JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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The Number of New Testament Manuscripts
Why is it that so many people uncritically accept the writings of the great classical
writers such as Plato, Homer or Aristotle while they categorically reject the Bible? This is ironic
since there are relatively few manuscript copies of ancient works that are available for study
today.
The 643 manuscript copies of Homer's Iliad contain the largest amount of copies of any
ancient work. But such an amount is highly unusual since there are only twenty copies of Livy's
History of Rome, only about ten manuscripts of Caesar's War Commentaries, seven for Plato's
Tetralogies, and merely a couple of copies for Tacitus' minor works.
How does the New Testament compare? It is vastly superior! The Greek manuscripts,
whether of a portion or of the whole of the New Testament, total nearly 5,300. Of these, 276 or
more are called "uncial manuscripts." These are written in capital letters. In addition, there are
more than 2,768 "minuscule manuscripts," which are written in small letters more or less joined
together in the flowing style of ordinary handwriting.36
There are also more than 2,146 Greek lectionaries in existence. These contain groupings
of portions of the New Testament for appropriate Scripture lessons for church worship. They are
being given more consideration for textual study than they were a few years ago. There are also
more than 81 papyri containing portions of the New Testament text.37
In addition, there are more than 19,000 ancient New Testament manuscripts in Latin,
Syriac, Armenian, and other languages. This means that there are more than 24,000 hand-written
copies of the New Testament that have survived. There are 8,000 copies of the Vulgate (a Latin
translation of the Bible done by Jerome from A.D. 382 to 405) and more than 350 copies of
Syriac (Christian Aramaic) versions of the New Testament (from A.D. 150-250 with most copies
being produced from A.D. 400s).38
The contrast between the manuscript evidence for the New Testament and that of
other ancient writings is monumental. Is it not ironic that hardly anyone ever questions, much
less examines, the accuracy of the texts of other works, yet readily claims that the New
Testament text cannot be trusted? The real culprit is not the lack of textual evidence of the
Christian Scriptures, but ignorance and prejudice. Sir Frederic Kenyon, eminent scholar of
textual criticism, addresses this double standard:
"Scholars are satisfied that they possess substantially the true text of the principal
Greek and Roman writers whose works have come down to us, of Sophocles,
of Thucydides, of Cicero, of Virgil; yet our knowledge of their writings depends
on a mere handful of manuscripts, whereas the manuscripts of the New Testament
are counted by hundreds, and even thousands."39