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Authors: Bart D. Ehrman
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experience, reading a text that was chock-full of âprinterâs errorsâ (i.e., copyistâs errors), enough to drive one to distraction.
A humorous example comes to us from the epigrams of the witty Roman poet Martial, who, in one poem, lets his reader know
If any poems in those sheets, reader, seem to you either too obscure or not quite good Latin, not mine is the mistake: the copyist spoiled them in his haste to complete for you his tale of verses. But if you think that not he, but I am at fault, then I will believe that you have no intelligence. âYet, see, those are bad.â As if I denied what is plain! They are bad, but you donât make better. 3
Copying texts allowed for the possibilities of manual error; and the problem was widely recognized throughout antiquity.
C OPYING IN E ARLY C HRISTIAN C IRCLES
We have a number of references in early Christian texts to the practices of copying. 4 One of the most interesting comes from a popular text of the early second century called The Shepherd of Hermas. This book was widely read during the second to fourth Christian centuries; some Christians believed that it should be considered part of the canon of scripture. It is included as one of the books of the New Testament, for example, in one of our oldest surviving manuscripts, the famous fourth-century Codex Sinaiticus. In the book, a Christian prophet named Hermas is given a number of revelations, some of them concerning what is to come, others concerned with the personal and communal lives of Christians of the day. At an early point in the book (it is a lengthy book, longer than any of the books that made it into theNew Testament), Hermas has a vision of an elderly woman, a kind of angelic figure symbolizing the Christian church, who is reading aloud from a little book. She asks Hermas if he can announce the things he has heard to his fellow Christians. He replies that he canât remember everything she has read and asks her to âGive me the book to make a copy.â She gives it to him, and he then relates that
I took it and went away to another part of the field, where I copied the whole thing, letter by letter, for I could not distinguish between the syllables. And then, when I completed the letters of the book, it was suddenly seized from my hand; but I did not see by whom. (Shepherd 5.4)
Even though it was a small book, it must have been a difficult process copying it one letter at a time. When Hermas says that he âcould not distinguish between the syllables,â he may be indicating that he was not skilled in readingâthat is, that he was not trained as a professional scribe, as one who could read texts fluently. One of the problems with ancient Greek texts (which would include all the earliest Christian writings, including those of the New Testament) is that when they were copied, no marks of punctuation were used, no distinction made between lowercase and uppercase letters, and, even more bizarre to modern readers, no spaces used to separate words. This kind of continuous writing is called scriptuo continua, and it obviously could make it difficult at times to read, let alone understand, a text. The words godisnowhere could mean quite different things to a theist (God is now here) and an atheist (God is nowhere); 5 and what would it mean to say lastnightatdinnerisawabundanceonthetable? Was this a normal or a supernormal event?
When Hermas says he could not distinguish between the syllables, he evidently means he could not read the text fluently but could recognize the letters, and so copied them one at a time. Obviously, if you donât know what youâre reading, the possibilities of making mistakes in transcription multiply.
Hermas again refers to copying somewhat later in his vision. The elderly woman comes to him again and asks whether he has yet handed over the book he copied to the church leaders. He replies that he has not, and she tells him:
You have done
A humorous example comes to us from the epigrams of the witty Roman poet Martial, who, in one poem, lets his reader know
If any poems in those sheets, reader, seem to you either too obscure or not quite good Latin, not mine is the mistake: the copyist spoiled them in his haste to complete for you his tale of verses. But if you think that not he, but I am at fault, then I will believe that you have no intelligence. âYet, see, those are bad.â As if I denied what is plain! They are bad, but you donât make better. 3
Copying texts allowed for the possibilities of manual error; and the problem was widely recognized throughout antiquity.
C OPYING IN E ARLY C HRISTIAN C IRCLES
We have a number of references in early Christian texts to the practices of copying. 4 One of the most interesting comes from a popular text of the early second century called The Shepherd of Hermas. This book was widely read during the second to fourth Christian centuries; some Christians believed that it should be considered part of the canon of scripture. It is included as one of the books of the New Testament, for example, in one of our oldest surviving manuscripts, the famous fourth-century Codex Sinaiticus. In the book, a Christian prophet named Hermas is given a number of revelations, some of them concerning what is to come, others concerned with the personal and communal lives of Christians of the day. At an early point in the book (it is a lengthy book, longer than any of the books that made it into theNew Testament), Hermas has a vision of an elderly woman, a kind of angelic figure symbolizing the Christian church, who is reading aloud from a little book. She asks Hermas if he can announce the things he has heard to his fellow Christians. He replies that he canât remember everything she has read and asks her to âGive me the book to make a copy.â She gives it to him, and he then relates that
I took it and went away to another part of the field, where I copied the whole thing, letter by letter, for I could not distinguish between the syllables. And then, when I completed the letters of the book, it was suddenly seized from my hand; but I did not see by whom. (Shepherd 5.4)
Even though it was a small book, it must have been a difficult process copying it one letter at a time. When Hermas says that he âcould not distinguish between the syllables,â he may be indicating that he was not skilled in readingâthat is, that he was not trained as a professional scribe, as one who could read texts fluently. One of the problems with ancient Greek texts (which would include all the earliest Christian writings, including those of the New Testament) is that when they were copied, no marks of punctuation were used, no distinction made between lowercase and uppercase letters, and, even more bizarre to modern readers, no spaces used to separate words. This kind of continuous writing is called scriptuo continua, and it obviously could make it difficult at times to read, let alone understand, a text. The words godisnowhere could mean quite different things to a theist (God is now here) and an atheist (God is nowhere); 5 and what would it mean to say lastnightatdinnerisawabundanceonthetable? Was this a normal or a supernormal event?
When Hermas says he could not distinguish between the syllables, he evidently means he could not read the text fluently but could recognize the letters, and so copied them one at a time. Obviously, if you donât know what youâre reading, the possibilities of making mistakes in transcription multiply.
Hermas again refers to copying somewhat later in his vision. The elderly woman comes to him again and asks whether he has yet handed over the book he copied to the church leaders. He replies that he has not, and she tells him:
You have done
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