The earliest centuries of Christianity

The ancient scribes weren’t exactly swinging swords over whose manuscript was the perfect one, but they did leave us a wonderfully tangled forest of variants. The earliest centuries of Christianity look less like a tidy library and more like a workshop where lots of scribes were trying to copy texts under flickering lamps, with varying skill levels, in multiple languages, and with different regional habits.

Greek sits closest to the heart of things, because the New Testament was written in Greek. Even there, the early manuscripts don’t line up perfectly. Scribes sometimes smoothed grammar, clarified theology, harmonized parallel stories, or made simple slips of the eye. These aren’t usually dramatic changes, but they’re real enough that scholars track them like paleontologists following fossil trails.

Coptic, Syriac, and Latin translations arrived early—2nd to 4th centuries—and each developed its own personality. Think of them as cousins raised in different households. Coptic often reflects Egyptian interpretive traditions, Syriac brings a Semitic flavor that sometimes preserves earlier readings, and Latin went through its own little evolution until Jerome tried to wrangle it into the Vulgate. None of these versions is “perfect,” but each witnesses an earlier stage of the text.

As for whether they fought over the perfect translation: the answer is subtler and more human. They didn’t battle in the modern sense—no councils declaring, “Thou shalt only copy Manuscript B.” What they did do was argue about accuracy, theology, and clarity. Jerome caught flak for daring to revise the Old Latin. Early Syriac communities debated which reading was authentic. And Greek scribes sometimes complained about “careless copyists.” So yes, tension existed, but it was more like scholarly elbowing than holy war.

If anything, the variety shows that early Christians weren’t guarding a single pristine copy. They lived with plurality. They debated, compared, corrected, sometimes exaggerated their certainty, and ultimately bequeathed a rich textual tradition that lets modern scholars reconstruct the earliest recoverable form with remarkable precision.

These show (1) awareness of textual variation, (2) arguments about translation quality, and (3) no belief in a single “perfect” manuscript tradition.

1. ORIGEN (3rd century) openly says the New Testament manuscripts differ.

Quotation:

“The differences among the manuscripts have become great, either through the negligence of some copyists, or through the perverse audacity of others.”

— Origen, Commentary on Matthew 15.14

What it shows:

By the early 200s, Christians already knew their Greek copies didn’t match. Origen does not deny it; he explains causes: mistakes, carelessness, and even deliberate changes.

2. JEROME (late 4th century) admits the Latin manuscripts were a chaotic mess.

Quotation:

“There are almost as many forms of the text as there are copies.”

— Jerome, Preface to the Gospels (Vulgate Prologue)

What it shows:

The pre-Vulgate Latin Bible wasn’t a unified tradition. Every church had slightly different text forms. Jerome’s whole Vulgate project existed because Latin manuscripts were not consistent.

3. JEROME says people attacked him for trying to fix the Latin text.

Quotation:

“If I am to translate the sacred Scriptures, they will call me a falsifier… Any change you make, even for the better, becomes a crime.”

— Jerome, Letter 27 (To Marcella)

What it shows:

Jerome faced hostility because Christians disagreed on what counted as the correct reading. They were defending their familiar—yet inconsistent—texts, not a single perfect original.

4. AUGUSTINE criticizes Jerome for revising the Latin and mistrusting the Old Latin.

Quotation:

“For my part, I would not have the church read a translation different from that with which she is familiar… I fear that your new translation will cause great scandal.”

— Augustine, Letter 71 to Jerome

What it shows:

Augustine opposed Jerome’s more accurate revisions because people would be upset when readings changed. He wasn’t claiming a perfect text—just worried about upsetting congregations.

5. The Syriac tradition shows the same plurality.

The Peshitta became standard only after 5th-century ecclesiastical pressure. Before that, the Old Syriac versions (Curetonian and Sinaitic) differed significantly from each other and from Greek sources.

Quotation (from the Peshitta editor Rabula’s canon laws):

He commanded that all churches must use “only the version approved and corrected” (referring to the Peshitta).

— Canon of Bishop Rabula of Edessa (early 5th century)

What it shows:

Syriac churches imposed uniformity because earlier manuscripts were diverse.

6. COPTIC manuscripts also preserve unique variants.

While Coptic scribes left no long theoretical treatises, the manuscripts themselves speak. The Sahidic and Bohairic versions contain distinct readings not found in each other or in Greek.

Example (textual evidence, not commentary):

In John 1:18, the Sahidic Coptic supports the reading “the only-begotten God,” aligning with early Alexandrian Greek manuscripts, while other traditions have “only-begotten Son.”

What it shows:

Different versions preserved different textual streams.

7. Early church historian Eusebius admits variant endings of Mark were debated.

Quotation (Eusebius quoting a question he received):

“The accurate copies conclude the story according to Mark at ‘for they were afraid.’”

— Eusebius, Letter to Marinus

What it shows:

In the 4th century, people were already asking which ending of Mark was original. No consensus existed.

Putting it all together. The evidence—straight from ancient writers—shows:

• They were fully aware manuscripts differed.

• No universal, pristine manuscript existed in any language.

• Communities defended their familiar readings, sometimes fiercely.

• Debates were real, but they were scholarly or pastoral disputes, not doctrinal wars over a single “perfect Bible translation.”

The early centuries look less like a single stream and more like a braided river: Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian—all reflecting slightly different textual ancestries that only later traditions attempted to harmonize.