What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[watchamadoodle]

Later scribes could not distinguish the editorial comments from the text and unintentionally created this apparently clumsy forgery? In other words it was margin notes instead of a deliberate forgery?

Scholars think that did happen. Not all "interpolations" are deliberate forgeries. Sometimes margin notes would be carried into later copies by careless scribes.

I suspect in some cases the scribe thought the margin notes were corrections to the manuscript instead of notes?

I wonder how the scribes knew where to interpolate the margin notes into the text when they made their mistakes? Do you suppose they guessed where the note should be inserted or did the note creator typically insert a marker in the text to show where his/her note applied?

Also, wasn't paper expensive? Would there be room in the margin for a note or would a scrap of paper be inserted?