New Testament Manuscripts

[tmitchell2]

In the July/August 2001 This Rock magazine, there was an article called “Jolted into Dealing with the Historical Reality of Christ”. The Damascus Road article states that there are over 5000 New Testament manuscripts in Greek, and the same amount in other languages; the manuscripts were written within decades of Jesus’ ministry, and they are almost identical.

Where are these manuscripts today? Do we still have them? I am forming an apologetics “class” of high school students and would like to present a historical perspective. Last month’s This Rock indicated that Oxford University has a manuscript by St. Matthew and is studying it now.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Jan_Wakelin]

All the different manuscripts and/or fragments are housed in various places. So you might have to do an Internet search under the name of each fragment to find out where it is located. For example, the Magdalen Papyrus is at Oxford. The Barcelona Papyrus is somewhere in Barcelona Spain (obviously)…probably in a museum.

Here is a website that gives you the manuscript names and the dating of the manuscripts and the books they contain:

How Old Are the Most Ancient New Testament Manuscripts Known Today?

Scroll down about a quarter of the page and see the info. nicely laid out.

At the end of the article at this site there are some references that might also be helpful.

We are not staffed to do the research required for your project, but hopefully your search will be fruitful.