إعادة تفعيل رابط الموسوعة الكاثوليكية
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14530a.htm#IV

وهذا هو النص حرفيا
اقتباس
Transmission of the text
اقتباس
No book of ancient times has come down to us exactly as it left the hands of its author--all have been in some way altered. The material conditions under which a book was spread before the invention of printing (1440), the little care of the copyists,correctors, and glossators for the text, so different from the desire of accuracy exhibited today, explain sufficiently the divergences we find between various manuscripts of the same work. To these causes may be added, in regard to the Scriptures,exegetical difficulties and dogmatical controversies. To exempt the scared writings from ordinary conditions a very specialprovidence would have been necessary, and it has not been the will of God to exercise this providence. More than 150,000 different readings have been found in the older witnesses to the text of the New Testament--which in itself is a proof thatScriptures are not the only, nor the principal, means of revelation. In the concrete order of the present economy God had only to prevent any such alteration of the sacred texts as would put the Church in the moral necessity of announcing with certaintyas the word of God what in reality was only a human utterance. Let us say, however, from the start, that the substantial tenor of the sacred text has not been altered, not withstanding the uncertainty which hangs over some more or less long and more or less important historical or dogmatical passages. Moreover--and this is very important--these alterations are not irremediable; we can at least very often, by studying the variants of the texts, eliminate the defective readings and thus re-establish the primitive text. This is the object of textual criticism.
Brief history of the textual criticism