I don’t think the issue is translators … could be the monks making copies …
There can be many reasons for the differences:
Involuntary, accidental – it’s not easy to copy correctly! One scribe wrote at the end of a manuscript: “Those who don’t know how to write think it’s no work to be a copyist: three fingers may do the writing, but the whole body toils!”
Deciphering what lay before them –
Handwritten manuscripts were not always easy to read – there were problems with penmanship first of all, then often faded ink, blotches, damage from water, holes made by vermin; unclear abbreviations, poor handwriting, etc. Poor handwriting is especially a problem because of how similar some letters are in any language.
A specific problem the copyists faced that we don’t today was the practice of continuous writing, without capitals, spaces, or punctuation, which meant that the same sequence of letters could be read as different words depending on how they were split up.
Remembering what they’d just seen – usually it was safe to remember only 4-5 words at a time with a maximum possibly of 8? After that, one begins to remember the sense rather than the exact words.
To aid in concentration the scribes did just what we do: they would repeat what they were reading to themselves as they copied it down, sometimes out loud. But sometimes the influence of parallel texts was so strong that the mind substituted the much more familiar text for the different one before them and they would end up writing down what they thought they had seen instead of what they actually did.
Transcription – the actual writing down of what had been read – due to the distractions, weariness, etc. they often did not write well or clearly, forgetting to “dot their i’s and cross their t’s,” so to speak, skipping letters or even words, changing spellings, and so on.
Some examples of types of accidental mistakes –
Dittography – one letter/word in the original accidentally written twice in the copy.
Haplography – two letters/words in the original accidentally written only once in the copy. –
Omission or Duplication by Homoioteleuton/Homoioarcton – this is what happens when two words end -teleuton] or begin -arcton] similarly [homoio-], and the eye when returning to the page accidentally picks up at the second word rather than the first, omitting everything in between, or accidentally picks up again back at the first rather than at the second, repeating everything in between.
Errors in Joining/Separating Words – recall that words were written continuously, without breaks between; words were not divided according to syllables at ends of lines but anywhere.
Misunderstanding of Abbreviations or Marginal Notes – the first of these is self-evident; the second refers to the fact that when, through comparing, an omission was discovered in a text, the scribe would put the missing words in the margin; but this was also where the owner would write his comments on the text. The next copyist sometimes thought these notes were actually part of the text and copied them right into the text he was creating.
Homonyms or similar-sounding words –when manuscripts were “mass produced” – sometimes rather than each monk at his own desk copying his own manuscript, monasteries would have one monk read the text and four or five monks copying down what he read. This leads to variants with homonyms or similar sounding words – when we find that, it’s a clue that that manuscript was not being copied by sight but by sound.
All these so far were examples of in-voluntary changes introduced into the text. But other changes were not accidental – they were deliberate “corrections” – the temptation on the scribe was just too great to “correct” the text he saw before him.
Sometimes the errors were mistakes in spelling or grammar or words that had been accidentally omitted – these would be “good” corrections, but they still constitute variants. However, scribes also harmonized texts (**“corrected” the text before them to agree with another passage or the version they were familiar with from the liturgy – e.g., the addition of “For thine is the kingdom, the power…” after the Lord’s prayer in some manuscripts of Matthew’s Gospel.) **
Sometimes we find them “correcting” what they thought were doctrinal “errors” in the text. Someone has said, scribes often thought it was more important to be “correct” than to be “accurate.” Examples:
Lk 23:32 – Jesus led to crucifixion with two other criminals (omitted)
Jn 7:8 – I am not going up to this feast yet (added)
Mk 8:31 – will rise **after three days ** (changed to on the third day)
What is more, often we find scribes “conflating” readings – they saw that two manuscripts had two different wordings; since they didn’t know which was correct, they combined them just to be on the safe side.
