Thank you for the question on the preservation of the Scriptures, “How have biblical texts survived for millennia with little meaning lost through interpretations and translations?”
There are copying errors of the Old and New Testaments. For a Christian to deny that there are any copying errors is dishonest nor for atheists to say that the whole Bible is full of errors and is untrustworthy is also false. For the the most part, copying errors do not change the text or have any major doctrinal impact.
If I may give examples of “errors” in the Bible. If a copyists spell church in these variant forms, churck, shurch, or churh, each letter or punctuation may be considered an “error.” When scholars look at each parchment, scroll or manuscript, every “error” is counted as one. Thus one can say there are thousands of errors in the text, but they are mostly spelling errors or inversion of words, etc.
As one looks at the word in question and in the context, one may be able to ascertain the “correct” word. One has to remember that copyists didn’t have erasers. Since the writing was on a scroll, it would be too costly to throw the scroll away every time one makes a copying error. The copyist may or may not be aware of the spelling error or thinks he hears the reader pronouncing the word in a certain manner. There would be scrolls that one would copy while in other times it may be dictated.
Scholars compare manuscripts, ascertain the approximate date of the parchments, scrolls or manuscripts with other texts while other scholars come to their interpretation of a text. Scholars tend to favor earlier manuscripts as being more accurate than later ones.
As one reads the Old Testament, the Torah was kept by the priests. Leviticus states that a king is to have a copy of the Law and to mediate on it day and night to obey it.
Deuteronomy 17 says this about a new king of Israel, “When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests. 19 It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees 20 and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel” (NIV).
The text states that the Levitical priests have/had the original copy of the Law and that the new king of Israel is to make a copy of it in his own handwriting under the supervision of the priests. The king was to meditate and obey the Law.
It is likely as the original autographs were worn out by usage, the priests would make another copy or copies of it.
As one knows prior to the Dead Sea Scroll being discovered between 1946–1956 has all the Old Testaments in additional to Apocrypha Books except for the Book of Esther. The dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls has been dated from third century BCE to first century CE. As one compares the later manuscripts with the earlier ones of the Qumran, the differences are not significant as one can read about them on the web.
The Levitical priests were primarily interested in preserving the Scriptures while teachers of the Law focused on the interpretation of the Law. The Scriptures were viewed as being the Word of God. The copyists or later Scribes did their best in preserving the words as they copied it.
When one compares the Leningrad Codex dating to about 1008 CE with the Dead Sea Scrolls about 3 century CE, they are remarkably similar. The Scribes of the Old Testament held a high regard for the Scriptures even as the Church viewed the New Testament in the same manner. The Council of Nicea and the early the Early Church Fathers had access to the Old Testaments scrolls and the writings or copies of the New Testament.
Perhaps one can use an analogy of the preservation of the US Constitution. If it was to be copy by hand before the invention of the printing press, great care would be given to preserve it. If 25 people had to copy it without any eraser on one long scroll, there would be variant errors between the 25 writers. If the original copy of the Constitution was lost to decay of reading, would the 25 hand copies of the Constitution be able to reconstruct the exact or near exact words of the original? The variant words of spelling or inversion of words would not adversely affect the content of the Constitution. Scholars would have to compare and note the differences, debate on what they think was in the original Constitution. That is what is being done with the thousands of scrapes of Old and New Testaments Scriptures.
SUMMARY: If one believes that the writing is the very word of God, one would take extraordinary care in preserving and copying the text.
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