Bible Fact · 1 Peter 1:25 — 'But the word of the Lord remains forever.'
New Testament Manuscript Evidence
The Fact
When scholars assess the reliability of ancient documents, they look at the number of surviving manuscripts and the gap between the original writing and the earliest copies. By these measures, the New Testament stands in a class by itself. Number of manuscripts: Over 5,800 Greek manuscripts exist, plus over 10,000 Latin Vulgate copies, and another 9,300 copies in other ancient languages — totaling over 25,000 manuscripts. By comparison: Caesar's Gallic Wars has 10 surviving manuscripts; Plato's works, 7; Homer's Iliad, 643 (the next best-attested ancient document). Time gap: The earliest known New Testament fragment (the John Rylands Papyrus, containing John 18:31–33) dates to approximately 125 AD — within 30 years of the original. For comparison, the earliest copy of Caesar's Gallic Wars is from 900 years after it was written. The earliest complete New Testament (Codex Sinaiticus) dates to approximately 330 AD. The textual variants that exist between manuscripts are primarily minor spelling differences and word order variations — the core theological content is stable across all manuscript traditions.
Context
The textual critic F.J.A. Hort wrote: 'The amount of what can in any sense be called substantial variation is but a small fraction of the whole residuary variation, and can hardly be said to touch one thousandth part of the entire text.' The text is extraordinarily stable.
Significance
No serious historian doubts the textual integrity of the New Testament — the question is not whether we have what was written, but whether what was written is true.
Reflection
The New Testament is the best-attested document of the ancient world. When someone says they can't trust the Bible because it's been 'changed' over time, you now have the historical answer. The question is: what will you do with what it actually says?