It is often asserted that copying errors in the Bible are minimal because the scribes were so skillful and careful, and while I don't believe that skill and care are sufficient to eliminate human error, I have always accepted that accuracy was the copyist's goal. However, something I just read in the August, 2003, issue of
Computer Magazine leads me to question whether this is really true. This is from
The Profession, a monthly column written by a different guest columnist each month. The August, 2003, guest columnist was Simone Santini, a project researcher at the University of California at San Diego. His column was titled, "Bringing Copyright into the Information Age." Here's the relevant portion:
Copyright Principles
In its current form, copyright results from the conjunct action of two historically profound revolutionary forces: the printing press and industrialization.
Gutenberg's legacy
The printing press consolidated the concept of the text as a closed corpus that can be changed only by the author, who is always clearly identified and takes responsibility for the contents fo the text. This notion represents a change from the classic and medieval concept of a text as an open work to which the whole reader community contributes. Saint Bonaventura, the Franciscan monk and philosopher, looked almost in scorn at those copyists who merely reproduced a text without altering it in any way. Likewise, Plato considered written language inferior to spoken language because it exposed the text to the risk of closure. Before the invention of the printing press, collectively written texts were common - from the tales of Homer to the commentaries of medieval philosophers.
So this leads naturally to the question of whether accurate copying was the goal of Bible copyists, or did they perhaps sometimes incorporate new ideas and/or story elements, perhaps their own, perhaps suggested to them by respected holy men or popular traditions of the time.
--Percy
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