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Did Early Bible Copying Remain Accurate? The collection of manuscripts (known
as the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered at How was such accurate copying
possible? The answer is found in
understanding the supremely high
regard the Jewish people had for their Sacred Scriptures, and the extreme devotion they gave to the
accuracy of their copying. There were two grades of copying: (1) Sacred copies for use in Synagogues and
for use as future master copies, and (2) common copies for individual use.
All Synagogue scrolls had to be written on specially cured skins from ritually
clean, pure animals. Strict religious rules were put in
place to safeguard the ongoing accuracy of their precious, sacred, Synagogue
copies. When undertaking the work of
sacred copying, the scribe first had to take a full ritual bath then dress,
and remain dressed, in full Jewish attire for the duration of his time spent
copying. Strict rules also extended to their
conduct while copying. Scribes were
not allowed to look up or acknowledge anyone coming or going around
them. They were not allowed to copy
from memory. They were not allowed to
copy ‘sentence for sentence’, or even ‘word for word’. Copying had to be done ‘letter for letter’
with a thread-breadth or hair-breadth between consonants. The strict rules regarding the actual
copying were known as ‘Fencing the
Scriptures’ because all letters, characters, words and sentences were to
be ‘locked in’. The lines and columns
had to be of a particular length and height, and letters and words were
counted and checked for accuracy by a second
person and then a third. As a further check for accuracy, rows,
columns, words and letters were counted to ascertain the middle letter of a
page, and this was scrupulously compared with the original. When a book was completed another check was
made that counted up the phrases. A
single error meant the destruction of the complete manuscript to ensure that
it could never accidentally be used as a master copy. |
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