has only 15 paragraphs.

But in the Sinaiticus manuscript, Psalm 144 has 21 paragraphs.

Therefore, six paragraphs are supposedly missing from the modern Christian Bible.

The problem is that the numbering of the Psalms is not always the same between the Hebrew/Masoretic tradition and the Greek Septuagint tradition.

Codex Sinaiticus is a Greek biblical manuscript, so its Psalm numbering follows the Greek tradition, not necessarily the same numbering used in modern Protestant Bibles like the Van Dyck.

But in the Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate numbering, the Psalm known in Hebrew numbering as Psalm 145 is numbered as Psalm 144.

This means that comparing:

• Van Dyck Psalm 144
• with Sinaiticus Psalm 144

can be misleading unless the numbering system is explained first.

This explains why Sinaiticus Psalm 144 may appear to have 21 verses.

It is not necessarily because six verses were deleted from Psalm 144.

It is because the manuscript is using a different numbering system.

This scan appears to show Psalm 144 in the Van Dyck Arabic Bible. The visible structure shows the psalm ending at verse 15. This matches the common Hebrew/Masoretic numbering used by many modern Protestant Bibles. The important point is that this scan by itself does not prove deletion. It only proves that Psalm 144 in this numbering system has 15 verses.

This scan appears to show Psalm 144 in Codex Sinaiticus or a Sinaiticus-based display, where the psalm has 21 numbered sections. The crucial point is that Codex Sinaiticus is a Greek manuscript and follows the Greek Psalm numbering tradition. In that tradition, the psalm numbered 144 corresponds to Psalm 145 in the Hebrew/Masoretic numbering used by many modern Bibles. Therefore, the difference between 15 and 21 verses is not automatically evidence that six verses vanished from Psalm 144. It is mainly evidence that the numbering systems differ.

“Psalm 144 is missing six verses.”

The stronger argument is:

“The Psalms were transmitted through different textual and numbering traditions. Codex Sinaiticus follows the Greek tradition, while the Van Dyck follows the Hebrew/Masoretic numbering. This shows that Christians do not have one simple, uniform Psalter tradition, and readers must be careful when comparing manuscripts and translations.”

“Psalm 144 is missing six paragraphs.”

That is too easy to refute because the issue is mainly Psalm numbering.

Publish it instead as:

“Codex Sinaiticus exposes that the biblical Psalms were transmitted through different numbering and textual traditions. What appears as Psalm 144 in one tradition may correspond to Psalm 145 in another, showing that the Christian Bible’s textual history is more complicated than ordinary believers are told.”