Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why

by Bart D. Ehrman

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the only changes being made were by copyists with a personal stake in the wording of the text. In fact, most of the changes found in our early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology. Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes, pure and simple—slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort or another. Scribes could be incompetent: it is important to recall that most of the copyists in the early centuries were not trained to do this kind of work but were simply the literate members of their congregations who were (more or less) able and willing.

Because they were not highly trained to perform this kind of work, they were more prone to make mistakes than professional scribes would have been. This explains why our earliest copies of the early Christian writings tend to vary more frequently from one another and from later copies than do the later copies