How We Got the New Testament
Papyrus, copyists, early witnesses, and preservation through ordinary means
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Before the Bible was one bound book, the New Testament was a collection of Gospels and letters traveling between congregations. This session follows the text from Paul’s mouth to your lap: what Christians wrote on, who copied the books, how copyists slipped, and how early the surviving evidence begins.
None of this makes the text fragile. It is what preservation looks like in real history.
1. Report back: count the footnotes
The last assignment was to read a short epistle in one sitting and tally translation notes and textual notes. Compare your results with somebody using a different translation.
Listen for three patterns:
- Translation notes usually outnumber textual notes. Most footnotes discuss English wording, not uncertainty in the Greek text.
- Different translations produce different counts. The NET supplies unusually extensive notes; other translations are more selective. That difference tells you about editorial policy, not about how much manuscript evidence exists.
- Some notes resist an easy label. Keep those. Later sessions will make the borderline cases clearer.
2. Writing it down
Around AD 56 or 57, Paul dictated Romans while a believer named Tertius wrote it down. Tertius identifies himself: “I, Tertius, who am writing this letter, greet you in the Lord” (Romans 16:22 NET). Paul spoke, Tertius wrote, and a courier carried the letter to Rome.
What they wrote on
| Material | Made from | Strengths | Weaknesses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Papyrus | Strips of reed pith pressed in crossing layers | Inexpensive, light, and common | Decays in damp climates; most surviving examples come from dry regions such as Egypt |
| Parchment | Prepared sheep, goat, or calf skin | Durable and writable on both sides | Expensive; especially suitable for substantial or prestige books |
Scroll or codex?
A scroll is a continuous sheet wound around a rod. A codex is a stack of folded sheets bound along one edge—the ancestor of the modern book. Christians adopted the codex remarkably early for biblical texts. Most of the earliest surviving Christian biblical manuscripts are codices.
The format was practical. A codex could hold more text, open directly to a passage, place several Gospels or letters in one volume, and travel more easily than a large scroll. Christians treated Scripture as something to be carried, searched, read aloud, and used.
Sacred names
Early Christian copyists frequently shortened words such as God, Lord, Jesus, and Christ to their first and last letters and drew a line over them. Scholars call these forms nomina sacra, Latin for “sacred names.” They occur throughout the earliest surviving Christian papyri and help identify a manuscript as Christian.
The practice also reminds us that copyists were not neutral machines. They knew they were copying books the church received as holy.
3. Who copied the New Testament?
The evidence suggests a movement from early local copying toward increasingly organized production.
| Early copying | Later copying | |
|---|---|---|
| Setting | Congregations and local networks during the first generations after the apostles | More organized copying, especially as the church expanded |
| Copyists | Literate Christians producing working copies | Trained scribes and workshops capable of substantial codices |
| Typical result | Practical books read heavily, sometimes discarded and later recovered from Egypt | More carefully produced and often more complete biblical manuscripts |
| What survives | Some of our earliest witnesses to wording | Many of our most extensive witnesses |
Neither category receives a free pass. A trained scribe may smooth a reading that looks wrong. A less polished copyist may reproduce a difficult wording faithfully because he does not presume to correct it. Textual criticism therefore studies a manuscript’s habits rather than trusting it merely because it is early, beautiful, or professionally written.
4. Four ways copyists made mistakes
Copying errors tend to follow recognizable patterns. That regularity is good news. Patterned changes leave fingerprints, and those fingerprints often let us reason backward toward the earlier wording.
Station 1: the eye skips
A copyist’s eye moves from a word or ending to the same word farther down the page, omitting everything between. Scholars call this homoeoteleuton, Greek for “same ending.”
Look at 1 John 2:23. The two halves end similarly: the one who denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father. The second half was absent from the printed Greek text behind early King James editions and was therefore sometimes supplied in italics. Earlier Greek witnesses preserve both halves, and modern translations print them normally.
The missing line can be explained by an eye-skip between matching endings.
Station 2: the ear mishears
Some copying was done from dictation. By the Christian centuries, several Greek vowel sounds had converged. Words that were visibly different on the page could sound alike when read aloud.
| Translation | 1 John 1:4 |
|---|---|
| KJV | “that your joy may be full” |
| NET | “so that our joy may be complete” |
The difference between “our” and “your” is meaningful, but it is easy to explain as a hearing or letter-level variation. It is not doctrinal sabotage.
Station 3: memory fills in
A copyist who knows Matthew’s Lord’s Prayer by heart can unconsciously expand Luke’s shorter form.
Compare Luke 11:2–4 with Matthew 6:9–13. In the shorter tradition Luke begins simply, “Father, may your name be honored.” The longer tradition gives Luke wording familiar from Matthew: “Our Father which art in heaven,” the petition about God’s will being done on earth as in heaven, and a closing request for deliverance from evil.
This is harmonization: one passage is made to resemble a familiar parallel.
Station 4: the helpful correction
A careful copyist encounters something that appears inaccurate and tries to improve it.
| Translation | Mark 1:2 |
|---|---|
| KJV | “As it is written in the prophets” |
| NET | “As it is written in Isaiah the prophet” |
Mark’s opening quotation combines Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3 but names Isaiah. “In the prophets” removes the apparent difficulty. It is easy to understand why a copyist would replace the harder wording with the smoother one and difficult to explain the reverse.
This introduces another working principle:
When the evidence is otherwise balanced, the reading that could have prompted a copyist to simplify or correct it deserves special attention.
That does not mean the strangest reading always wins. It means we ask which reading best explains the others.
Return to Romans 8:1
The phrase from Romans 8:4 may have reached verse 1 through sight, memory, or both. It was close on the page and familiar in the ear. The change fits the same ordinary patterns.
Studies of individual early papyrus copyists also caution against a universal story in which scribes only made the text longer. Some copyists omitted far more often than they added. Each witness has to be examined on its own record.
5. When the evidence begins: P52
One of the earliest commonly discussed New Testament fragments is Papyrus 52, usually abbreviated P52. It is about the size of a credit card and is held by the John Rylands Library in Manchester.
What survives
One side contains portions of John 18:31–33 and the other John 18:37–38: Jesus before Pilate, including words from the exchange about truth.
How it was identified
The fragment was acquired in Egypt in 1920 and remained unidentified until C. H. Roberts recognized its text as John 18. He published it in 1935.
How old it is
Roberts dated its handwriting to the first half of the second century. Paleographic dating works by comparing handwriting, so it produces a range rather than a precise year. Later scholars have proposed both early and later second-century possibilities. It is safest to call P52 an early witness to John’s Gospel from the second century, not to build an argument on a single exact date.
Its geographic importance is clear even with a wide date range: a copy of John had traveled to Egypt while the Gospel was still comparatively young.
Other early papyri
P52 is not alone. Important papyrus witnesses from roughly the late second and early third centuries include:
| Papyrus | Approximate date | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| P46 | Around AD 200 | A substantial collection of Paul’s letters |
| P66 | Around AD 200 | Much of John’s Gospel |
| P75 | Late second or early third century | Large portions of Luke and John; carefully copied |
These manuscripts do not eliminate textual questions. They move the surviving evidence centuries closer to the New Testament’s composition and let us test later forms of the text against earlier witnesses.
6. How the books traveled
The letters were meant to circulate. Paul tells the Colossians: “after you have read this letter, have it read to the church of Laodicea” (Colossians 4:16 NET). Read it, copy it, and send it on: that was the engine of circulation.
By the middle of the second century, Justin Martyr described “the memoirs of the apostles” being read with the prophets when Christians gathered on the Lord’s Day (First Apology 67). He describes an established practice rather than proposing a novelty.
Public reading mattered for transmission:
- Books used in worship were copied repeatedly.
- Copies circulated between communities rather than remaining under one person’s control.
- Familiar public readings made wildly divergent wording less likely to pass unnoticed.
- No ruler, scribe, or congregation possessed every copy everywhere.
The process was not perfectly tidy. Not every congregation possessed every book at once, and some books circulated more slowly than others. The formation of the canon is related history, but it is not identical with the textual question in this course.
7. Preservation through ordinary means
Papyrus and parchment, local copyists and trained scribes, eye-skips and harmonizations, fragments and great codices, a letter passed from Colossae to Laodicea: this is not the story of a text left unguarded. It is preservation carried through ordinary means.
| Inspiration | Preservation | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Paul speaks, Tertius writes, and the apostolic words are God’s Word | Faithful copying, circulation, quotation, translation, and public reading across the church |
| When | A definable act of composition | Two thousand years and continuing |
| Through what | Prophets, apostles, and their authorized work | Ordinary believers, materials, trade routes, congregations, and God’s providence |
Preservation does not require one flawless manuscript, a surviving autograph, or a copyist who never slipped. It requires God to keep what the apostles wrote in the whole stream of witnesses and in the public life of the church.
The variants are real. The faithfulness is real too.
We are not living after the age of preservation. We are living in it.
Discussion and practice
- What does the early Christian preference for the codex suggest about how Scripture was meant to be used?
- The copyist who harmonized Luke’s Lord’s Prayer probably knew Scripture well. How can familiarity sometimes interfere with careful reading?
- Which is more reassuring: that copying mistakes follow recognizable patterns, or that so few materially affect meaning? Why?
- How might the weekly public reading of Scripture help guard a text?
Working vocabulary
Codex. A book with pages bound along one edge, as opposed to a scroll. Plural: codices.
Parchment. A writing surface made from processed animal skin.
Exemplar. The manuscript from which a copyist works.
Scriptorium. A workshop where manuscripts are copied. Plural: scriptoria.
Nomina sacra. Latin for “sacred names,” the shortened and overlined forms Christian copyists used for words such as God, Lord, Jesus, and Christ.
Homoeoteleuton. Greek for “same ending,” an eye-skip that drops the words between two similar endings.
Harmonization. A change that makes one passage resemble a familiar parallel.
Paleography. The study of ancient handwriting, used to estimate the dates of manuscripts.
P52. A small second-century papyrus fragment containing portions of John 18, held in Manchester.
Before the next session
Read: Chapter 3, “The History of the Printed Greek New Testament.” It is one of the longer chapters, so begin early.
Do one thing: Read John 18:31–38, the passage represented on the two sides of P52. Picture the surviving scrap and consider how far John’s Gospel had already traveled.
Bring: Your Bible, a King James if you have one, and your vocabulary pages.
Think about: Apart from Tertius, we usually do not know the names of the copyists who carried the New Testament forward. What does it mean that God kept his Word through people whose names are lost?
A closing word
Thanks be to God for papyrus and parchment; for copyists whose names we do not know and for one named Tertius whose name we do. The Word came through ordinary hands and ordinary materials by extraordinary providence, and it lies open before us centuries later.
The Word travels still.
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”
— Colossians 3:16 (NET)
Scripture quotations in this session are from the NET Bible, with the KJV quoted where translations are compared. Confessional citations follow the Kolb-Wengert edition of the Book of Concord.