![]() An example of this indicates sound changes that were in process in the Greek language of the time. We see this kind of thing even in the original gospels. When the practice began of adding spaces between words, a sequence of letters might offer more than one possibility of phrasing, yielding different meanings in different manuscripts.ĭifferent ways of spelling the same sounds might lead to inadvertent differences between copyists in certain words or phrases, leading to later uncertainty about the intended word. For example, a manuscript commonly had not spaces between words, making it difficult to tell where word divisions occur when reading aloud or interpreting a phrase. The format of text in hand-copying situations causes special difficulties modern readers and authors would not imagine. Many resources are available that detail kinds of copy errors that can occur. Over the centuries before printing, each new copy was laboriously produced over weeks by hand, with all the difficulties presented by, for instance, individual handwriting and human foibles, with changes in lettering styles, shifts in letter forms, changes from capital to newly-developed lower-case letters and squeezed letters to get as much as possible onto one precious skin or pressed papyrus sheet. Proofreading a new book, for instance, is done many times in the process, and still errors get in our modern books sometimes. To put our expectations in perspective, just look at the difficulty people have in our everyday society reading other people's writing, copying, copy typing, etc., even in a highly literate society. We still see this same medieval format in the multiple readings of scripture selections in the current liturgies of many modern denominations. The way most people gained access was through the oral reading of portions of biblical text in public worship settings. Not at all the situation we have of literacy and documents in our time in the Western world today. When we think of the handing down of the biblical (or any) text over the centuries, it is too easy to overlook the fact that these manuscripts existed and were copied and circulated in a primarily oral world, where the vast general population was illiterate. Factors such as this are well-documented in the various scholarly literature. This was not the context of hand-copied manuscripts, which could often be a rote-copying of symbols by assembly-line copyists who may not have even understood the language and words they were copying. The question of reliability of manuscripts is also overlaid with assumptions about literacy as it has developed in the last two centuries in the west. N general, what we know about hand copying indicates more errors are introduced (and definitely the potential for introduction of errors is high) with each generation of copying. It is logical, isn't it, to assume that older biblical manuscripts would more likely reflect the original reading of the scriptures? If so, what are some reasons why? Orality and Literacy Are Older Bible Manuscripts More Reliable? *** Are Older Bible Manuscripts More Reliable? *** Orville Jenkins Articles
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