I have often talked about scribes of the New Testament sometimes being careless, occasionally making rather amazing mistakes.  Most of the time, of course, scribes were careful and accurate, but every now and then they would make a mess up by, say, leaving out a word or three, or an entire line, or copying the same word twice, etc.  And sometimes they added things they thought ought to be in the text but were not. Only in a few places does that involve MAJOR additions, the two largest and most significant by far are the last twelve verses of Mark (16:9-20, where Jesus appears to his disciples after the resurrection) and the story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:11). Most of the changes scribes made were accidental (slips), others were almost certainly intentional (whoever added the long ending of Mark didn’t do so by a slip of the pen).  In making mistakes, these early Christian scribes were almost certainly never ill-intentioned:  they were human and made mistakes (accidental changes) [...]

One of the most frequent questions I get asked about (who woulda thought?) is  whether the source called "Q" really existed and why I think so. I'll explain what that means in a second, but first: if you are interested in hearing two of the world's experts talk about it (taking opposite sides!), do we ever have an event for you!  It is not connected with the blog, but it would be a shame not to let blog members know about it in case they (you!) want to attend.  Here's a link for more information and registration: Did Q Exist? So, for those who don't know, "Q" is the hypothetical document allegedly used independently by both Matthew and Luke for a good many passages in their Gospels, mainly sayings of Jesus (the Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes, a number of parables, one-liners, etc.). The deal is this:  it is almost universally agreed that both Matthew and Luke used Mark for many of their narratives (they have verbatim agreements all over the place, and there [...]