Manuscripts

2ND-10TH Centuries

Manuscript: A book, document, or piece of music written down by hand. In regards to the New Testament, every manuscript is a copy, not an individual attestation.

• There are 5677 Greek manuscripts.
• There are ~10,000+ Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian manuscripts. The majority are from after the 10TH century.
• Every copy contains errors. In 2014 Eldon J. Epp raised the estimate of textual variants to 400,000-750,000: "a wild guess would be somewhere between two fifths to perhaps three quarters of a million." page 419.
• There are no Latin manuscripts before the 3RD century.
• 10TH-12TH centuries were the peak production time for New Testament manuscripts. The later invention of the printing press increased the amount of copies, though they were no longer considered manuscripts since they weren't copied by hand.
• P52 is the oldest fragment known. It has recently been redated to 200CE.
• 93% are from after the 8th century and more than 99.04% are from the 4th century and later.
• Less than .08% are before the third. Less than 1% are before the 4th century.
• Breakdown of Greek NT manuscripts by century:
  
  Source