Typographical Errors and Manuscript Correction in the Gutenberg Genesis as a Representative Cold-Type Hand-Press Text

 Transcription and translation of the first two lines of the Guttenberg Genesis page:
[Strike-through text was replaced, in the first line, by a correction above the line.]

Incipit liber bresich que nos ^id est^ Geneseos
in principio creavit Deus caelum et terram dicim(us)]

Translation:
Here begins the book [in Hebrew called] bresith that we ^that is^ Genesis
In the beginning God created heaven and earth we say. 

     These typesetting errors appear to have happened because the typesetter was, shockingly, trying to read the Latin text as he set the type, anticipating what it might say, rather than just following the copy he was given.  He was struggling with the introduction of the Hebrew name of the book, "bresith" [there transcribed in Roman characters], in the middle of the first sentence, after the "Incipit" or "Here begins."  He made a similar error at the end of the first line of Genesis to indicate that "we" (Latin readers) would say it this way.  This book's owner had the mistake hand-corrected by a scribe, or it may be that Gutenberg had this copy corrected while the first letters of each sentence were being "rubricated" or touched-up with red ink.  That makes this copy of the earliest printed book a hybrid, part moveable type-set and part scribal manuscript.  Note that the ink of the inserted correction, "id est," matches the rubrication ink rather than the red of the two-color printing in the "incipit" line.  The same corrector/illuminator also probably added the multi-color capital and marginal decorations, and in that same red ink, the marginal Roman numeral chapter numbers ("i" through "vi" or 1 through 6).  If you count up 16 and 18 lines from the bottom of the right column, you can see two other cross-out corrections of the printed text by our scrupulous scribe.

     To see the same page of another copy of the Gutenberg Bible held by the Morgan Library, click here.  In addition to its differing scribal decoration, you will note that its errors are uncorrected.  What does this mean about the power of print to disseminate sacred text?