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New Testament Manuscript Evidence

“The Bible’s been changed”? The New Testament is the best-attested text of the ancient world. The key numbers, manuscripts, and an honest account of the variants. Members download the full reference.

The easiest hard objection

“The Bible has been copied and changed so many times we can’t know what it said.” In fact the New Testament is, by a wide margin, the best-attested document of the ancient world — more manuscripts, earlier copies, a smaller gap to the originals than any comparable text.

The facts (free preview)

  • ~5,800 Greek manuscripts (~25,000+ in all languages)
  • Earliest fragment — P52, c. AD 125, within a generation of the original
  • Most variants are trivial; no core doctrine rests on a disputed reading

What’s in the full member PDF

  • A numbers table (vs. Homer, Caesar) and the key early manuscripts
  • An honest account of the variants — including the two openly-flagged passages
  • Why the accurate claim is also the strong one

Members: download the full printable reference below. Support for $1/month or more to unlock the library.

Topic: Christian Orthodoxy