This episode contrasts the New Testament manuscript tradition with that of classical authors. We presently have 5,600+ partial copies of the New Testament in Greek and 43% of NT verses are present in 10-12 manuscripts prior to 200 A.D, including all of the Pauline corpus. More than a 100 manuscripts exist dating prior to 300 and an entire copy of the New Testament from 350 (Codex Sinaiticus). Regarding classical works (excluding Homer), we have on average about 15-20 copies of some classical works, the earliest of which is at least 1,000 years after the original autograph. 643 copies of Homer exist, the earliest of which is more than a 1,000 years old. Virtually no one doubts that the classical works have come down to us with very little change from the original autograph, even though we have much fewer copies, the earliest of which is more than a 1,000 years after composition. Consequently, if one is confident that he is reading the actual works of antiquity, based on the relatively sparse classical tradition, one should be exponentially more confident of the reliability of the New Testament.
