There are a couple thousand manuscripts that contain all or portions of the Gospels. This is orders of magnitudes better (20x) than any other ancient writing.
| Text | Date of Autographs | Date of oldest extant manuscript | Time b/w autographs and extant manuscripts | # of Manuscripts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Testament | 2nd-3rd century | 5,700(1) | ||
| Josephus | 11th century | 133(2) | ||
| Tacitus | 11th century | 3(3) | ||
| Suetonius | 9th century | 200(2) | ||
| Herodotus | 500 years | 75(1) | ||
| Thucydides | 500 years | 20(1) |
- Mark D. Roberts, Can we Trust the Gospels?, 31.
- Komoszeqski, Sawyer, and Wallace, Reinventing Jesus, 71.
- Metzger and Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament, 126.
Source:
Response:
Most of these thousands of manuscripts are later than 400 A.D.