New Testament

AUTHENTICITY OF NEW TESTAMENT

How can we know for sure that the collection of Books making up the New Testament haven’t changed over time?  After all, it was entirely written during the 1st Century.  Isn’t it likely that between that time and now, errors would have crept in?

Ancient Manuscript Comparison

There is a continuous line of more than 20,000 manuscripts with less than a 300-year time between the time the New Testament first was penned till the entire New Testament was contained in one volume.

Early Versions

The New Testament was written in Koine Greek by the Apostles. There are several copies of the entire New Testament that date within a few hundred years of its writing. Some of the earliest versions are shown here. Note that the term “codex” simply means “book form”.

Lectionaries

As today, church service liturgies were commonly used in the Mediterranean world by the 3rd Century. These contain many quotes of Scripture.

To date, 2143 Lectionaries (dating back to the 3rd Century and containing portions of the New Testament) have been found.

Minuscules

By the 800s, a new writing style emerged that included lowercase letters, punctuation marks, and spacing. These were referred to as Minuscules.

Papyri

The earliest copies we have of portions of the New Testament are found on papyrus. In ancient times, scribes would write on strips of plant stokes or reeds that were glued together – this would form papyrus. This is where we get our word ‘paper’.

Writings of the early Church are referred to as “Patristic Writings”. These contain numerous quotes from the New Testament and the Old Testament. These writings make the New Testament the most authenticated collection of books in history!

By “uncial” we mean the text uses all capital letters, no spacing between words and no punctuation marks. Such conventions (spacing, punctuation, and lower case letters) are a relatively recent phenomenon in writing history.