The Story of the New Testament

How We Got the Bible

Our First Hero

Constantine Von Tischendorf

St. Catherine’s Monastery

Scarcely had he entered the room, when, resuming our former conversation, he said: “And I, too, have read a Septuagint”…. And so saying, he took from the corner of the room a bulky kind of volume, wrapped in red cloth, and laid it before me. I unrolled the cover, and discovered, to my great surprise, not only those very fragments which, fifteen years before, I had taken out of the basket, but also other parts of the Old Testament, the New Testament, [and other writings from the early church]…. I knew that I held in my hands the most precious biblical treasure in existence.

“Tischendorf justified his taking the manuscript, writing that the precious codex was on the verge of being burned by the monks. The monastery has always protested against this slander, and laments the loss of this manuscript.”

Hansel and Gretel Breadcrumbs

The Four Great Uncial Manuscripts The 1,000s of Miniscule Manuscripts Papyrus Manuscripts Early Christian Quotations

The Major Trails of Evidence

Early Complete Accurate

The Four Great Uncials—Why Are They So Great?

Codex Sinaiticus – 350 C.E.Codex Vaticanus – early 400sCodex Alexandrinus – early 500sCodex Ephraemi Rescriptus

What Are They?

The Miniscule Manuscripts

Papyrus Manuscripts

City of the Snout-Nosed Fish

A.S. Hunt and B.P. Grenfell

126 papyrus texts More than 50 from 4th century or earlier 25 out of 27 N.T. books John Rylands fragment (P52)

Papyrus Manuscripts

John Rylands Fragment

Quoted N.T. over 1,000,000 times

“… if all other sources for our knowledge of the text were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of the entire New Testament.” -Dr. Bruce Metzger

Early Christian Quotations

“In contrast [with the manuscripts for ancient Greek literature], the textual critic of the New Testament is embarrassed by the wealth of material.”

Comparison of New Testament with Other Greek Manuscripts

“Textual critics not working with the New Testament would love to have the same kind of early witnesses that the biblical scholars possess. In fact, many of them work with manuscripts written 1,000 years after the autographs were composed!”

Comparison of New Testament with Other Greek Manuscripts

Variants and the Bart Ehrman

The Quality of Variants in the New Testament

Telephone Game

“In the telephone game … there’s only one line of transmission, it is oral rather than written, and the oral critic only has the last person in line to interrogate. When it comes to the text of the [New Testament], there are multiple lines of transmission, and the original documents were almost surely copied several times…. Further, the textual critic doesn’t rely on just the last person in [line], but can interrogate many scribes over the centuries, way back to the second century. And even when the early manuscript testimony is sparse, we have the early church fathers’ testimony as to what the original text said.”

--Dr. Daniel B. Wallace

“Finally, the process is not intended to be a parlor game but is intended to duplicate the original text faithfully—and this process doesn’t rely on people hearing a whole utterance whispered only once, but seeing the text and copying it.”

“The telephone game is a far cry from the process of copying manuscripts of the N.T.”