> rewritten in light of the morality of those with power. Case in point: the Bible

Wait, are you saying that the bible itself has been rewritten (in terms of actual substance)? I was always under the impression that a lot of care was taken to preserve the original meaning of the underlying text, taking into account that it was written thousands of years ago in a language nobody fully understands anymore.

The Bible has changed connotations in certain verses in the translation stage.

For one example, "The Ten Commandments" is an unscriptural phrase; it's "The Ten Words" in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Only for the King James Version in English does it become commandments (possibly reflecting the monarch-benefactor's ideas of law and authority).

> meaning of the underlying text

The meaning is so highly disputed there are literally thousands of denominations.

"Meaning" sure, but the actual words? I'm not being hostile, dude, I'm genuinely curious to see examples. Of course translations vary, but I was under the impression that the actual text of the translations didn't vary substantially (like "thou shalt not kill" became "you will not kill", etc.). But I don't have the bible memorized, so there may be more to it than I'm aware.

You are right. Massive effort has been put into creating correct translations, both concordant and simplified.

And last time older writings were found they showed that the copies had been amazingly precisely done.

Actually if you head over to r/AcademicBiblical you will find one consensus among scholars(no matter the denomination + atheist) is that there are multiple variations of the bible.

Thus there is no one canonical bible. We can only have approximations of the originals.

And that is before we get to the problem of translating Koine Greek and ancient Hebrew into modern languages.

Multiple endings of Mark, the added adultery fable, the Johannine comma and that is just the examples from New Testament.

There are basically two types of errors when copying, the innocent: like copying line twice - probably due to tiredness

Then there is the ideological, where change was made by copyst to suit some particular ideology.

Actually there is also the well meaning copyist who sometimes will "correct" some text.

The earliest fragments we have are at least 100 years removed from originals for the New Testament.

For the Old Testament the earliest we have Dead See Scrolls which are also a couple of hundred of years removed from originals if not more.