andrewcriddle

Although it certainly did not guarantee 100% accuracy, it does seem to have been common for a manuscript to have been checked and corrected by a fellow scribe.

Codex Sinaiticus for example seems to have been corrected by a scribe contemporary with the original copyist.

Andrew Criddle

aa5874

What are you talking about?

Judea, Egypt and Mesopotamia were part of the Roman Empire.


Please name the society that DID NOT PAY ANY SCRIBE.

Now, you made a blanket statement that scribes were slaves that has been found to be false.

You made a blanket statement that scribes were not paid that has been found to be false.

You have implied that no slave was paid that is false.

But, what you claim is false. I did not claim that there were no errors.

You are DELIBERATELY mis-representing what I post even though my posts are recorded.

Please read my post carefully and desist from making false claims

Now, examine the link on Wikipedia, it explains that Jewish scribes did use certain techniques to eliminate errors by verbalising each word out loud and reviewing their work every 30 days for errors.

Now, it MUST BE that there were scribes who made copies that were 100% accurate once they established and maintained meticulous techniques to eliminate errors.

Minimalist

And, if you read a scroll that had an error you would know this how?

Are you suggesting that people read multiple copies of the same book to see if there were errors?

Ehrman has written that there are more "errors" in the NT than there are words in the NT. That is because once an error was written it stood every chance of being copied (and repeated) by other copists who most likely added errors of their own.

This in no way deals with the doctrinal changes which were incorporated as xtianity evolved into the bureaucratic nightmare that we know today.

Again. Don't take my word for it. Read Misquoting Jesus. This stuff is not news. It has been known for centuries.

Petergdi

That is major spin-doctoring on his part. Say there are 5000 or so manuscripts (mostly medieval minicules) and on average 40 to 80 minor copying errors per text. Then you get a figure of 200,000 to 400,000 copying errors in total. It sounds really scary doesn't it - a lot more scary than saying 40 to 80 minor errors on average when copying the New Testament. There are 5000 or so manuscripts, but there weren't 5000 generations of copying.

Peter.

aa5874

But, you seem to think that copying a book was some kind of rocket-science.

Up to today people copy information by hand without any errors once they proof-read their copy.

Do you not understand that scribes in antiquity were professionals, well-educated and had techniques to eliminate errors?

Now, the NT and Church writings are a total different thing. Perhaps they were written in underground caves in the dead of night to conceal the identity of the writers. I cannot tell how any of the books of the NT were originally produced or who could have copied them, interpolated them and filled them with errors.

I would expect the writings of Josephus, Philo, Suetonius, Tacitus, Pliny and similar writers to have been FAITHFULLY copied by scribes but I cannot say that the fables of Jesus believers who were operating in secret did use scribes.

In "Against Marcion" by Tertullian it would appear that the writer, if what he wrote was true, did not use a scribe but some kind of brother, friend, Apostate or associate who transcribed his work full of mistakes and published it by fraudulent means.

Examine Tertullian's "Against Marcion" 1.1

So, this writer under the name Tertullian has given an explanation of how it was possible that Church writings were fraudulently transcribed full of mistakes and published.

And according to Jerome, some character called Rufinus, I don't know if he was a scribe or just a translator, was accused of manipulating, harmonising or falsifying the writings of other Church writers.

See Jerome's "Apology Against Rufinus" for the details of forgeries and falsification of Church writings.

It does not seem that the errors were done by the scribes themselves but perhaps "BROTHERS" or" APOSTATES" of the Church.

It must not be forgotten that all the authors of the NT Canon are likely to be false which would imply that it was not the scribe who made the errors but those who were in control of the manuscripts.

J-D

There is no proof-reading technique which can be guaranteed to produce 100% accuracy in absolutely every case. Ask anybody in the editing profession if you don't believe me.

No human technique or process is infallible because no human being is infallible.

If scribal copying were infallibly 100% accurate, all the manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales, for example, would be letter-by-letter identical. But they aren't. There are many variations, and collating them is a major topic of Chaucerian research.

Minimalist

Exactly.

darstec

A least one author back then complained about scribes altering his own works. He complained that they added to, deleted from and simply changed what he wrote. I'm looking for the exact quote but I have tens of thousands of posts on various newsgroups and forums to go through to find it.

darstec

Read the Dead Sea Scroll's Great Isaiah Scroll and compare it to any of the Maoretic texts book of Isaiah. Comparing those two books alone generates well over a thousand differences, not all of which were minor copyist error's. I've provided the link at least a dozen times (perhaps though not on FRDB) with a side by side comparison. The Great Isaiah Scroll even differed from those of other examples of Isaiah in the DDS collection.

Your position is an over worn apologist's misrepresentation of the real facts. The errors weren't all as minor as they argue nor are they as infrequent.

Petergdi

I think that's true, but of zero relevance to the point under discussion.

The point is that the fact that Minimalist got from Bart Ehrman - the huge total number of manuscript variations in the NT - is spin doctoring. The primary reason why there are more total textual variants than words in the New Testament is that there are a huge number of manuscripts. Dividing the estimated range of numbers of total textual variants by the number of manuscripts does give you the average number of variants introduced per copy.

Rubbish. The "Ehrman has written that there are more "errors" in the NT than there are words in the NT" is plain and obvious spin-doctoring. The reason for the huge number of variants is the huge number of manuscripts. Someone who wants a realistic idea of what the variations in the NT text amount to should look at a Nestle-Aland and learn to read the apparatus. It is nothing like as bad as the spin-doctoring makes it sound.

Peter.