The New Testament is the best-attested book of the ancient world. The manuscript copies of most Greek and Latin authors can usually be counted on both hands, with some rising in the hundreds. Homer’s writings are the second-most common, with fewer than 2500 copies of his Iliad and Odyssey combined. But Homer pales in comparison with the New Testament.
The number of New Testament manuscripts in Greek alone now stands at over 5800. Add another 10,000+ for Latin copies (which the NT began to be translated into in the second century), and several thousand more for Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopic, Georgian, Arabic, Hebrew, and many other languages. Conservative estimates are that the New Testament weighs in at 20,000 to 25,000 manuscripts in these various languages. Scholars don’t know for sure because they haven’t finished counting them all yet.
That’s approximately ten times the amount of manuscripts for Homer, and Homer had a 900-year head start! And the average New Testament manuscript is not some small scrap: the average is more than 450 pages long. In terms of sheer quantity of manuscripts, nothing in the ancient world comes close to the New Testament.
I read quite a bit of Socrates in college (he was brilliant indeed). In spite of the fact that we have no writings from Socrates himself, most people have heard of him, many know something about him, and nobody doubts that Socrates existed. We only know of his existence through the writings of other people. Objectively, we have more eyewitness accounts of Jesus’s existence than of Socrates.
| Ancient Work | Written | Earliest Copy | Time Gap | Copies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Homer’s Iliad | 900 BC | 400 BC | 500 years | ~1800 |
| Plato | 427-347 BC | 900 AD | 1,300 years | 210 |
| Aristotle | 384-322 BC | 1100 AD | 1,400 years | 40 |
| Caesar’s Gallic Wars | 100-44 BC | 900 AD | 1,000 years | 251 |
| Tacitus’ Annals | 56-120 AD | 1000 AD | 900 years | 31 |
| Herodotus’ History | 484-425 BC | 100 AD | 600 years | 109 |
| Livy’s History of Rome | 59 BC-17 AD | 300 AD | 400 years | 90 |
| New Testament | 50-100 AD | Portions: 100-150 AD Books: 150-200 AD Entire NT: ~300 AD | 29-100 years | 5800+ in Greek 18,500+ early translations ~42,000 OT scrolls and codices |
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