New Testament Manuscripts and

Other Ancient World Document

Manuscripts

Last Updated: June 29, 2006

Posted: December 25, 2005

Introduction:

The New Testament textual critic Dr. Bruce M. Metzger compares the manuscript evidence for the New Testament documents to some of the manuscript evidence for other ancient documents in his volume, The Text of the New Testament. Some of his comments, along with a few of Antony Flew's comments, are below:

Dr. Metzger writes:

New Testament Manuscripts:

• “On the contrary, the time between the composition of the books of the New Testament and the earliest extant copies is relatively brief. Instead of the lapse of a millennium or more, as is the case of not a few classical authors, several papyrus manuscripts of portions of the New Testament are extant which were copied within a century or so after the composition of the original documents” (TTNT:35).
  
  
  
  Amount of Manuscripts and Time Gaps for Other Ancient World Documents:
  
  
  
• “The works of several ancient authors are preserved to us by the thinnest possible thread of transmission. For example, the compendious history of Rome by Velleius Paterculus survived to modern times in only one incomplete manuscript, from which the editio princes was made—and this lone manuscript was lost in the seventeenth century after being copied by Beatus Rhenanus at Amerbach” (TTNT:34).
  
  
  
• “Even the Annals of the famous historian Tacitus is extant, so far as the first six books are concerned, but in a single manuscript, dating from the ninth century” (TTNT:34).
  
  
  
• “In 1870 the only known manuscript of the Epistle to Diognetus, an early Christian composition which editors usually include in the corpus of Apostolic Fathers, perished in a fire at the municipal library in Strasbourg. In contrast with these figures, the textual critic of the New Testament is embarrassed by the wealth of his material” (TTNT:34).
  
  
  
  
• “Furthermore, the work of many an ancient author has been preserved only in manuscripts which date from the Middle Ages (sometimes the late Middle Ages), far removed from the time at which he lived and wrote” (TTNT:34-35).

• Atheist Antony Flew stated: “There’s a much greater richness of manuscripts for all the major early Christian documents than there is for, say, the plays of Aeschylus or Sophocles or the works of Aristotle. But of course, that’s not evidence about Jesus, but very good authority for the accuracy of the text that is printed in translation in the New Testament” (DJRFD:66).