New Testament Manuscripts - Most Are From The Middle Ages

There are currently over 5,700 manuscript copies (and fragments of manuscript copies) for the New Testament in Greek. We have more manuscripts for the New Testament than for any other book from the ancient world — more than we have for the writings of Homer, Plato, Cicero, etc. However, this number can be a bit misleading if we don’t look closer.

First, the 5,700 number is often quoted in a way that makes it look like we have over 5,700 FULL manuscript copies. We don’t. This number includes partial mss copies, and fragments (such as P52, the oldest fragment we have from the Gospel of John that is the size of a business card).

Also, the VAST majority of these mss copies are from the Middle Ages, as the chart above shows. (The chart was created by data provided by Kurt Aland - one of the principle editors of our modern Greek source texts - in his book, “The Text of The New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism.”)

We have very few manuscript copies that go back to the early centuries CE. Also, all of these manuscript copies have textual variants. Thousands and thousands of textual variants. The majority of them are minor, such as grammatical differences or errors. But there are some that are larger. And the farther we go back in time, to the older manuscripts, the larger the number of textual variants. The older manuscripts have many textual variants between each other, and also variants from the later mss…..such as the last 11 verses in the book of Mark, or the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8. If you have a Bible with good footnotes, you will see those passages contained in brackets (John 7:53-8:11, for example), and there will be a statement in the footnotes along the lines of: “Later mss add the story of the adulterous woman” in the NASB, or “The most ancient authorities lack 7.53—8.11; other authorities add the passage here or after 7.36 or after 21.25 or after Luke 21.38, with variations of text; some mark the passage as doubtful” from the NRSV. Similar notes will be found in the footnotes of the NIV and ESV.

The textual variants are laid out in detail in the critical apparatus of the source texts, like the Nestle-Aland and the UBS Greek New Testament. Those are the texts, and the detailed notes from the apparatus, that translators use to provide the majority of our modern English New Testaments.

So again, the 5,700 number can be a bit deceiving. Yes, scholars do have many many manuscript copies to work with..…more than were available before. We continue to find more manuscript copies and fragments of copies, and also continue to learn more about the language and culture of the 1st and 2nd centuries, which helps in the scholarship process. But we are also faced with the reality that the vast majority of the manuscript copies we have come from the Middle Ages, and the further back we go, the less we have, but with more textual variants involved.

Essentially, we have to trust that scholars are doing the best they can with what they have (which is ironically something Evangelicals tend to scoff at - trusting scholars).

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For resources on this, see the following:

Textual Research On The Bible https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/Intro-ScholarlyEditions-GBS_2.pdf

New Testament Manuscripts: Good News and Bad News https://ehrmanblog.org/new-testament-manuscripts-good-news-and-bad-news/

A Very brief Introduction to the Critical Apparatus of the Nestle-Aland by Brent Nongbri (2006) http://www.marquette.edu/maqom/ApparatusGuide.pdf

Bruce Metzger - Handing Down the Bible Through the Ages: The Role of Scribe & Translator https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfWOEh0AYSo

The Text of The New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism - Kurt Aland https://books.google.com/books?id=RtcUAAAAIAAJ&q=81#v=snippet&q=81&f=false

The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (4th Edition) - Metzger and Ehrman https://archive.org/details/TheTextOfNewTestament4thEdit

Bart Ehrman on the Original New Testament https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIwfV3SdhNQ&t=3s

Is The Original New Testament Lost? :: A Dialogue with Dr. Bart Ehrman & Dr. Daniel Wallace https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg-dJA3SnTA&t=628s

The Origins of the New Testament  http://www.helsinki.fi/teol/pro/_merenlah/oppimateriaalit/text/english/newtest.htm

25,000 New Testament Manuscripts? Big Deal. (The chart at the top came from this link…the data came from Kurt Aland’s book as referenced above.) http://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined/2013/11/25000-new-testament-manuscripts-big-deal/

Biblical Manuscripts - New Testament Manuscripts - Various sources listed here (Metzger, Ehrman, etc) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_manuscript#cite_ref-5

Dating the Oldest New Testament Manuscripts https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/scriptorium/papyrus/texts/manuscripts.html