Garnet

I've heard this a couple of times now. That there are 24000 to 30000 copies of the NT dating from the first century. Each time I've heard this assertion, I've asked for a source. Today, in e-mail, I finally received a source. This page on the CARM website has a table that makes the claim and also compares the NT to other earlier writings.

http://www.carm.org/evidence/inspiration.htm


Apparently, the source for these numbers it the author Josh McDowell.

Is there any truth to this table? Research I have doesn't indicate any complete copies of the NT from that time. And how could there be a copy of the NT for that time frame? I thought is wasn't canonized until much later.

Hayulp?

Gullwind

What gets me is that somehow this number of copies is supposed to be proof that the events described actually happened.

There are millions of copies of the Lord of the Rings floating around but no one is claiming that it is a true story.

Garnet

Very true, Gullwind.

I looked at some links that Toto provided about biblical timelines. And what I see indicates only a few fragments from the first century. Mainly, texts from the first century were taken from writing about them...not actual copies.

Mageth

130 A.D. would be the second century.

http://www.haroonsaadiq.com/christ/testment.htm

which leads to:

http://www.earlham.edu/~seidti/iam/interp_mss.html

Methinks McDowell & Co. do quite a bit of exaggerating...

Garnet

Thanks for the correction, Mageth. Looking at some sites that Toto previously posted for me and what you sent, the earliest "nearly" complete copies of the NT are from the 4th century.

Sorry for posting before I delved deeper into sources that I had. I was just so surprised at the claim.

Intelligitimate

Two good threads on the subject:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=33716
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=33695

Toto

Notice that your source says "Earliest Copy: 130" and "Number of Copies: 24,000" (The time span appears to be the time between the original source or events and the first known copy). Evidently the tiny fragment of gJohn counts as the earliest copy.

But, by a process of evolutionary development or telephone tag, apologists who read this will claim that there are 24,000 copies dating to 130.

Garnet

Thank you Illegit..sorry for the abbreviation..my brain done dumped the rest of your name. Anyway, those threads helped to confirm what I was thinking.

Agreed Toto. However, I'm not an apologist..and I took it that way. Isn't that an intentional misrepresentation? Or am I over reacting because of problems I've had with fundies lately?

Given how wrong the information was on that table about the Bible, does anyone know about the other sources sited?

CX

I was going to add my two cents, but you saved me the trouble. Damn am I predictable.

CX

I think this thread has been pretty well mopped up but a few points bear noting in recap.

1)1st "COPY" of the NT dates to around 325 C.E. (and contains additional books not in the canon as well as lacking several lacunae).

2)Of The 24,000 number 90% or more come after the 12th century when the Xian church was hegemonic and had entire organizations dedicated to the copying of the canon. It also includes 16,000 - 19,000 translations, commentaries and lectionaries which cannot reasonably be called copies of the originals. In reality we have on the order of 5,000 to 8,000 Greek MSS the vast majority of which are fragmentary scraps and only a handful of which are anything like complete copies.

3)Those 5,000-8,000 MSS show considerable variation.

4)All that notwithstanding, the number of copies of a document is irrelevant to determining it's truth value. We can use the MSS evidence we have to come up with a reasonable reconstruction of what the Xian canon said as of the 4th century, but it is nigh to impossible for us to state with any certainty what it said prior to that time or what it's historical truth value is. Or what the relative proportion of so-called heretical beliefs (attested only by a handful of extra-canonical texts) to those of the proto orthodox was in the first few centuries of Xian theological development.