Chapter 3 Textual Criticism Michael W. Holmes Bethel College In an age of mass-produced books and copy machines that enable us to obtain virtually on-demand, perfect copies of almost anything, it is difficult to imagine just how hard it was to obtain a reliable copy of a book before the invention of printing. All copying was done by hand (thus books produced in this way are called manuscripts), and this slow, laborious, and expensive1 process was subject to all the vagaries and corrupting influences