Quote:The photograph reveals that the word purportedly used by Tacitus in Annals 15.44, chrestianos ("the good"), has been overwritten as christianos ("the Christians")
Remember that these were copies of copies of copies. Even in Tacitus' day he would have written one manuscript copy which would be taken to a
scriptorium where it would be read aloud so that scribes - more likely literate slaves - could copy them down thus industrializing the process as the Romans loved to do. Depending on the pronunciation of the reader and the hearing of the scribe errors could have been introduced into the process right in the beginning. Bart Ehrman goes into this sort of thing in great depth in Misquoting Jesus. So there may very well have been only one inerrant version of Tacitus' book...or any book. The one the author hand wrote. Anything after that gets iffy.
Since parchment scrolls did not last forever - particularly in humid climates - it was necessary for owners to have copies made if they wished to preserve them. Again, Ehrman discusses how even these individual copyings could and did go awry.
But let's lose the idea that we are dealing with what "Tacitus" wrote. These scrolls were well removed from his original.
