Biblical History
Bart D. Ehrman discusses the way in which various 'books' of the bible were published. Essentially they were copied, by hand, at first by non-professional scribes and later by the scribes of religious orders. As one would think, there exist mistakes either by accident or intentional that change meanings. Ink can smudge, words misunderstood, shadows making it look different, ink bleeding through and sheer carelessness lead to most of the mistakes, but some texts have been altered to bolster one side or another of a theological debate. Scribes altered texts to reflect their beliefs not necessarily what the original author may have intended. With the discovery of more and older manuscripts differences have been detected. In fact some of them are noticeably altered. While making a xerox copy of a xerox copy of a xerox copy leads to degradation, a better example might be the party game of telephone. A statement is whispered in one's ear and that person passes it on to another and then another until the last person attempts to repeat what was said. However, in this case their is an additional caveat, the last person has to repeat it in faultless Greek.
