Page 48 - Bible Doctrine Survey I - Student Textbook (3)

Luke were scarce and were all made by hand by
people whose profession and training had nothing to
do with copying Greek Scripture. A great percentage
of the textual variants were introduced in the first
300 years of copies.
In the 300’s, Constantine legalized Christianity and
made it the state religion of Rome. Scribes were
employed by the church to make copies of the
scriptures to be disseminated among the empire.
Scriptoriums were set up and copying techniques
were formalized.

New manuscripts were copied directly from a mother
manuscript. Scribes misspelled a word, left out a
word phrase or whole line due to his eye catching a
similar or similar ending a line or two above on the
page he is copying.

Kinds of errors the scribes would make

In the Scriptorium, a master scribe would read from a passage of Scripture while other scribes wrote
what they heard on vellum for sometimes 12 hours or more during the day.

Words were misspelled, omitted. Sometimes whole phrases were omitted.

Harmonization occurred: Ex., Eph. 1:2 in Greek says: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ whereas Col 1:2 in Greek says: Grace to you and peace from god our Father.
Sometimes a scribe would miss a phrase when it was being read, he would realize he has left the phrase
out, so rather than throw away a very expensive piece of Vellum and loose his work to that point, he
would add the missing word in the margin.

Other scribes would make personal comments about a verse or passage, or write a parallel passage in
the margin. That manuscript would then be sent to another scriptorium hundreds of miles away and be
used as the mother script. When a copiest would come to a marginal note, word, or phrase, most often
it was added into the text (better safe than sorry). As a result, later copies of the Bible became “fuller”
or longer.

Examples of marginal notes appearing in later manuscripts:

Mark 16: 9-20 – Conclusion of Mark

John 7:53 – 8:11 – The woman caught in adultery

John 5:4 – The angel stirring the water

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