Christian apologists have long pointed out that when it comes to textual reliability, the NT is in a league of its own compared to all other ancient texts. According to NT manuscript expert Daniel Wallace, there are 1000x more copies of the NT than the average ancient Greek text. If we stacked the NT manuscripts on top of each other, they would reach more than a mile high. Not only are there more manuscripts for the NT than any other ancient text, but the gap between the original text and our first copies is smaller for the NT than other ancient texts. There are 3x as many NT manuscripts within 200 years of the original text than the average Greco-Roman text has in 2000 years.
Unfortunately, many of the statistics appearing in apologetics literature are outdated. Additional manuscripts of both the NT and other ancient texts continue to be discovered. Clay Jones wrote an article for the Christian Research Institute in 2012 providing the latest stats. The article was recently posted on the CRI website. Check it out and see how the NT compares to other ancient Greek texts.
Thinking to Believe 
January 15, 2014 at 3:50 am
AS AN ADJUNCT For Information:
RELIGIONS’ HOLY BOOKS:
The Analects, Confucius;
Bhagavad Gita
A Sanskrit poem that is part of the Indian epic known as the Mahabharata ;
Five Classics, Five works traditionally attributed to Confucius;
Koran (Arabic, al-Qur’an) The primary holy book of Islam.;
New Testament The second portion of the Christian Bible;
Old Testament The Christian name for the Hebrew Bible.;
Talmud A compilation of Jewish oral law and rabbinical teachings;
Tao-te-ching (The Way and Its Power) The basic text of the Chinese philosophy and religion known as Taoism;
Upanishads The basis of Hindu religion and philosophy;
Veda The sacred scripture of Hinduism.
Guru Granth Sahib is the Sikh Holy Book. It contains all the sayings of Sikh gurus.
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January 15, 2014 at 10:23 am
Thanks Jason, updated info is always welcome and useful.
I sent you my completed review of Dr. Richard C. Lewontin’s Billions and Billions of Demons recently. I could not find any commentary on it on line and considering how often it has been quoted by us I thought it would serve some useful purpose.
I finally posted it here:
http://www.booksie.com/editorial_and_opinion/article/danzil/an-examination-of-richard-c-lewontins-billions-and-billions-of-demons
Also did a response to Todd C. Wood’s “There is no Darwin Conspiracy” paper published in the AiG’s Research Journal in 2009.
also posted here:
http://www.booksie.com/editorial_and_opinion/article/danzil/there-is-no-darwin-conspiracy
sorry for crashing your blog with this news but it’s just so darn convenient:)
Hope the family and you have a bless New Year.
Okay, back to your topic.
It has always amazed me how willing God hates are to ignore statistics when they are not in their favor. And how willing they are to accept the credibility of lesser documents that don’t challenge their world view.
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January 15, 2014 at 12:35 pm
Dan,
Got your email. I’ll take a look at it at some time in the future (to be specific, 🙂 ).
Critics of Christianity don’t have a leg to stand on if they want to claim that the NT has not bee reliably preserved since the 27 books were written in the 1st century.
Jason
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