Jesus: Man, Messenger, Messiah · 2. The Copyists

The earliest copyists were amateurs

In short

1.For the first two centuries, copies were made privately by whoever in a congregation could write.
2.Professional scriptoria only appear later, from roughly the fourth century.
3.Amateur copyists produce more errors, and the earliest copies are the least controlled.
4.The manuscripts we have therefore descend from the period of *most* uncontrolled copying.

The claim being examined

Copying is imagined as the careful work of monks in a scriptorium.

The Islamic position

Qur'anic transmission was oral-first and mass-verified: thousands of memorisers cross-checking a single recited text, with the written codex as a support rather than the sole carrier.

Analysis

Chapter 2 makes an argument about the shape of the error curve. Because the earliest copies were made by non-professionals in private settings, and because the copies we possess descend from those copies, the greatest volume of variation entered the tradition precisely where the evidence is thinnest. Ehrman notes that later manuscripts are often more uniform, not because they are more accurate but because they descend from an increasingly standardised medieval text.

Sources

Bart D. Ehrman · Kim Haines-Eitzen · Bart D. Ehrman, *Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why* (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), ch. 2 'The Copyists of the Early Christian Writings', pp. 45-58

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