As you know, we do not have a single original book (or letter) of the New Testament. What we have is copy of copies of copies… The original recipients understood that the writings given to them were of a divine nature and that they were written on perishable materials. Thus, they went through the expensive and painstaking task of copying these documents. Our discussion today is regarding the ancient Bible texts, or, manuscripts that our Bibles today are based upon.
Let’s first consider the two major types of manuscripts we have…
(1) UNCIALS
These are considered the most valuable because they are the oldest, placing them in closer proximity to the original writings of the New Testament. These manuscripts are written in all capital letters with no spaces between words and no punctuation marks. We have around three hundred of these manuscripts. None of these contain the complete New Testament.
Of these manuscripts, about seventy or so of them are written on papyrus. These manuscripts date from the second to fourth century. Around two hundred manuscripts were copied onto vellum, dating from the fourth to the ninth century. Other New Testament writings are found on pieces of broken pottery and ostraca (flakes of limestone).
John 1:1 would have been written something like this in one of these early manuscripts (except in Greek, of course):
INTHEBEGINNINGWASTHEWORDANDTHEWORDWASWITHGODANDTHEWORDWASGOD
(2) CURSIVES
These manuscripts are dated from the ninth to the fifteenth century, thus they are of less value since generally more errors would have crept into the text. We have around five thousand of these manuscripts. However, only a few come close to containing the entire New Testament. This is not surprising, not merely because of deterioration, but simply because of size and practicality, little attempt was normally made to put every book in one binding.
The manuscripts we have indicate that the copies were often grouped together as follows: (1) The four Gospels, (2) Acts and the General Epistles, (3) Paul’s Epistle’s, and (4) The Book of Revelation. Sometimes they were grouped into two volumes: (1) The Gospels and (2) The rest of the New Testament letters.
Daren Schroeder