The Christian scriptures were originally written much before the invention of movable type methods of printing. Moreover, the autograph documents (i.e. the original documents) were often written on papyrus, which was easy to transport and relatively inexpensive. However, papyrus is easily damaged by water and fire. Hence, in order to transmit the documents, it was essential to have scribes copy the documents onto new papyri every so often.

As can be expected, the scribal process of duplication is not 100% accurate. We ourselves know that we are prone to making errors when we copy something by hand. The scribes were, like us, human. And so they too were prone to making the same errors.

However, we must bear in mind that, for the most part, the scribes believed that they were copying scripture. Hence, they were much more careful in their duplication than we are with ours. While this is a good thing, we will see in future sections that this could have negative consequences.

Here, I wish to highlight a couple of issues that arose during the process of duplication. First, scribes often worked in scriptoria (singular scriptorium). Literally, it means ‘a place of writing.’ These were rooms dedicated to copying books. These rooms were often kept out of direct sunlight so that the fragile papyrus or parchment would not disintegrate and the writing would not fade. While this was done to preserve the documents, the lack of electric lighting meant that these rooms were often dimly lit. As can be expected the poor lighting contributed to the scribal errors.

Second, while the Hebrew scriptures were originally copied by scribes who knew the language, in the years following the writing of the New Testament documents, most of the scribes knew neither Hebrew nor Greek. This, quite understandably, was a drawback since the scribes really did not understand what they were copying. Hence, in the case of difficult readings the scribes were ill prepared to make good judgment calls. As a trivial example, if a scribe read ‘god is nowhere’ because the earlier scribe did not introduce adequate spacing, the scribe would not know that this should actually have read ‘god is now here’. While, in this hypothetical situation the two meanings are almost opposite, this is almost never the case with the biblical documents that we have.

We may wish for there to have been a more unfailing way of transmitting the scriptures. However, wishes do not change the reality. And the reality is that the scribes knew they were copying sacred text. And so they were exceptionally diligent, during this all too human process, to faithfully transmit the texts they received.