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There are over 5,600 Greek [[manuscript]]s containing all or part of the [[New Testament]], as well as over 10,000 Latin manuscripts, and perhaps 500 other manuscripts of various other languages. Additionally, there are the [[Patristic]] writings, which contain copious quotes from across the early centuries of the scriptures.
Most of these manuscripts date to the [[Middle Ages]]. The oldest complete copy of the New Testament, the ''
[[Codex Sinaiticus]]'' , which includes two other books<ref>The [[Epistle of Barnabas]] and [[The Shepherd of Hermas]]</ref> not now included in the accepted NT canon, dates to the 4th century. The earliest fragment of a New Testament book is the [[Rylands Library Papyrus P52]] which dates from 125–175 AD,<ref>{{Cite book |title=Orsini, Pasquale and Clarysse, Willy (2012) "Early New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates; A Critique of Theological Palaeography", Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 88/4, p. 470}}</ref> recent research pointing to a date nearer to 200 AD.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/search-resources/guide-to-special-collections/st-john-fragment/what-is-the-significance/ |title=What is the significance of this fragment? by the University of Manchester}}</ref> It has the size of a business card. Very early manuscripts are rare. The average NT manuscript is about 200 pages, and in all, there are about 1.3 million pages of text. No two manuscripts are identical, except in the smallest fragments, and the many manuscripts that preserve New Testament texts differ among themselves in many respects, with some estimates of 200,000 to 300,000 differences among the various manuscripts.<ref>See Ehrman, ''Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew'', p. 219</ref> According to [[Bart D. Ehrman|Bart Ehrman]]:
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{{quote|Most changes are careless errors that are easily recognized and corrected. Christian scribes often made mistakes simply because they were tired or inattentive or, sometimes, inept. Indeed, the single most common mistake in our manuscripts involves "[[orthography]]", significant for little more than showing that scribes in antiquity could spell no better than most of us can today. In addition, we have numerous manuscripts in which scribes have left out entire words, verses, or even pages of a book, presumably by accident. Sometimes scribes rearranged the words on the page, for example, by leaving out a word and then reinserting it later in the sentence.<ref>See Ehrman, ''Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew'', p. 220</ref>}}
In the 2008 Greer-Heard debate series, New Testament scholars [[Bart Ehrman]] and [[Daniel B. Wallace]] discussed these variances in detail. Wallace mentioned that understanding the meaning of the number of variances is not as simple as looking at the number of variances, but one must consider also the number of manuscripts, the types of errors, and among the more serious discrepancies, what impact they do or do not have.<ref>{{Cite book |editor-first= Robert B. |editor-last= Stewart |year= 2011 |title= The Reliability of the New Testament: Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace in Dialogue |location= Minneapolis, Minnesota |publisher= [[Fortress Press]] |isbn= 978-0-8006-9773-0 |oclc= 646121910}}</ref>
For hundreds of years, biblical and textual scholars have examined the manuscripts extensively. Since the eighteenth century, they have employed the techniques of [[textual criticism]] to reconstruct how the extant manuscripts of the New Testament texts might have descended, and to recover earlier [[recension]]s of the texts. However, [[Authorized King James Version|King James Version (KJV)]]-only inerrantists often prefer the traditional texts (i.e., ''Textus Receptus'', which is the basis of KJV) used in their churches to modern attempts of reconstruction (i.e., [[Novum Testamentum Graece|Nestle-Aland Greek Text]], which is the basis of modern translations), arguing that the [[Holy Spirit]] is just as active in the preservation of the scriptures as in their creation.<ref>White, JR., ''The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations?'', Baker Books, 2009, p. 24.</ref>
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=== Inerrantist response ===
==== Evangelical inerrantists ====
[[Evangelical Christians]] generally accept the findings of [[textual criticism]],<ref>Bacote, VE., Miguélez, LC. and Okholm, DL., ''Evangelicals & Scripture: Tradition, Authority and Hermeneutics'', InterVarsity Press, 2009.</ref> and nearly all modern translations, including the New Testament of the [[New International Version]], are based on "the widely accepted principles of ... textual criticism".<ref>''Today's new International Version: New Testament'', Introduction.</ref>
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