scribal error
Manuscript transcription slip
A scribal error is a mistake made when copying a text by hand, typically in historical manuscripts before the age of printing.
Such errors include misspellings, omitted words, repeated lines, or misread letters that then propagate through subsequent copies.
The term appears most often in biblical scholarship and textual criticism, where scholars attempt to reconstruct original texts by identifying and correcting these accumulated copying mistakes.
- copyistDocument duplicator by hand
- typoPrinting mistake
- parchmentTreated hide for manuscripts
- quillFeather used for writing
- misreadingIncorrect interpretation of text
omission · corruption · palimpsest · ink · pen slip · blot · erasure · interpolation · variant · codex · marginalia · lacuna · emendation · gloss · vellum · miscopied · textual · collation
- authorshipauthorship, author bio, byline, attributed, credited
- paleographypaleography, uncial, minuscule, majuscule, cursive
- Hebrew manuscriptsDead Sea Scrolls, Torah scroll, sofer, vocalization, megillah
- scriptoriascriptorium, copyist, calligrapher, amanuensis, illuminator
- textual criticismcritical apparatus, collation, emendation, recension, variant
- textual scholarshipemendation, collation, emendations, critical edition, critical apparatus
scribe, scribal, script, scripts, scripture, scriptures, scriptural, scribble, scribbles