There are about five thousand manuscripts or parts of manuscripts (some of them mere fragments) of all or part of the Greek New Testament, and about eight thousand manuscripts or parts of manuscripts of versions.
Manuscripts containing these and other variants soon arose in various locales, giving rise to the creation of manuscript families, or “text types.” Today, these manuscript families are known as the “Alexandrian,” “Western,” and “Byzantine” text types.
Note the relative quality of the manuscripts.
With evidence such as this we are now in a position to define biblical inerrancy: the inerrancy of Scripture means that Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact.
The oldest extant manuscripts of the OT in Hebrew are the Masoretic texts, which are no earlier than the 8th century. Only manuscripts of individual books have been found in the Dead Sea scrolls.
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