Just saw this with the recent thread bump.
Another curious difference is that Christianity tries to support the veracity of its scriptures by pointing out the thousands of document pieces/scraps and copies that are used to compare one to another [to show how little variation there has been].
meanwhile Islam claims divine origin for its scripture by pointing out there are only 6-7 (?) valid authentic copies of scripture. This lack of quantity is assumed to be a mark of divinity.
To me, the shocking thing actually
is how close to samizdat the various original language texts of the Bible have remained, though to be fair they weren't disseminated nearly as far or for as long as the various second or third generation translations. However, even the Latin bible from one end of the Roman Catholic world greatly resembled the bible from the other end, and this long before the printing press revolution.
The problem comes in when people don't realize that they're reading not a second generation, but rather a
fourth generation copy of the original work that's been translated through at least three different languages, each of which had to use circumlocution to describe words that didn't exist in their own language. No matter how well-intentioned the scribe (and most of them honestly were), there are just some errors of meaning that always leak in.
However, even reading the original Greek/Aramaic/Hebrew texts, the saving grace of Christianity's ability to move with the times, is how impossible it is for any respected scholar of the Bible to argue that it is anything except an arbitrarily
made thing, even if the books themselves are completely accurate. Some church officials over a millenia ago sat down and decided what of a few dozen books floating around were canonical, which were heretical, and which fell somewhere in-between. It's clearly recorded in church history and impossible for anyone who calls themselves a scholar to argue. The best case that can be made was that these leaders were wise people who could be trusted to make the right choice, but the concept of an infallible Bible sinks right there.
And that's a frickin' relief.