Errors made by scribes

• Revelation 1:5 (NLT)

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Sometimes accidental mistakes were made not because words looked alike, but because they sounded alike. This could happen, for example, when a scribe was copying a text by dictation--when one scribe would be reading from a manuscript and one or more other scribes would be copying the words into new manuscripts, as sometimes happened in the scriptoria after the fourth century. If two words were pronounced the same, then the scribe doing the coping might inadvertently use the wrong one in his copy. The word for "released" (Lusanti) sounds exactly like the word for "washed" (Lousanti), and so it is no surprise that in a number of medieval manuscripts the author prays to the one "who washed us from our sins."

Misquoting Jesus pg 92-93

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