The evidence we have for the New Testament in the form of manuscripts, copied from the second straight through to the nineteenth century, is an embarrassment of riches.
Scholars have long used the many thousands of manuscripts in Greek, Latin, Coptic, and other languages to reconstruct an “original” or other early form of the text, to trace the history of particular New Testament texts in particular historical contexts, to see the traces of human activity within the New Testament’s tradition, and to better understand the book technologies that have brought us the New Testament as we now experience, whether in print or digital forms. There continues to be much to do with the manuscripts along these more traditional lines.
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