The New Testament letters were written in the latter half of the first century on papyrus sheets. Because papyrus is a fragile writing material, the original letters perished within a fairly short period of time. How do we know, then, that we have accurate copies of the original manuscripts?
A. Because these original letters written in Greek were received by the early Christians as authoritative messages directed from heaven. Many copies were made.
B. There are two major types of New Testament manuscripts: uncials and cursives. Uncials, written in all capital letters, are the earliest and most important type. Cursives, written in a smaller, running-hand style, did not debut until the ninth century. Altogether, there are about 500 unicals and 4,700 cursives. Most of these are not complete copies of the New Testament because a handwritten copy of the entire text on paper of the day would be very bulky.
C. Uncial writing would appear very strange to us today because there are no spaces separating words, nor are there marks or punctuation. Paul's letter to the Romans (translated into English) would appear something like this in the uncial style:
PAULASER
VANTOFJESUSCHRISTCA LLEDTOBE
ANAPOSTLESEPA RATEDUNTO
THEGOSPELOFG
ODWHICHHEPROMIS EDAFORETHRO
UGHTHEP
(Note that spaces were used to keep columns
straight)
D. About 70 of these uncial documents, written on papyrus, have been discovered in the last 75 years. These are some of the earliest uncials, dating from the 2nd to the 4th centuries. About thirty fragments of pottery, with portions of the New Testament copied on them, were found at the same time. Our other 200 uncials, copied on vellum, date from the 4th to 9th centuries.
E. The oldest vellum uncials are the Vatican, the Sinaitic, and the the Alexandrian manuscripts, which date from 300-450 A.D. These are complete, or nearly complete, copies of the New Testament and are the oldest Bibles in the world. All three of these are in codex (book) form and all have become known to scholars since the King James translation of the Bible.
F.Though there is a far greater number of the cursives, their later dates render them less important than the uncials. They do, however, add to our scholarship, and they are quite interesting in appearance. Many have elaborate ornamentation, complete with multi-colored drawings and rich stampings.
G. We also have many volumes of letters written by early Christians. These writers copied portions of scripture from New Testaments which are much older than any we possess today. These valuable documents tell us much about ancient Bibles used by the early church.