Again, this is because the manuscripts are so plentiful and so early that in every instance the original NT can be reconstructed from the available evidence.” Wallace in Reinventing Jesus states that “The vast majority of NT scholars would say that there are absolutely no places where conjecture is necessary. In fact, there is no doubt in the original wording. that were copied: “Jesus Christ” (the # represents a tear, hole, or damage to the manuscript).

You can obviously reconstruct the original wording from the mss. Here is a quick example of how we compare and contrast mss. that are not catalogued by the University of Munster (which keeps the official count of NT mss). At the National Library of Greece this past year alone they found 20 new mss. Wallace and his team keeping finding new mss. This far outstrips any other ancient document in mss. So, the more you have, the more you can compare and the New Testament is doing rather well in their mss. All ancient documents are in the same boat. This might sound disconcerting, but we don’t have the autographs of any ancient document such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, etc. original documents), scholars have to compare mss. Since we do not have the autographs (i.e. This process is important because of the nature of textual critical studies of the New Testament. Their most recent expedition has been to the National Library of Greece which contains one third of all known Greek New Testament manuscripts (mss). Photographing is at times in confined spaces such as a basement and the pressure of not damaging these rare artifacts adds the the stress. Wallace (on the left) preparing a manuscript for photographing and (on the right) his team taking photographs of a manuscript:

Wallace as a Greek scholar and the work he is doing with CSNTM: The more manuscripts you have the better you can reproduce the original autograph. In order to reproduce what was in the original you have to compare and contrast the varied manuscripts (handwritten copies).

Manuscripts – There are no original documents (called “autographs”) of any book of the New Testament. Wallace travels the world to take pictures of the New Testament manuscripts in order for them to be preserved and available for scholars across the world. Remarkably, in this endeavor, they have discovered more than 90 New Testament manuscripts.ĬSNTM’s goal is to photograph digitally all the existing Greek New Testament manuscripts so that such images can be preserved, duplicated without deterioration, and accessed by scholars doing textual research. It has collaborated with more than 40 institutions on 4 continents to produce more than 350,000 images of the New Testament manuscripts. It was started to preserve and study Greek New Testament manuscripts. This past weekend I had the honor of attending a fundraising banquet for T he Center for the Study of the New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM).

Center for new testament manuscripts