Church History
Teachers
Lesson Summary
Art Clark taught about the process of New Testament textual transmission and the various types of changes that occurred as scribes copied manuscripts throughout the early centuries of Christianity. The class examined three sources of textual evidence: Greek manuscripts, early versions, and writings of apostolic and church fathers. Clark emphasized two categories of textual changes: unintentional errors and intentional modifications. Unintentional errors arose from faulty eyesight, faulty hearing (especially in scriptoria where one reader read aloud to multiple scribes), errors of mind, and errors of judgment such as skipping lines when two adjacent lines ended with the same word. Intentional changes included corrections of spelling and grammar, harmonistic corruptions where scribes attempted to harmonize accounts between different Gospels, additions of clarifying details, and alterations made for doctrinal reasons. Clark illustrated how the absence of spaces between words in ancient Greek could create ambiguity and lead to different interpretations. He highlighted the remarkable accuracy of early manuscripts, particularly a papyrus fragment from 150 A.D. containing portions of John's Gospel, and discussed the role of "correctors" in scriptoria who reviewed copied manuscripts for errors. The teacher conveyed both appreciation for the devoted labor of ancient copyists and confidence in the reliability of the textual transmission process.