Manuscript Quantity
This test asks questions about the substantiation of the documents. Are there enough early manuscripts of a document to conclude that it has been accurately transmitted? The New Testament far exceeds any other historical document in this category. There are over 24,000 early manuscripts or manuscript fragments, including more than 5,300 in the original Greek language. There are complete collections of the New Testament books preserved in a bound fashion similar to today’s Bible. We call these codices. Compare this with only 193 copies of the writings of Sophocles and it is clear that the preservation of the New Testament manuscripts is superb. Amazingly, of all documents prior to the second century, the Iliad by Homer comes in a distant second with only 643 manuscript fragments.
Accuracy of Manuscripts
When compared to each other, how accurate do these manuscripts appear? Do they all say the same thing? Naturally, the more manuscripts available the less likely they would be to match precisely. The Bible defies these odds. While there are not enough copies to determine the accuracy of most historic documents, the New Testament is generally regarded as 99+% accurate. The small percentage of inaccuracies is usually insignificant spelling and/or wording changes. There are virtually no changes of significant meaning.
One of the great evidences of this occurred with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and actually applies to the Old Testament documents. Prior to this discovery the oldest known Hebrew manuscript of the entire Bible was the Aleppo Codex, written about 900 AD. When the scrolls were unearthed scholars were amazed to find the text to be virtually identical to the Aleppo Codex, despite the fact that they dated about 200 BC – over 1000 years earlier!
Period of Time Elapsed
How much time elapsed between the original writing and the earliest copy we have available today? A longer time span since the original would mean more generations of copies, thus more room for human error. Most of the early copies we have of New Testament documents date to within 90 years of the original; some may be closer than 20 years.
Until recently a fragment of the Gospel of John, dated about 125 AD, was the earliest known copy of any part of the New Testament. In 1972, however, nine New Testament manuscript fragments were found in the caves near the Dead Sea. Among these were part of Mark dated about 50 AD, part of Luke dated about 57 AD, and part of Acts from 66 AD. Remarkably, this places these copies not more than a decade or two (and perhaps only a few years) from the original documents.
Additionally, complete New Testament manuscripts have been found, such as Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, which are dated to 325-50 AD and 350 AD respectively. Compare this to the earliest copies of Sophocles’ writings dated 1400 years after the original.
Comparison to Other Literary Works
The table below shows how other historical literary works compare to the Bible.1 First note the number of extant copies (copies made from the original) still in existence. Also note how narrow the time span is between the original and the earliest copies. Of the two major steps involved in textual criticism, no other literary work in history can compare to the Bible. If there is any book in all of history that can be considered to be textually accurate, it should be the Bible.
| WORK/AUTHOR | DATE WRITTEN | EARLIEST COPY | YEARS ELAPSED | NO. (#) COPIES |
| Caesar | 100 – 44 BC | 900 AD | 1,000 | 10 |
| Plato | 427 – 347 BC | 900 AD | 1,200 | 7 |
| Sophocles | 496 – 406 BC | 1000 AD | 1,400 | 193 |
| Aristotle | 384 – 322 BC | 1100 AD | 1,400 | 49 |
| Iliad (Homer) | 900 BC | 400 BC | 500 | 643 |
| Tacitus | 100 AD | 1100 AD | 1,000 | 20 |
| Thucydides | 460 – 400 BC | 900 AD | 1,300 | 8 |
| Herodotus | 480 – 425 BC | 900 AD | 1,300 | 8 |
| Euripedes | 480 – 406 BC | 1100 AD | 1,500 | 9 |
| Aristophanes | 450 – 385 BC | 900 AD | 1,200 | 10 |
| New Testament | 40 – 90 AD | 50 AD | <20 | 23,000 |
- Information condensed from Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands A Verdict (Here’s Life Publishers, Inc., San Bernardino, CA, 1992), 42-43. ↩︎