The Scarcity of Scribes in the Late Roman Empire

 

Roman Sarcophagus Relief 2nd CE

(William Rockhill Nelson Trust)

 

While reading through an article by Raffaella Cribiore I came across a reference to the scarcity of scribes in the late Roman Empire. 

"Texts copied in book hands were produced at a slower pace and a higher cost. Such specialized scribes were not always available and may have been in high demand. We know that some writers, such as Cassius Longinus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Basil of Caesarea, deplored their scarcity." (Cribiore, 258)

In a cover letter that accompanied his Contra Eunomium I, Gregory of Nyssa wrote to two students of Libanius, John and Maximian apologizing for the long delay of his work.

"We Cappadocians are poor in almost all the things that make those who possess them happy—and poor especially in those able to write. This indeed is the reason for the long delay of my treatise, for though my refutation of the heresy has been finished for some considerable time, there was no one to transcribe it. It was this lack of copyists that in all likelihood brought on us the suspicion of slackness or of inadequacy for the task" (Ep.15, trans., Anna M. Silvas)

In a letter to the Presbyter Paeonius Basil of Caesarea wrote 

"I have had no writer with me, neither calligraphist, nor short-hand. Of all those whom I happen to employ, some have returned to their former mode of life, and others are unfit for work from long sickness" (Ep. 134)

It was so bad for Basil that he took to training his own scribes for the task. Note his instructional letter to a scribe in training.

"Write straight and make the lines straight. Do not let your hand go too high or too low. Avoid forcing the pen to travel slantwise, like Aesop's crab. Advance straight on, as if following the line of the carpenter's rule, which always preserves exactitude and prevents any irregularity. The oblique is ungraceful. It is the straight which pleases the eye and does not allow the reader's eyes to go nodding up and down like a swing-beam. This has been my fate in reading your writing. As the lines lie ladderwise, I was obliged, when I had to go from one to another, to mount up to the end of the last: then, when no connection was to be found, I had to go back, and seek for the right order again, retreating and following the furrow, like Theseus in the story following Ariadne's thread. Write straight, and do not confuse our mind by your slanting and irregular writing." (Ep. 334)

Similarly, in his reply to Porphyry, Longinus of Athens complains that there are few scribes available to make copies of books.

"Whatever else you may be expecting, do not hope for anything new of my own, or even for the earlier works which you tell me you have lost; for there is a sad dearth of copyists here. I assure you it has taken me all this time to complete my set of Plotinus, and it was done only by calling off my scribe from all his routine work and keeping him steadily to this one task." (Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 19)

The anecdotal evidence from these 3rd and 4th century figures indicates that there was a scarcity of high-quality scribes. Even for those who were well educated and connected to others across the empire, finding a good copyist could be a difficult task.

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Raffaella Cribiore, "The Dissemination of Texts in the High Empire." American Journal of Philology 140, no. 2 (2019): 255-290

Anna M. Silvas, Gregory of Nyssa: The Letters, Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2007)

Review of Nicholas A. Elder's "Gospel Media"

I recently reviewed Nicholas Elder's new book "Gospel Media: Reading, Writing, and Circulating Jesus Traditions" (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2024). I reviewed the book for the Evangelical Review of Theology and Politics.

Scribal Memory and Textual Fluidity in Copying Christian Texts

Marble Relief of a Scribe from Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus (ca. 2nd cen. BCE)

Istvan Czachesz, "Rewriting and Textual Fluidity in Antiquity: Exploring the Sociocultural and Psychological Context of Earliest Christian Literacy" in Myths, Martyrs, and Modernity (Leiden: Brill, 2010); 425-441.

I was recently reading the article by Czachesz, referenced above, that engages with early Christian scribal practices from the perspective of modern studies on memory. I came across a lengthy quote that intersected with my own research interests.

"With no institution existing to safeguard the faithful reproduction of religious literature, the fate of books in the ‘religions of the book’ was not very different from the fate of ancient books in general. Not all texts were, however, equally fluid. A book with very large circulation and high authority was arguably more resistant to modifications. If a text was relatively accessible and well known among the educated, like Homer in Graeco-Roman culture, alterations to it were more easily spotted and less likely to be accepted as original than changes made to less well- known texts. In this case, a rewritten text could be identified as a new literary work, dependent on a well-known, authoritative text as its source. In contrast, the random distribution and small circulation of less well- known works, or of new works aſter their release, made them especially vulnerable to changes. In such cases, it was oſten impossible to know that the text at hand existed in multiple versions or to identify the authoritative version." (Czachesz, pg. 431)

I do generally agree with Czachesz's observations here, that in the first century "A book with very large circulation and high authority was arguably more resistant to modifications." I only disagree in that a work that had a narrower circulation would also be resistant to textual change for exactly the same reasons as a more popular work. The difference being that a smaller group that circulated a less popular text may have greater success in getting the collaboration of everyone involved in order to alter that text. It would still require the agreement of all those circulating and engaging with the text in question for significant alterations to a text to take effect. I discuss this and other issues in my article,

Timothy Mitchell, "Exposing Textual Corruption: Community as a Stabilizing Aspect in the Circulation of the New Testament Writings during the Greco-Roman Era" Journal for the Study of the New Testament 43.2 (2020): 266-298.

How Can We Say the Bible is Inerrant in the Originals (autographs)?

A friend notified me of a recent episode of "The Breifing" by Albert Mohler where he addresses a question sent to him by a listener. You can hear the question and Mohler's response at the following link.

This isn't the exact wording of the question, but it went something like this.

"How can we say that the Bible we have is inerrant only in the originals? If our translations today could have small errors over time, can we really say that the Bible is perfect?"

The questioner indicated that this issue was causing him to doubt his faith. This really struck a cord with me because this is a very similar problem that drove me into studying New Testament textual criticism. Unfortunately I was a little disappointed by Mohler's response, which sounded more like a dodge to me. With that said, his answer was honest and transparent about the limitations of his own knowledge of the topic.

I wanted to briefly address this question, though a full throated response would necessitate a book.

There is a theological problem that is revealed by the way the question is worded. The concept of divine preservation is confused and lumped in with divine inspiration, and thus, inerrancy and these two theological ideas must be understood as two different events.

Divine Inspiration of Scripture:

Inspiration was a one time event that occured through the apostles and prophets as they were moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20-21). Paul told Timothy that all scripture (γραφη) is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Because Peter mentions words that were spoken and Paul uses the term γραφη, inspiration must therefore be limited to certain people (apostles and prophets) at an appointed time (while speaking or when writing) and limited to specific words (being spoken and or written). These scriptural references also reveal that there was a divine confluence in this event, the Holy Spirit worked through men who spoke or wrote. 

Because God is the one who moved the men to write, then it must mean that there is no untruthfulness or mistakes in what was conveyed through these men (Numbers 23:19, Titus 1:2, Hebrews 6:18). However, because men of a certain age and culture were moved to speak and write, then actual human languages, couched within specific cultures and countries were employed (Hebrew, Aramaic, Koine Greek).Once the inspiration event was over, the documents were released for copying, circulation, and dispatched to Churches (in the case of the epistles), then the inspiration event was over.

Preservation of Scripture through Fallible Human Agency:

Now ordinary men were given charge over copying and distributing God's word. In Deuteronomy 17:18, the King is charged with making a copy of God's Law, and the priests are charged with keeping master copies. Yet they failed in their tasks, the kings failed to follow God's commands and the priests lost track of the copies of the law (Hosea 4:6, 2 King's 22:8-10). In the New Testament, men are entrusted to spread the Gospel (Matthew 28:19-20), this involved copying out the scriptures to be distributed (Colossians 4:16). Yet, even then, the apostolic message was twisted, which is what happened in the case of Paul's letters (2 Peter 3:15-16). Already within one hundreds years of the time of the apostles errors had found their way into copies of the scriptures that were circulating. Irenaeus (180 CE), in his Against Heresies, 5.30.1., mentions that some copies of Revelation had the mark of the beast as 616 rather than 666.

Finally, another problem with the way the original question was worded was that it confused the wording of the inspired autographs or "originals" with a physical object. It must be understood that it is the wording, the text that was inspired not a physical document (such as papyrus, or parchment). As long as the wording is faithfully transcribed, then the copy is also inspired. Because fallible men have been entrusted with transcribing and transmitting the scriptures, however, there are imperfections in the extant copies. This means that our access through our imperfect manuscripts to inerrant inspiration has some limitations. These textual variations in the manuscripts are human errors of transcription, not errors of inspiration. Though our access to God's inerrant word has some limitation, our access is sufficient for knowing and understanding the message of salvation.

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For a transcript of "The Breifing" go to the following link, under "Part II".

For a fuller treatment of these topics, see my two articles below.

"What are the NT Autographs? An Examination of the Doctrine of Inspiration and Inerrancy in Light of Greco-Roman Publication." JETS 59/2 (June 2016): 287-308.

Where Inspiration is Found: Putting the New Testament Autographs in Context,” in Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 24.3 (Fall 2020): 83-101.

[EDIT: I want to also recommend this excellent volume that addresses a lot of the issues that the questioner is facing.

https://www.amazon.com/Enduring-Authority-Christian-Scriptures/dp/0802865763]

Some Observations on Orthography and the Π Group

A Shelf in the Old Library at Magdalen College, Oxford

After having completed my dissertation for some months, and with it now recently being made available online, I have had time to reflect back on some of the conclusions of the years of study. After transcribing all of the witnesses to be included in the examinations, I had to regularize those readings that were not genealogically significant, which means tagging these readings to be ignored by the collation software. Chapter 3 of the dissertation covers in detail the entire process (Mitchell, Family Π in the Gospel of Mark, pp. 71-102). I noticed that many of the regularizations were spelling differences involving the substitution of similarly sounding vowels or the omission of the same letter in a word containing a double consonant (i.e. λλ). Tables 3.1 through 3.6 in Chapter 3 list out the number of orthographic variations (pp. 91-98). It seems to me that those who used these manuscripts were comfortable with variations in spelling as long as the words sounded the same when pronounced while being read out. Because so many of these manuscripts were prepared and used for lectionary readings, this may be a byproduct of this type of environment. I conclude that

"[this] may reflect a more utilitarian attitude of the scribe who may have cared more for function rather than perfection. That is, as long as orthography did not impede the transmission of meaning, then it did not impede its usefulness." (Mitchell, Family Π in the Gospel of Mark, p. 102)

Most of these manuscripts reflect late antique or medieval attitudes towards the copying of texts, so it may not be applicable to earlier centuries. With that said, I wonder how much of the modern textual critic's approach to errors in the text related to spelling are actually anachronistic to some degree. It makes me wonder how many more variations, especially those that hardly affect meaning, such as transpositions or word substitutions with a synonym that have a large semantic overlap, would have been considered an acceptable byproduct of hand copying. For those who created and used these manuscripts, the vast majority of these types of variations would likely not have been considered "errors" as we see them today, which can be the cause of many modern day apologetic, epistemological, and theological crises.

Timothy N. Mitchell, "Family Π in the Gospel of Mark" Now Availabile

I was just informed that the PDF version of my PhD dissertation and it's accompanying data are now available freely on the University of Birmingham's Ethesis Repository. The PDF of the dissertation is available at the following link.

https://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/13692/

I won't re-post the abstract as it can be read at the above link. The summary of my findings are these;

1) The so-called Family Π is actually a group because the manuscripts do not originate from a lost archetype.

2) The origin of the Π Group readings are that they arose as a result of copying from commentary manuscripts (catenae). The scholia acting on the text reintroduced Π Group readings into the text throughout the centuries.

3) As Π Group manuscripts were copied, the text was standardized through a process of the copyists conforming the text to the readings they were used to hearing during their lectional readings.

If you do not want to read the entire thesis, I recommend reading Chapter 1 as it will give a really good backdrop to the study. Then read the concluding summaries of Chapters 2 and 3. Read all of Chapter 4 as this chapter  contains the core arguments of the thesis. Skip Chapter 5 as it contains a long list of group readings obtained from the collation. Finally, read all of Chapter 6 as it discusses the arguments surrounding the origin of the Π Group.

The accompanying data can be found at the following links.

Accompanying data for "A Collation of Family Π in Mark" https://doi.org/10.25500/edata.bham.00000983

A Collation of Family Π in Mark [Online Edition] https://purl.org/itsee/mitchell

A positive apparatus of Family Π in Mark https://epapers.bham.ac.uk/4289

Transcriptions of 27 Manuscripts of the Gospel according to Mark https://epapers.bham.ac.uk/4290

[EDIT: I began the research for this dissertation way back in 2017. See the earlier post here where I first mentioned my dissertation topic.]

Interview With Paul Larson on Credible Faith Podcast

A couple of years ago I was interviewed by Paul Larson of Credible Faith ministries. I just learned that Paul, after some delays, had uploaded the interview a few days ago.

The discussion centers around my work on ancient writing practices and the composition of the New Testament writings. We covered issues of textual stability, the relationship of autographs to inspiration, and composition practices.

The YouTube version can be found here.

Larson's website with the audio version of the interview can be found at this link.