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However, if there ever was an "original" NT, we don't have it any longer. Supposedly the NT was written in the latter half of the 1st century (between 20 and 70 years after Jesus died, depending on which book of the canon you're talking about). However, none of those manuscripts have been located. Not a single manuscript fragment from the 1st century is known to exist... and yet that's the one that God supposedly inspired. Here's what we do have: from 4 to 6 manuscripts (really fragments) for all of the 2nd century, starting with P52, which is a credit card sized single paged fragment from a codex of the gospel of John (see my picture below). It does not even mention the word "Jesus" and it has just a few partial verses on each side. It is dated to about 125 CE (about 95 years after Jesus is supposed to have died). The total number of verses and verse fragments we have from the 2nd century is about 45 all together.
From the 3rd century (200 CE to 300 CE), we have about 45 additional manuscript fragments, including a few (about 4) more or less complete books of the full orthodox canon of 27 NT books (which are first identified by Athanasius in his Festal Letter of 367 CE. Until 367 CE the books of the NT canon were not settled upon, and numerous other candidate books including over 40 gospels didn't make the cut (e.g. The gospels of Thomas, Mary Magdalene, Judas, etc, and other epistles and even at least one other book of Revelation (that of Peter)).
It's not really until the 4th century that anything approaching a complete canon is known to exist. For example the Codex Vaticanus (325 CE to 350 CE) and the Codex Sinaiticus (330 CE to 360 CE).
All these early manuscripts and manuscript fragments (fragments or normally just referred to as "manuscripts" by Bible scholars, even if they're just a tiny piece like P52) contradict one another and show signs of deletions, interpolations, editing, forgeries, mistakes and other problems. In general, the earlier one goes back in time, the larger and more important the inconsistencies between manuscripts there are. For example, here are some issues with early manuscripts:
1. Some early versions of Luke did not include the 1st two chapters, which give the genealogy and nativity stories of Jesus. Some NT scholars think that the author of Luke (which was not necessarily a guy called "Luke" since like all the gospels, that name did not appear in association with the gospel until 180 CE when "church father" Irenaeus wrote Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies)), did not originally include the 1st two chapters because chapter 3 can serve as a plausible beginning chapter. Only later did he go back and add in the 1st two chapters.
2. The "Comma Johanneum" (i.e. 1 John 5:7-8, the only explicit mention of the trinity in the NT):
"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one."
"The general consensus today is that that passage is a Latin corruption that entered the Greek manuscript tradition in subsequent copies."
Was probably a later insertion into Latin copies and was probably not in the Greek.
3. The "Pericope Adulterae" (the "woman taken in adultary": John 7:53 - 8:12) was also probably not in the original and started out as a marginal note in a later copy which eventually got incorporated into the canon. There is some controversy still about this however.
4. Mark 16:9-20 (the last 12 verses of Mark), were also not likely part of the original, having been added later. "The current consensus among scholars is that verses 9–20 were not part of the original text of Mark but represent a very early addition." (see my sources)
5. Pauline Epistles: only 7 of the 13 Pauline Epistles are regarded as being authentic (i.e. written by Paul) by the vast majority of NT scholars. 3 of the remaining epistles are contested, and 3 are considered by the vast majority to be forgeries (Timothy 1 & 2 and Titus: however the same forger is thought to have written all three of these).
While it's true we have a LOT of Greek manuscripts (some 5500 of them), 94% of those were created in the 9th century or later. So only about 330 Greek manuscripts exist for the years 125 CE to 799 CE, and the further back in time you go, the more fragmentary and rare they become.
Also, the most prominent and well respected NT scholars in the world today are starting to conclude that it doesn't really make sense to speak of an "original" NT. For example, some of Paul's epistles are not whole letters, but parts of several letters stitched together. So what's the original in that case? The 1st stitched together copy (which excludes some parts of each letter), or the original letters in their entirety before being collected into an amalgamation?
So instead of an "original" NT, what you have is the efforts by many NT scholars over the centuries to reconstruct one. Their efforts are constantly being redone when new information comes to light. Keep in mind that the Dead Sea Scrolls don't help, since they don't include ANY of the NT books, either canonical or apocryphal.
Then you have the problem of why were certain books included and not others? Well it turns out there were many different Christianities during the 1st through the 4th centuries, most of which did not accept the doctrine of the trinity which was devised by what eventually became the dominant sect that we now refer to as the proto-orthodox/orthodox sect (of which both Irenaeus and Athanasius were a part of).
All of these sects of Early Christianity were labeled "heretical" by the proto-orthodox and eventually suppressed:
Ebionists: who kept the Jewish laws. The gospel of Matthew is considered to be most in keeping with their views. They did not regard Jesus to be god.
Gnostics: their theology included many gods, depending on the specific sub-sect (e.g. 2, 30, and even 365 gods). Typically they held that a creator god known as "Sophia" created the world, and she was evil. Jesus was sent to impart secret knowledge for those wishing to escape into the realm of the divine. Jesus was not considered to have been human by gnostics in general, but a spirit. They did not accept that Jesus died on the cross.
Marcionites: related to the Gnostics, the Marcionites were an EARLY Christianity (early 2nd century) started by Marcion of Sinope. They were the 1st sect to propose a canon which consisted of only the Pauline epistles and the original Luke (minus the 1st two chapters) as his canon. Marcion did NOT include any books of the Old Testament (OT) in his canon because he considered the Jewish god Yahweh to be evil. In Marcionite theology, Jesus came to save mankind from the evil creator God Yahweh.
Arians: Arians were prominent in the 4th century in Rome, and well into the 6th century in Northern Europe. After Constantine was emperor, two subsequent emperors were actually Arians. Arians did NOT accept the trinitarian god concept. But by the end of the 4th century their influence in Rome had been crushed.
Assuming that something like original manuscripts, written in Koine Greek, were created in the 1st century, then you have the problem of when they were written. Most proposed timelines look something like this:
30 CE: Jesus dies
50 CE - 60 CE Paul (who never claims to have met Jesus: he just had a vision of him) writes his epistles. Paul never describes Jesus' life, his ministry, his words, or how he selected his disciples.
65 CE - 70 CE: Mark is written as the 1st gospel. Like all the gospels, it does not say within the text who wrote it or how they came by the information. All the gospels were thus written anonymously, with the names only being added later by Irenaeus in 180 CE.
~85 CE: Matthew is wrtten. Unlike Mark, this gospel includes a genealogy of Jesus and a nativity story. Matthew is the most "Jewish friendly" of the gospels, as was likely the gospel used by the Ebionites. Matthew used Mark as source material.
~ 85 CE: Luke is written, using both Mark and Matthew as source material. This is the last of the synoptic gospels (the three 1st gospels, which are very similar to each other).
95 CE: John is written: it is very different than the other three gospels
Diagram of the three synoptic gospels here:
https://thechurchoftruth.files.wordpress...
In 1707 (96 years after the King James Bible was published based off of Erasmus' 2nd edition of the 1st ever printed Greek Bible, which in turn was based off of about 10 Greek manuscripts) John Mill published his analysis of about 100 Greek manuscripts. What he found shocked the Christian world: he carefully documented over 30,000 differences between all the manuscripts. He was accused at the time of trying to undermine Christianity, but indeed he was just doing careful scholarship.
With over 5500 known Greek manuscripts in existence now, nobody really knows how many differences there are between them, but it's well over 100,000.
P52: the oldest known NT fragment to exist, pictured here in it's entirety (about credit card sized). It is from the gospel of John, and is dated to about 125 CE. It is not an original, but a copy of a copy of a copy, etc
http://stuffconcerningstuff.blogspot.com...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mill_%...
http://stuffconcerningstuff.blogspot.com...
Also keep in mind that Jesus and his disciples likely could not read or write (there was only about a 3% reading literacy rate in 1st century Palestine, and much lower for those who could write as well), and they probably only spoke Aramaic. The gospel authors wrote between 40 and 65 ye
PedroJesus
· 2 days ago
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(finishing last
thought under sources above): 40 and 65 years after Jesus died and never
met Jesus nor anyone who did. They likely wrote in far away cities such
as Rome, were highly educated, and almost certainly used the Greek
translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint) for source material
PedroJesus · 2 days ago
as well, rather than
the original Hebrew OT. Any accounts of Jesus' life they were
transcribing was obtained from an oral tradition, passed on between
people for decades prior to them hearing it. Good luck sorting out what
"God's original words were" given that sausage making process!
PedroJesus · 2 days ago
