Before the advent of the movable type printing press in the 1,400’s books had to be hand-copied in order to create a duplicate copy. Needless to say, this was a painstaking endeavor and errors in copying could easily come about. So, the question remains just how reliable are the copies of the Bibles we have from the time of the original Old and New Testament manuscripts, from biblical times, until the 1,400’s.
On the surface we could expect many errors not just because the copying of a biblical manuscript was a major endeavor but because some Old Testament books had to be copies hundreds of times over from the time they were written until the advent of the printing press – in some cases this could be over a 2,000 year timespan. This awesome task of copying the biblical manuscripts fell to a special class of people called scribes. Scribes, however, were not ordinary copyists.
Referring to the scribes, Christian theologian, Bernard Ramm, said: “Jews preserved it as no other manuscript has ever been preserved. With their massora (counting methods) they kept tabs on every letter, syllable, word and paragraph. They had special classes of men within their culture whose sole duty was to preserve and transmit these documents with practically perfect fidelity – scribes, lawyers, massoretes. Whoever counted the letters and syllables and words of Plato or Aristotle? Cicero or Seneca?”1
And as far as the copying process consider the following:
“Jewish scribes were held in high esteem because of the seriousness of copying God’s Word. Jewish tradition demanded a precise method of preparing themselves, preparing the materials, and the copying process; failure to adhere to God’s standard of copying without error had serious consequences. The copying of any error was considered a sin. In recognition of this, a process was developed and codified in the Hebrew Talmud. The following is just a sample of the regulations.
*There was a specific way to prepare and dedicate the manuscript material so that it would be pure to receive God’s Word.
*There was special and dedicated black ink for copying Scripture.
*Each word was read alone and aloud from an authentic copy before it was written.
*When the word GOD was encountered, the scribe’s pen had to be wiped clean. When YHWY was encountered, the scribe had to wash his body before he could write it.
*Each letter and word had a certain distance from each other and could not touch.
*Each letter and word was counted.
*Each column of text could only permit 48-60 lines.
*Each page could only permit a certain number of letters and words.
*Each page was rigorously checked (in addition to counting, finding the beginning, mid-point, and ending letter, etc.)
*Any mistake on a page, the page was condemned.
*3 mistakes on one page condemned the whole manuscript.”2
My friends scribes on occasion made errors since they were human but the biblical manuscripts by far surpass the accuracy of non-biblical writings down through the centuries. According to the Bible Manuscript Society:
“Down through more than two thousand years, though world empires have come and gone, across cities, counties and continents, the Hebrew Old Testament has been miraculously and meticulously preserved. Wars have ravished. Cities have been plundered. Rulers have come and gone. Empires have long since arisen, died and disappeared into the history books. Yet amazingly, miraculously, the Hebrew Old Testament has been preserved intact down through all those intervening centuries, remaining as free from corruption and variation as mortal man is capable of.”3
We can also make the above statement in reference to the New Testament documents.
In conclusion the most exciting thing about the transmission of the Scriptures over the past 3,000 years is that scribal errors have not touched any core Christian doctrines. Scribes may not have been perfect but they were used by God in a mighty way to give us our wonderful Bible we have today.
1 http://heavenboundgb.worthyofpraise.org/4509/
2 http://helpmewithbiblestudy.org/5Bible/TransALookJewishScribalCustoms.aspx#sthash.z7zb7RiP.UlK87Ygw.dpbs