Greek Manuscripts, New Testament, 6000?

I was round a friends house, and was asked a few questions regarding my conversion to Islam. Whilst answering these questions, the age old statement came up, but what about the thousands of manuscripts we have supporting the New Testament?

Unfortunately, I could not 100% recall an accurate response in detail other than, the number of manuscripts from close to the time of Isa/Jesus “pbuh” was so small, its nearly insignificant, and the partiality of these manuscripts puts into question the reliability and validity.

So Lets look more in depth as to why this is.

The History of New Testament Manuscripts

Upon examination, of the manuscripts, you will find that the two major manuscripts are Masoretic text in Hebrew and the Septuagint in Greek. The Masoretic text refers back around the 9th century while the oldest manuscript for Septuagint refers back to the 4th century. As for the New Testament, the oldest manuscripts are the Greek Vaticanus and Sinaiticus which are thought to be the primary used, and refer to the 4th century AD.

Codex Sinaiticus

Among many scholars the Codex Sinaiticus is known as the preeminent Christian Bible or the “Aleph” – first letter of the Hebrew alphabet or number one. The Codex Sinaiticus is most well known for containing the most and earliest complete copy of what is known today as the New Testament in the Bible. There is a copy of the Codex Sinaiticus within the British Library in London, however this is not an original but the earliest copy that we currently have. The Codex Sinaiticus was discovered at Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt (Sinai). The book is comprised from just over 400 large leaves of prepared animal skin and on the parchment leaves is written about half of the old testament and

What About Earlier Fragments?

You will find that a lot of apologists and some Christian scholars will state that there “were” fragments that prove that at the time of, lets say, the fragment of John Rayland, were present and prove that the books were present. So on this example, letls look at the fragment mentioned.

The fact that fragments like this exist are not proof for the accuracy or even the existence of the Gospel of John at that time. The only thing fragments like this prove is that these words were present in some form at that time. However there is also the possibility that these could have been taken from another source and that the Gospel of John was written while copying certain elements from that source. So all this proves is that there are many possibilities but these fragments do not lend themselves to proving the fact as evidence.

Dead Sea Scrolls?

Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls many scholars an apologists use these to prove the authenticity of the Old Testament, however the only thing that was found was fragments, the only “nearly” complete book that was found amongst them was the book of Isaiah. This in itself does not prove that the Old Testament that we have now is the same one that was present back then. As an example, books like Esther and Nehemiah are completely missing and a huge amount of Apocrypha were found amongst the scrolls. This actually adds another question concerning the books that were known as canonical at that time, but we wont go into that today but just as a quick note, a lot of the Apocrypha were present in the same manuscripts as 1-4 Maccabees and the Prayer of Manasseh which are present in the Vaticanus with other canonical books.

Conclusion

All these evidences that are used in apologetics, from a Muslim POV are not enough to tell if it true or not, the most important factor that should be taken into account is the time that all of this was written.

So I will leave you with this thought, If Isa (Jesus) “pbuh” claimed to be God, Son of God, then why was this not put on more of a focal point within Christian texts, as this is quite an important thing from the Jewish community and most people would agree, there would have been a lot more recorded information about this. The biggest push for the Divinity of “Christ” comes from a man and his followers who never met Isa (Jesus) “pbuh” and was not supported by the disciples according to the texts themselves.