Page 76 - Bibliology - Textbook w videos short

much care was taken to prevent the introduction of variants, they are numerous. Let’s see how they
crept into the copies of the scripture:

During the first 300 years of Christianity, the Church was under terrific persecution. Many in the church
had to worship underground in isolated pockets. Copies of the letters of Paul or 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.

Copies were often quite ornate and used color ink
and pictures. To the left is a copy a miniscule of
Book of the Revelations (Apocalypse)

How was the Bible translated?

75