For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. [KJV 22:18-19]

The lineage, modulations and some pleasant illustrations of the scrivener's curse will here be sketched as well as a bit of its relation to the manifold processes of the manuscript transmission of literature. The basic paradoxical question to be addressed is: how did the scribes justify their own interventions in the texts they passed on while damning others who would do the same to theirs? 

While we readers of printed books find the occasional typo distracting, nothing less than a specter haunted the professional readers and writers of ancient books. They had constantly to interrogate the scrolls and codices they held in their hands. Just what is this volume? Who wrote it, copied it, glossed it, rubricated it, and occasionally effaced it? For whom was it made and for what ends? Why does it differ, trivially or dramatically, from the last copy they saw? What are their own options in satisfying demands for new copies from princes, teachers, students, librarians and laymen? These questions, habitual among the contemporary users of manuscripts, became the lifelong labor of the textual critics and diplomatists of more recent centuries. And the terminology they developed, concerning textual ancestors and descendants, conflation, recension, revision and so on, were only the scientific names for the ancient craft of handmade books.²

Very early on, the scribes began to promote the idea that they were not alone and unaided in their productions. The God they celebrated had books of his own and practices similar to theirs.³ Thus, in Exodus, the zeal of the Levites in smiting their brothers is rewarded with a blessing and the disloyal remnant are punished with a revealing curse:

And Moses returned unto the Lord, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin--: and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written. And the Lord said unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me, him I will blot out of my book. [KJV 32:31-33]

God's register was thought to be inscribed with the names of the living each New Year's day and those who are to die that year are blotted out, an act made final ten days later on the Day of Atonement. On this basis Jesus would give the faithful "power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Notwithstanding, in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven." [Luke 10:19-20]. 

Taking their example from the acts they imputed to the Deity, the scribes reciprocated with condemnatory practices comparable to God's. This effort reaches its pinnacle in the codification of the Law of Jealousies in the book of Numbers, ch. 5. There the priest, as helpful hand in the reproductive dynamic between husband and wife, also employs the scribal practices of writing and cursing. The fascinating procedure demands quotation in full:

And the LORD said to Moses, 
12: "Say to the people of Israel, If any man's wife goes astray and acts unfaithfully against him, 
13: if a man lies with her carnally, and it is hidden from the eyes of her husband, and she is undetected though she has defiled herself, and there is no witness against her, since she was not taken in the act; 
14: and if the spirit of jealousy comes upon him, and he is jealous of his wife who has defiled herself; or if the spirit of jealousy comes upon him, and he is jealous of his wife, though she has not defiled herself; 
15: then the man shall bring his wife to the priest, and bring the offering required of her, a tenth of an ephah of barley meal; he shall pour no oil upon it and put no frankincense on it, for it is a cereal offering of jealousy, a cereal offering of remembrance, bringing iniquity to remembrance. 
16: "And the priest shall bring her near, and set her before the LORD; 
17: and the priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel, and take some of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle and put it into the water. 
18: And the priest shall set the woman before the LORD, and unbind the hair of the woman's head, and place in her hands the cereal offering of remembrance, which is the cereal offering of jealousy. And in his hand the priest shall have the water of bitterness that brings the curse. 
19: Then the priest shall make her take an oath, saying, 'If no man has lain with you, and if you have not turned aside to uncleanness, while you were under your husband's authority, be free from this water of bitterness that brings the curse. 
20: But if you have gone astray, though you are under your husband's authority, and if you have defiled yourself, and some man other than your husband has lain with you, 
21: then' (let the priest make the woman take the oath of the curse, and say to the woman) 'the LORD make you an execration and an oath among your people, when the LORD makes your thigh fall away and your body swell; 
22: may this water that brings the curse pass into your bowels and make your body swell and your thigh fall away.' And the woman shall say, 'Amen, Amen.' 

23: "Then the priest shall write these curses in a book, and wash them off into the water of bitterness; 

24: and he shall make the woman drink the water of bitterness that brings the curse, and the water that brings the curse shall enter into her and cause bitter pain.
25: And the priest shall take the cereal offering of jealousy out of the woman's hand, and shall wave the cereal offering before the LORD and bring it to the altar; 
26: and the priest shall take a handful of the cereal offering, as its memorial portion, and burn it upon the altar, and afterward shall make the woman drink the water. 
27: And when he has made her drink the water, then, if she has defiled herself and has acted unfaithfully against her husband, the water that brings the curse shall enter into her and cause bitter pain, and her body shall swell, and her thigh shall fall away, and the woman shall become an execration among her people. 
28: But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, then she shall be free and shall conceive children. 

29: "This is the law in cases of jealousy, when a wife, though under her husband's authority, goes astray and defiles herself, 
30: or when the spirit of jealousy comes upon a man and he is jealous of his wife; then he shall set the woman before the LORD, and the priest shall execute upon her all this law. 
31: The man shall be free from iniquity, but the woman shall bear her iniquity." [RSV]

This special ritual is thought to be necessary when there are no witnesses to suspected adultery, a situation comparable to the doubts of the users of unfamiliar manuscripts. Here the jealousy of the husband can be accommodated to the jealousy of the scribe concerning the legitimacy of their respective offspring, and the curse of God is linked with that of the scribe, to wit.: "Drink my ink, defiler!"

The hand of God is further manipulated by the makers of manuscripts when the book of the Law, discovered by the scribes and read to king Josiah in II Kings 22, is burned by king Jehoiakim in Jeremiah 36. His reward is a prodigious curse on behalf of both God and the scribe, who now has his own name in the credits:

Now, after the king had burned the scroll with the words which Baruch wrote at Jeremiah's dictation, the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah:
28: "Take another scroll and write on it all the former words that were in the first scroll, which Jehoi'akim the king of Judah has burned. 
29: And concerning Jehoi'akim king of Judah you shall say, 'Thus says the LORD, You have burned this scroll, saying, "Why have you written in it that the king of Babylon will certainly come and destroy this land, and will cut off from it man and beast?" 
30: Therefore thus says the LORD concerning Jehoi'akim king of Judah, He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David, and his dead body shall be cast out to the heat by day and the frost by night. 
31: And I will punish him and his offspring and his servants for their iniquity; I will bring upon them, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and upon the men of Judah, all the evil that I have pronounced against them, but they would not hear.'" 
32: Then Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neri'ah, who wrote on it at the dictation of Jeremiah all the words of the scroll which Jehoi'akim king of Judah had burned in the fire; and many similar words were added to them. [RSV]

Notice the fine irony of "many similar words were added to them," thus legitimizing Baruch's own scribal additions along with curses like those aimed at future corrupters of the textual line. As a consecrated reviser of received texts, however, Baruch must yield to the fame of Ezra the scribe, called Esdras in the Septuagint. His legend, as one divinely and dramatically inspired, is developed in the apocryphal book called 4 Ezra or II Esdras, although the enormously complex suite of alterations that actual scribes made to the received historical texts in their own compilations of I and II Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, are too extensive to explore here:⁴

19: Then I answered and said, "Let me speak in thy presence, Lord. 
20: For behold, I will go, as thou hast commanded me, and I will reprove the people who are now living; but who will warn those who will be born hereafter? For the world lies in darkness, and its inhabitants are without light. 
21: For thy law has been burned, and so no one knows the things which have been done or will be done by thee. 
22: If then I have found favor before thee, send the Holy Spirit into me, and I will write everything that has happened in the world from the beginning, the things which were written in thy law, that men may be able to find the path, and that those who wish to live in the last days may live." 
23: He answered me and said, "Go and gather the people, and tell them not to seek you for forty days. 
24: But prepare for yourself many writing tablets, and take with you Sarea, Dabria, Selemia, Ethanus, and Asiel-these five, because they are trained to write rapidly; 
25: and you shall come here, and I will light in your heart the lamp of understanding, which shall not be put out until what you are about to write is finished. 
26: And when you have finished, some things you shall make public, and some you shall deliver in secret to the wise; tomorrow at this hour you shall begin to write." 
37: So I took the five men, as he commanded me, and we proceeded to the 
field, and remained there. 
38: And on the next day, behold, a voice called me, saying, "Ezra, open your mouth and drink what I give you to drink." 
39: Then I opened my mouth, and behold, a full cup was offered to me; it was full of something like water, but its color was like fire. 
40: And I took it and drank; and when I had drunk it, my heart poured forth understanding, and wisdom increased in my breast, for my spirit retained its memory; 
41: and my mouth was opened, and was no longer closed. 
42: And the Most High gave understanding to the five men, and by turns they wrote what was dictated, in characters which they did not know. They sat forty days, and wrote during the daytime, and ate their bread at night. 
43: As for me, I spoke in the daytime and was not silent at night. 
44: So during the forty days ninety-four books were written. 
45: And when the forty days were ended, the Most High spoke to me, saying, "Make public the twenty-four books that you wrote first and let the worthy and the unworthy read them; 46: but keep the seventy that were written last, in order to give them to the wise among your people. 
47: For in them is the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom, and the river of knowledge." 
48: And I did so. [RSV ch. 14]

Unlike the cursed bitter drink of ink that reveals infidelity and induces abortion, the firewater divinely proffered to Ezra ignites both comprehension and loquacity. By it the scribe is ennobled as well. A similar image of the scribe as a favored being is developed in another apocryphal work, the wisdom book of Sirach. Although Ben Sira has much to say about cursing, the image of the scribe presented here is too exalted for that. And his self-conception places him closer to God the Creator than to other working men:

Sirach, chapter 38.
24: The wisdom of the scribe depends on the opportunity of leisure; and he who has little business may become wise. 
25: How can he become wise who handles the plow, and who glories in the shaft of a goad, who drives oxen and is occupied with their work, and whose talk is about bulls? 
26: He sets his heart on plowing furrows, and he is careful about fodder for the heifers. 
27: So too is every craftsman and master workman who labors by night as well as by day; those who cut the signets of seals, each is diligent in making a great variety; he sets his heart on painting a lifelike image, and he is careful to finish his work. 
28: So too is the smith sitting by the anvil, intent upon his handiwork in iron; the breath of the fire melts his flesh, and he wastes away in the heat of the furnace; he inclines his ear to the sound of the hammer, and his eyes are on the pattern of the object. He sets his heart on finishing his handiwork, and he is careful to complete its decoration. 
29: So too is the potter sitting at his work and turning the wheel with his feet; he is always deeply concerned over his work, and all his output is by number. 
30: He moulds the clay with his arm and makes it pliable with his feet; he sets his heart to finish the glazing, and he is careful to clean the furnace. 
31: All these rely upon their hands, and each is skilful in his own work. 
32: Without them a city cannot be established, and men can neither sojourn nor live there. 
33: Yet they are not sought out for the council of the people, nor do they attain eminence in the public assembly. They do not sit in the judge's seat, nor do they understand the sentence of judgment; they cannot expound discipline or judgment, and they are not found using proverbs. 
34: But they keep stable the fabric of the world, and their prayer is in the practice of their trade. 

Sirach, chapter 39:

1: On the other hand he who devotes himself to the study of the law of the Most High will seek out the wisdom of all the ancients, and will be concerned with prophecies; 
2: he will preserve the discourse of notable men and penetrate the subtleties of parables; 
3: he will seek out the hidden meanings of proverbs and be at home with the obscurities of parables. 
4: He will serve among great men and appear before rulers; he will travel through the lands of foreign nations, for he tests the good and the evil among men. 
5: He will set his heart to rise early to seek the Lord who made him, and will make supplication before the Most High; he will open his mouth in prayer and make supplication for his sins. 
6: If the great Lord is willing, he will be filled with the spirit of understanding; he will pour forth words of wisdom and give thanks to the Lord in prayer. 
7: He will direct his counsel and knowledge aright, and meditate on his secrets. 
8: He will reveal instruction in his teaching, and will glory in the law of the Lord's covenant. 
9: Many will praise his understanding, and it will never be blotted out; his memory will not disappear, and his name will live through all generations. 
10: Nations will declare his wisdom, and the congregation will proclaim his praise; 
11: if he lives long, he will leave a name greater than a thousand, and if he goes to rest, it is enough for him. 

The generosity of this scribal self-conception flows from the centrality of scripture in Jewish life generally.⁵ And it especially flourished in Hellenistic times.⁶ No penetrators of the subtleties of parables or the revisers, adapters, and amenders of texts were more active in the transmission of scripture, and Greek literature as well, than those of Alexandria in the centuries immediately before and after the turn of the Common Era.⁷ And they tooted their own horns too. They developed, for example, their own legend concerning the process of translating the Hebrew scripture into the Greek Septuagint. The spurious second-century BCE Letter of Aristeas asserts that, at the request of Ptolemy II, seventy-two elders of Israel translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek in seventy-two days in Alexandria. It employs its own version of the scribal curse: 

308 When the work was completed, Demetrius collected together the Jewish population in the place where the translation had been made, and read it over to all, in the presence of the translators, who met with a great reception also from the people, because of the great benefits which they had 309 conferred upon them. They bestowed warm praise upon Demetrius, too, and urged him to have the whole law transcribed and present a copy to their leaders. 310 After the books had been read, the priests and the elders of the translators and the Jewish community and the leaders of the people stood up and said, that since so excellent and sacred and accurate a translation had been made, it was only right that it should remain as it was and no 311 alteration should be made in it. And when the whole company expressed their approval, they bade them pronounce a curse in accordance with their custom upon any one who should make any alteration either by adding anything or changing in any way whatever any of the words which had been written or making any omission. This was a very wise precaution to ensure that the book might be preserved for all the future time unchanged.⁸ 

Side by side with the Jewish scribes, Christian makers of texts also worked in Jerusalem and Alexandria. The apostle Paul and the authors of the Gospels engineered the deconstruction of Synagoga and the Old Testament Law, constructing in their place Ecclesia and the transcendent Spirit of the New. They also employed the scrivener's curse with new twists of their own. One of these involved creating a distinction between their own humble scribal activity and that of the priestly elite of the Temple. 

Thus in Mark, the Scribes of the Pharisees are portrayed as a patrician corporation of resentful quibblers, while the Son of Man's own teaching among the commoners is exalted by miracles. But that portrait may be a straw man. In an article on "Judaisms of the First Century CE," Sarah J. Tanzer says:

The evidence for Scribes in the first century CE is at best sparse and confusing, and the portrait that emerges from the various sources is incoherent. Despite the presentation of the scribes in the New Testament, scribes do not seem to have formed an organization with its own membership. Rather, scribalism was a profession and a class of literate individuals who functioned as personal secretaries and public officials at all levels of Jewish society. Scribes who worked with the ruling class would most likely have been learned in all aspects of Judaism.⁹ 

The interesting thing here is that the scribes of the New Testament were fashioning a class enemy in the self-important Scribes of the Temple while discrediting its 'wisdom of this world' in favor of its transcendent replacement by the gospel of Christ. These new scribes at the margins of Jewish society saw themselves as workers in the vineyard, greatly elaborating the narratives about Jesus in proceeding from Mark to Matthew and Luke to John's dramatic recension. 

But it is in the letters of Paul that the scrivener's curse is transmuted into a metaphor that matches in profundity the spiritual claims of his conception of the new religion. Certainly Paul had employed curses of his own, as at the end of I Corinthians: "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Marantha." [KJV 16:22] And in the epistle to the Galatians, Paul pronounces a curse on the bearers of rival texts: "If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed." [KJV 1:9] There, he was concerned to discredit the Judaisers among the followers of Christ who would require Gentiles to undergo circumcision and conversion before being admitted to the fellowship of Christians.¹⁰ But this justification by works, however painful, and in conformity with the old Law, is forcefully dismissed in favor of justification by faith alone.

For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the Book of the Law to do them. But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith. And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth of a tree. [KJV 3:10-13]

Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you? Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.¹¹  [KJV]

But to return, finally, to John's curse at the end of Revelations, and its echo of the Law of Jealousies, the redeemed in the New Jerusalem are seen to be "prepared as a bride for her husband" [21:2]

And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. [KJV 22:18-19]