Page 51 - Bible Doctrine Survey I- Student Textbook

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 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 lose 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 copyist 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

Problem of pietism: When the Catholic Church became the majority church of the Middle Ages, monks
and scribes began inserting more descriptive phrases. For example, in the place of the name of Jesus,
“Lord Jesus Christ” was often inserted. The later Byzantine manuscripts have the “Lord Jesus Christ”
occurring in 86 places in the New Testament, where the older manuscripts have it occurring 61 times.
Most of the time, Jesus is replaced by Lord Jesus or Lord Jesus Christ.

50