CX

Hmmm...I'd say yes and no. Some of the alleged "citations" are quite a stretch and could simply reflect common language in use at the time. Others provide reasonably good attestation for individual phrases and passages, but I'm not aware of any that provide attestation to large portions of the NT. In general apologists tend to overstate the significance of patristic references as they do with such canards as the "25,000 copies" bit. To be honest I have not studied the church fathers in as great detail as the Greek MSS evidence so all my comments are based only on cursory examination.

CX

More on McDowell's "patristic citations"...

I took a quick look at your table and there are some things worth noting that are usually glossed over by McDowell and people of his ilk aside from the extremely subjective nature of identifying patristic citations. The earliest church father in the table is Justin who wrote in the middle of the 2nd century (ca. 130-162). The remaining fathers all write near the turn of and into the 3rd century save Eusebius who writes in the 4th century. In my view none of these does much to improve upon what we have in the MSS evidence. Not only that but the same issues we have with the MSS evidence applies to the church fathers. We do not have the autographs for their writings and some (for example Origen) we have only in fragmentary citations in later church fathers. The whole business of patristic citations strikes me as "straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel".

Peter Kirby

All you ever wanted to know about Ante-Nicene references to the New Testament is here:

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/e-catena/

The computer doesn't lie.

cordially,
Peter Kirby

Godless Dave

They also call it "a rock", because that's what it is. Not to mention that Mt. Ararat in Turkey was named after the mountain in the flood story, not the other way around.

Someone has been telling you lies, thebeast. Please don't repeat them here.

So what? There are thousands of copies of the Quran from the early Islamic era. There are thousands of copies of the Book of Mormon from the early Church of Latter Day Saints era. How many copies of a book exist has nothing to do with the book's authenticity.

Radcliffe Emerson

I've read several books on NT manuscripts, and most of them are fragments. The statement they are complete manuscripts is simply not even close to being true.

thebeast

Canards is what you hear from the mouths of the pagans here...

Here's another site for the baboons.

http://www.facingthechallenge.org/documents.htm


'Facing the Challenge' is a new course to train Christians to respond to our postmodern culture in a Biblical, effective way
What's New on the site?


How many copes of the
original documents are there?
The New Testament is made up of 27 different books, letters, Gospels etc. They were all originally written in Greek, and had to be copied by hand until the invention of the printing press. There are over five thousand six hundred Greek manuscripts of part or all of the New Testament. There are also ten thousand manuscripts of the Vulgate - an early translation into Latin, and nine thousand three hundred other Latin versions. In all, we have about twenty five thousand hand copied manuscripts.

In ‘The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict’, Josh McDowell cites for comparison Homer’s ‘Iliad’. There are six hundred and forty three manuscript copies of the Iliad. Or consider the 'Gallic Wars', from roughly the same time as the New Testament, written by Julius Caesar. Today, there are only about ten copies of it altogether.

The New Testament documents were the most copied, and most widely circulated, of any ancient documents. No other documents from the same period of time come anywhere near having as many copies.

thebeast

How reliable are the documents?
How close in time are our copies to the original documents of the New Testament?
There are many manuscript copies of the New Testament documents - far more than for any other ancient document. Not only that, but they also go back much closer in time to the original writers.

There are many manuscripts of the New Testament dating from within four centuries of when the books were first written. Four centuries may sound like a lot, but it is small compared to the gap for most other ancient manuscripts – see below.

One of the most important manuscripts is the Codex Siniaticus. [‘Codex’ means it is in book form, rather than scroll or parchment]. The British Government bought this from the Government of the Soviet Union in 1933, for £100,000 - a huge sum at the time. It is now in the British Museum.

There are also some manuscripts dating back to the second century, and fragments of manuscripts dating back to only thirty years or so after the documents were originally written.

In ‘The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict’, Josh McDowell cites for comparison Homer’s ‘Iliad’. The earliest copies of the Iliad date back to the thirteenth century. Yet scholars do not doubt that we have essentially what Homer wrote.

Or consider the ‘Gallic Wars’, written by Julius Caesar, about the same time as the New Testament. The earliest copy of it dates from one thousand years later. But historians don’t doubt that it is authentic.

By comparison, the earliest manuscripts of small parts of the New Testament date from only about thirty-five years after they were written. So there are copies of the New Testament going back much closer to the originals than for any comparable ancient documents.
The earliest known New Testament document

thebeast

We're sorry that due to error in shipping, we're unable to produce video clips of the resurrection at this time...

thebeast

Finally regarding the rest of the canard pasted on by the misinforming heathens, here's the post concerning the accuracy of the documents.

How reliable are the documents?
How much variation is there between different manuscripts?
There are many variations between different ‘families’ of manuscripts of the New Testament. This is what we would expect of hand-copied documents.

However, in spite of what people sometimes claim, the differences between the manuscripts are small and insignificant (-often just minor matters of punctuation or grammar-), and do not in any way affect any significant matter of historical fact or Christian belief

thebeast

Of course, I do realize that argueing with idolaters is absolutely futile, since the reason they don't believe is not for lack of proof, but for the wickedness of their hearts.

As Paul said, they are brute animals without reason or logic. And discussion with them is strongly discouraged.

Just like the evolution baboons, who think their father is a monkey... showing the quackery of evolution through thousands of proofs won't make a dent in their stupidly held beliefs. They believe in evolution not because it's true, but because it's the ONLY alternative to creation. And despite the overwheling evidence against it, and despite the everwhelming evidence supporting creation, they will believe the lie. They'd reather believe the lies than the truth.

They strain at gnats, and swallow the camels. Evolution is the camel of course. Just like here, they don't want to believe the overwhelmign evidence of the truth of the scripture, but most of these baffoons believe in mysticism and myths of Gaaaaaaa the gaddesse earth. Ptui!