The Thousands of Manuscripts
Apologists when speaking on the historical New Testament like to point out that there are ‘thousands of manuscripts’, but what they do not mention or do not know is that 90% of them are 12th to 13th century or later and about 5% are 9th century and later. When the 1st Bible was assembled around the 4th century and before the manuscripts consists of isolated fragments. Prior to 200 CE; existing manuscript evidence amounts to 0.28% of the New Testament (22 fragmentary verses out of a possible 8,000 verses coming only from Revelations and the Gospel of John). The Oxyrhynchus (P77) which contains verses from the Gospel of Matthew (200 CE), the Chester Beatty papyri (P46) which contains verses from the Pauline Epistles and 28 fragmentary manuscripts which date to about the 3rd century CE. Greek manuscripts: I would consult Appendix I Codices Graeci et Latin in Nestle-Aland 27th Edition and Novum Testamentum Graece (pp. 684-718).
Summary:
P52 2nd century contains Gospel of John (GJ) 18:31-33,37-38
P90 2nd Century contains GJ 18:36-19:1, 19:2-7
P98 possibly 2nd Century contains Rev 1:13-20
P32 ca. 200 CE contains Titus 1:11-15, 2:3-8
P46 ca. 200 CE contains lengthy portions of 9 Pauline and Deuteropauline epistles; none is complete
P64 , 67 ca. 200 CE contains portions of Gospel of Matthew (GM)
P66 ca. 200 CE most chapters of GJ
Since we have almost nothing in the way of New Testament texts before the 4th century then we cannot evaluate the historically of the claims within them.
Filed by Frank at September 5th, 2008 under Religion