The Superior Integrity of the New Testament Text
No other ancient text is substantiated by such a wealth of ancient textual witnesses as is the New Testament text. About 5,800 separate manuscripts are extant and available, variously containing anything from the entire New Testament corpus to a slight fragment of a single verse. There are also hundreds of copies of ancient translations (or versions) in languages other than Koine’ Greek of the New Testament that reveal the form of the text known to their translators, as well as numerous New Testament quotations in the writings of the early church “fathers” that disclose the form of the particular texts known to them.
Where did the accepted New Testament books come from? The process of determining which texts would comprise the Biblical canon (the standard of authoritative and normative teaching for the church) is asserted to have taken place over several centuries. Beginning in the first century CE., Christian communities recognized the authority of texts that they gathered into collections for circulation and use in public worship. Second Peter already suggests a familiarity with the letters of Paul, and goes so far as to place them on par with the Hebrew Scriptures (3:16). Evidence reveals that during public worship Christians in the earliest centuries read from the texts that would become the New Testament, just as they did from the Hebrew Scriptures (