Digging up the Biblical Manuscripts
A.K. Richardson
9 min read
Seemingly in the eastern lands, it doesn’t take much more than kicking over a rock to unearth some artifact related to the biblical record, and among such archaeological gems, none are more valuable than biblical manuscripts. A biblical manuscript is any hand-written copy of the text of the Bible written in the original language and especially one written before the era of print. God chose manuscript copying as the means through which to bring the Bible down to us through the ages. Thus it’s good to have at least a basic understanding of the nature of the transmission of the biblical texts and nature of the manuscripts. Our focus will be on those of the New Testament.
Throughout the first century, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Apostles and other chosen authors of the New Testament wrote letters to various churches and individuals and also wrote other documents such as the Gospels, the book of Acts, etc. In the field of study of manuscripts, these original documents are called “autographs,” and the original language in which they were written was Greek. After the NT authors wrote, they distributed their writings to the churches (Colossians 4:16; 1 Thessalonians 5:27), and anywhere the documents went, Christians would have recognized their authoritative nature as scripture (1 Corinthians 7:12, 14:37; 2 Thessalonians 2:15), and copies would be made. This copying continued through the ages. Like other ancient writings, many of these copies of ancient days became lost or destroyed as time moved on, but large numbers survive one generation to another, and archeologists still discover surviving manuscripts to this very day.
SHEER NUMBER
The amount of extant biblical manuscripts still in our possession today is simply incredible. There are approximately 5,856 manuscripts known to date. Let’s put this into perspective. There are far more copies of the NT writings than any other work of antiquity, and that number continues to grow as archaeologists continue to dig them up, and this does not even include many that are already found and known but not yet catalogued. While many are fragmentary (any portion of a manuscript is counted as one manuscript), the average size is more than 450 pages. Dr. James R. White says (as of 2008) that we have approximately 1,300,000 handwritten pages of the NT. As observed already, this is unique among all the ancient literature that has survived to present day.
Of Homer, for example, we have approximately one thousand copies, which is quite a significant number for an ancient work but is severely dwarfed by the NT copies. From Plato, we have a less impressive seven copies remaining. We have eight of Herodotus, twenty of Tacitus, and seven of Pliny the Younger. Professor Daniel B. Wallace of the Dallas Theological Seminary and Executive Director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts says that if the average number of manuscripts of ancient Greek writers were stacked in a pile, it would be about four feet high, but if the NT manuscripts were all stacked on one another, the stack would be one mile in height!
THE NATURE OF THE COPYING
Sometimes those who are uninformed have described the history of the textual transmission of the NT as something akin to the “phone game,” where one person on the phone relates what he hears to another person and that person subsequently passes it over the phone again to someone else, and as the message is passed along it undergoes drastic change. Occasionally this is an intentional attempt to cast doubt on the reliability of the texts as if the copies cannot be trusted. As it has been said by certain skeptics, "We not only do not have the autographs, we don’t even have copies of the autographs, but rather we have “copies of copies of copies of copies and on and on it goes.” However, it is a faulty comparison to the “phone game.” There was not just one line of copies from the original autographs as there is one line of communication of the phone message, but rather there is a multitude of lines of transmission of the copies—a vast multitude! And this multitude of copying was made in many various places where the original letters went.
Imagine one of these letters being copied by a congregation somewhere. The letter then is taken to another congregation somewhere else and copied by a number of members there as well. This is repeated again and again and in various congregations across the country. There would exist many lines of copies of the original letter at many various locations. This is what the transmission of the text of the autographs was like. It was not like the telephone game.
In fact, what we have in the historical record of the transmission of the biblical manuscripts is what is called a “free transmission” of the text. The text of scripture was never in control by any one individual or group at any time in its history because the letters traveled around and were copied, and the copies themselves were carried around and copied too. Thus the text of scripture, in the divine care of God, was being duplicated quickly and in many different places, which made it impossible for anyone to control the content of the text by changing it and making it say what they wanted it to say. There were simply too many copies around! This is especially true in the first century with the original writers and the original recipients living.
THE MATERIAL
From the first century to the fourth, the manuscripts were primarily papyrus (from which comes the English word paper). Strips of papyrus stalks were flattened crosswise onto one another to make sheets. Yet papyri did not hold up well in the long run. Normal usage gave the manuscripts perhaps a decade of durability. From the fourth century onward, parchment (also called vellum), made from animal skin, was the material of choice and because it had much greater lasting-power, the vast majority of surviving manuscripts are parchment.
While many associate ancient texts with scrolls, and certainly the Old Testament manuscripts were in the form of scrolls, NT manuscripts are rarely found in scroll form. For the early Christians, the codex was the form of choice, which is basically like modern books with the sheets bound on one side and flipped rather than unrolled like a scroll.
THE HANDWRITING
The text of the earliest NT manuscripts is written in all large letters, no spaces, and no punctuation. These manuscripts are called “uncials,” or “majuscules,” which means, “large letters." An English example of an uncial text of John 3:16 looked like this:
FORGODSOLOVEDTHEWORLDTHATHEGAVEHISONLYBEGOTTENSONTHATWHOSOEVERBELIEVETHINHIMSHOULDNOTPERISHBUTHAVEEVERLASTINGLIFE
However, most of the manuscripts we have are known as “minuscules,” meaning “small letters,” because the text is written in smaller style. They are also called “cursives,” because the words are in cursive form. Unlike the uncials, the minuscule texts have space between words and some degree of punctuation and thus appear much more like modern writing.
Due to the fact that most of the time non professional writers were copying the texts, the minuscule manuscripts can be very difficult to read because of the sloppy handwriting. Nevertheless, there are in fact very beautifully written manuscripts, and this is especially true of the uncial type, penned in many cases by professional scribes. These scribes often wrote in what are called scriptoriums where a manuscript would be read aloud and several scribes would write the text as they listened. Incidentally, this explains one of the largest number of differences between the various manuscripts—spelling differences! Of course, there was no standardized spelling, so various scribes would spell words differently.
THE DATING
Earlier, we noted how amazing the number of biblical manuscripts is that we have in possession, but better yet, not only do the manuscripts far outnumber any other ancient work, the earliest in our possession appear much closer to the time of the authors than any other ancient work. In other words, the gap of time between the autographs and the earliest dated extant copies is much smaller than that of other ancient literature. Copies we have of the average classical author go back to about half a millennium after that author wrote. With the NT writers, we have manuscripts that date even to the early second century. Considering this along with the great number of manuscripts, the reliability of the NT is immensely substantiated.
The number of early dated manuscripts continues to grow. In 2018, for example, an early manuscript fragment of Mark was finally published after years of anticipation. In The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. 83, this Markan fragment, originally excavated in 1903, has been dated to the second century. Unfortunately, the excitement of the early date was diminished by faulty announcement years earlier by Daniel Wallace that it was a first century fragment! Nevertheless, another second century find is still amazing and only adds further attestation to the text of the NT!
Now how do these manuscripts get dated? When a manuscript is discovered, it is studied at length to determine when it should be dated (in addition to other reasons to study a manuscript). We list here only some examples:
1. Using Manuscripts with Dates. Perhaps the most expected method of determining dates is using the manuscripts that actually have historical markers in the text. Many manuscripts will have a recorded date or will document an event or person for whom a date can be determined by historical records. The writing on these dated manuscripts is studied for certain styles, idiomatic words and phrases, and other elements. These elements can then be used as a dating guide for the texts of other copies. This study of ancient writing is known as Paleography. Paleographists study the writing and spelling habits of scribes and are able therefore to place certain forms in general time frames. As we know, language is dynamic and is always changing from one generation to another. Even the spelling of certain words changes over time. For example, in the past, the letters “a” and “e” were joined as one (æ) called a ligature. Old typewriters will have the æ key. If a letter written in English text contains this ligature, it would be automatically dated to a certain era of history.
2. The Material. Another way to narrow the date is to study the material of the manuscript. As stated earlier, the papyri manuscripts will automatically be placed within the earlier centuries. Also, the uncial manuscripts were the earlier form of writing, and thus any uncial type manuscripts will be dated to early periods.
3. Ink. The color of ink is another indication. Later periods of copies display colored and sometimes beautiful writing which scribes often decorated with colored pictures.
4. Accompanying Material. When manuscripts are discovered they are often found together with other literature or materials that can be used for dating, and the manuscripts will be assumed to be of the same time period. Of course, the other methods of determining dates will also be employed.
IMPORTANT EARLY MANUSCRIPTS
Of all early manuscripts, three of the most important, and which get much of the attention due to their prominent use in modern translations, are three uncials: The Vatican manuscript (Codex Vaticanus), Sinaitic manuscript (Codex Sinaiticus), and the Alexandrian manuscript (Codex Alexandrinus).
Codex Vaticanus.
Among the oldest near-complete manuscripts in our possession today, and likely the most famous, is the Vatican codex which is dated to the fourth century. Remarkably, it includes almost the entire NT as well as the notable Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. Its name is derived from the fact that it is located in the Vatican library and has been there since the late 1400’s.
Codex Sinaiticus.
The “Sinai book” is so named because its first publicly known origin was at a monastery near the traditional Mount Sinai. This codex is in fact considered the oldest complete manuscript we have (though, like Vaticanus, it has lost some portions). It’s dated also to the fourth century. Interestingly, in addition to the books of the Bible, this manuscript contains two other “Christian” works, the Shepherd of Hermes and the Epistle of Barnabas.
Codex Alexandrinus.
From the fifth century, the Alexandrian manuscript is another one of the complete biblical copies. It also contains what is known as First Clement and some others books. It has one of the best copies of the book of Revelation currently possessed.
THE EGYPTIAN PAPYRI
While Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Alexandrinus are the three leading witnesses among manuscripts, the papyri discovered by archaeologists at Oxyrhynchus Egypt in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century became a monumental addition to the manuscript record. Previously it was noted that papyri fragments are our earliest copies of the NT, and several of these are from the tens of thousands of papyri manuscripts uncovered at Oxyrhynchus. Besides giving us additional manuscripts to the NT, the papyri have increased our understanding of the NT language and vocabulary. This is due to the fact that most of the fragments cover a wide variety of non-religious writings such as tax receipts, court documents, personal letters, invitations, sales records, and so on. Previous theories had floated around that the NT language had been divinely invented by God as a “Holy Ghost language,” but the papyri manuscripts have demonstrated the language and vocabulary of the NT to be the language of the people of that day. God communicated to the them in the very language they spoke. Lexicons and Bible dictionaries rely heavily on these papyri for the vocabulary of the NT.
OTHER ARCHAEOLOGICAL WITNESSES
Besides biblical manuscripts, archaeologists also discover many secondary witnesses to the NT—ancient translations. These “early versions” are considered only secondary witnesses because they are in fact translations of the NT rather than copies of it. The value of these, however, should not be underestimated. They provide early witness to what the NT looked like in the ages when we have less surviving manuscripts. The earlier back we go to the first century, the fewer biblical manuscripts we still have in possession because the manuscripts were lost. Obviously, these translations would have been made using the copies of the NT which themselves could have gone back very early. Three important and early translations are the Latin, Syriac, and Coptic. We have over 10,000 Latin manuscripts, 5,000 - 10,000 other ancient manuscripts.
We have only skimmed the surface of the study of biblical manuscripts, but what we have seen is that God has brought his revelation down through the millennia by means of copies to enlighten the path of man (Psalm 19:8; 43:3; 119:105) and to empower him to salvation (Romans 1:16). Let God be thanked!
McDowell, Sean. “What is the Most Recent Manuscript Count for the New Testament?”
www.seanmcdowell.org, March 13, 2018,
www.seanmcdowell.org/blog/what-is-the-most-recent-manuscript-count-for-the-new-testament
Accessed 28 Oct. 2020.
White, James. “Does the Bible Misquote Jesus.” YouTube, uploaded by Alpha & Omega Ministries, March 20, 2014,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K-AOfj1Axg
Wallace, Daniel. “The Reliability of the New Testament by Daniel Wallace.” YouTube, uploaded by New Testament Textual Studies, July 7, 2020,