Already in the second century, the pagan critic Celsus had argued that Christians changed the text at will, as if drunk from a drinking bout; his opponent Origen speaks of the “great” number of differences among the manuscripts of the Gospels; more than a century later Pope Damasus was so concerned about the varieties of Latin manuscripts that he commissioned Jerome to produced a standardized translation; and Jerome himself had to compare numerous copies of the text, both Greek and Latin, to decide on the text that he thought was originally penned by its authors.
It is disturbing how progress of thought can halt for a millenia.
The modern myth is of a world always progressing towards truth, knowledge, and equity, though I suppose those things quickly fall to the wayside when the world is faced with sickness, political instability, and war, as it was during much of the Middle Ages in the Western world.
People look for questions when all they have are answers, and look for answers when all they have are questions.
