L6 Writing and Copying Manuscripts

Before the printing press was invented production of books was a matter of copying by hand. How the manuscripts were produced, the materials, the techniques and the practice of scribes is discussed in this lecture. The codex form of the first book required additional changes, e.g. chapters, verses, etc.

1. The Bible was not a book in the literal sense before the 4^th century C.E.

   1. No single collection of all the “books” contents that we regard as the bible were found in scrolls or codex prior to 4^th Century C.E. but were found as loose collections e.g. Paul’s letters.

   2. Between the 4^th and 15^th C all reproductions of biblical compositions were done by human handwriting.

   3. We have no signed letters or gospels: therefore the technology of writing and copying manuscripts are important to appreciate the experience of “scripture” in the history of Judaism and Christianity.

2. The art of writing in the Near East was a royal prerogative, was arduous, expensive and vested with authority.

   1. Cuneiform in ancient Babylon and hieroglyphs of Egypt delivered messages in the form of letters or pictographs chiseled on stone.

   2. Writing on stone was the public and private form for much of antiquity.

   3. The “Law” of Moses was the “writing of God, graven on tables of stone” (Exodus 32:16).

   4. Oral performances also had authority.

   5. Writing enabled greater control and consistency than oral delivery.

   6. Papyrus (2600 B.C.E.) and parchment as writing materials made it possible to spread literacy further.

3. Production and copying of manuscripts was expensive, arduous and fallible.

   1. Materials for writing offered resistance to speed and efficency. Papyrus was smooth on one side and rough on the other, thus only one side was good for writing.

   2. Parchment from animal skins required cleaning and preparation, stitching together to form scrolls.

   3. Using a stylus and ink was slow in forming letters. Cursive style came later. Scribes often wrote in majuscules (capital letters) rather than minuscules (lower case).

   4. Lack of separation between words and sparse indicators of punctuation made copying more difficult. Scribes might decipher words on the basis of memory or oral tradition.

   5. Manuscript copying allowed scribes intentionally and unintentionally to alter words or phrases or whole sections.

      1. Unintentional errors were altered letters that sounded alike, repeating or skipping words because of similarity of appearance, harmonizing with a similar text, or adding a previous scribe’s explanatory gloss into the body of the text.

      2. Intentional changes included changes in the context of a text that the scribe thought “should” say something that the copy in front of them did not.

4. Transmission of biblical manuscripts was more chaotic in Christianity than in Judaism.

   1. Within Judaism, scholars known as the Masoretes sought to standardize the Hebrew text from as early as the first or mid second century, using vowel markings and accents to consonantal text for proper reading. The MT (Masoretic text) (c915) by Rabbi Aharon ben Asher is the full Hebrew Bible (first edition).

   2. In early Christianity, several factors led to a more diverse manuscript tradition.

      1. Lack of distinct scribal traditions and rapid spread of the religion in many locations and for a variety of populations meant a proliferation of textual variants.

      2. Multiple versions (translations) from the beginning also complicated the textual situation.

      3. One Greek text in the east (Koine or Byzantine) became standard for medieval Greek manuscripts.

      4. Discovery of papyri fragments of early New Testament manuscripts gives us a look in this complex history.

Questions:

What difference does the oral and written culture in antiquity make to the writing and reading of Scripture?

What social factors account for the control over manuscripts in the Jewish tradition in contrast to the Christian tradition?