How Many Manuscripts Do We Have?

This question is important when it comes to textual criticism and defending the reliability of the Bible. However, we need to have a balanced (or at least honest) answer. Don’t worry, truth still favors reliability, but being open or transparent with facts allows skeptics to engage in the conversation rather than constantly attack.

What most people focus on is the sheer number of manuscripts. Yes, the NT particularly has enormous amounts of support compared to any other author of Greco-Roman literature. Homer is the closest with about 600-700 copies of his writings. Sophocles and Aristotle are next with 100-200. We could dive deeper into these copies, noting their dates and how much time had passed between the authors and the approximate date of the first copy. I’ll leave that for a later post.

When we turn to the NT, we have about 5800 manuscripts. The following chart is from 2017, so numbers probably need to be adjusted. Papyri are certainly our most important witnesses, since they are early. 

        Witness Type                                    #                Date Range

Papyri                 128     2nd–8th

Uncials (Majuscules)          322     Mostly 4th–10th, but some as early as 2nd

Minuscules (Cursives)             2926     9th–16th

Lectionaries                 2462

Total                  5838 

Versions: Some will make a brash claim that we have 15,000-20,000 copies of the NT. This is flat incorrect. Any number that is exaggerated like this is most likely including early versions of the NT, that is where the NT was translated into Latin, Coptic, or Syriac. The value of these versions varies, depending on their date, the skill of the scribe/ text type, and the quality of the manuscript that they were translating. 

It is possible for versions to be a witness for very old readings, so they could be quite valuable. 

We have approximately 10,000 Latin manuscripts, from 3rd to 16th centuries. 

The Coptic version has both Sahidic and Bohairic strands, and its origins are in the 3rd century.

The Syriac version also has origins into the 3rd century.

Yes, we have an abundance of evidence. And it’s early. This bodes very well for helping determine original wording.

Truth time 1. Dan Wallace identifies four reasons why our number of Greek manuscripts needs to be adjusted. (1) some manuscripts have been lost or misplaced (2) some have been destroyed (3) some are parts of others that have already been identified [so we’ve counted twice], (4) some were identified as one type of manuscripts (e.g., majuscule) and then corrected to another (e.g., lectionary)—we categorized twice. All of these corrections affect the numbers by about 100-200. I will hunt down his article on this, but for now, see his chapter in Interpreting the NT Text by Bock and Fanning.

Truth time 2. The skeptic’s favorite topic to point out is the amount of differences among the manuscripts. Here’s the number: 400,000 (ish). Bart Ehrman’s most popular quote is that there are more variants than words in the entire NT (138,000 words). The more manuscripts we have, the more potential for variants.

However, I would much rather have 6000 manuscripts with many differences than just one manuscript or no differences. That’s cult like. Or as if someone destroyed manuscripts that disagreed with them. That has happened throughout history with religions, and again, I’d rather be honest with the data we have.

Two encouraging thoughts to close:

(1) The text has been stable. The TR forms the basis for the KJV. The TR was built from a handful of late, Byzantine texts. The NA28 uses an entirely different method (reasoned eclecticism) to determine accurate readings whenever there is a variant in the text. It “usually” agrees with Alexandrian readings. 

Yet, there are only 5,000 differences between the TR and the NA28. That’s 96% agreement. 

(2) Text critics like to break the 400,000 variants down into three categories: (a) insignificant for the meaning of the text. This would be spelling, synonyms, “the,” switching word order, etc. (b) meaningful but not realistic. These are readings only supported by one or two manuscripts. We know these are very unlikely to be original. (C) meaningful and realistically could be the original reading. 

Only about 1% of the 400,000 fit into category C, and none of them affect any major doctrine. As in, Jesus’ deity is never denied. Salvation is always by faith. Jesus always rises from the dead. We can trust the reliability of the NT based on the data we have.

But it’s still preferred to be transparent with all the information. And listen to the concerns of others before blasting them with our knowledge. Probably a good place to apply Prov 26:4-5.