Replies

ALMOST all the texts we have of the ancient classics derive from generations of scribal copies, separated by many centuries from the originals.

With the exception of the New Testament documents, virtually all the other classic texts are represented by only a very few copies written many hundreds of years after the originals. The generations of scribal copying isn't too bad a thing unless one has only a very few copies to work with in which case it is difficult to get a good idea of what the original documents actually were. Polar opposites are the early Christian literature/New Testament and the Koran. In the former, there is such a wealth of literature that most of the New Testament can be reconstructed from quotes in the early church fathers alone. There is a very good degree of certainty about the text of the original writings as they existed in the latter half of the first century and the early second century. In contrast, "reformers" in Islam caused non-authorized versions of the Koran to be rounded up and burned. The discoveries in Herculaneum are truly wonderful and terribly exciting.