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while papyrus manuscripts represent the earliest copies of the New Testament, there are also ancient copies written on parchment, which was made from skins of cattle, sheep, goats and antelope, we have what are called uncial manuscripts, which are written in all-capital Greek letters, today, we have 306 of these, several dating back as early as the 3rd century, the most important are Codex Sinaiticus, which is the only complete New Testament in uncial letters, and Codex Vaticanus, which is not quite complete, both date to about AD 350, a new style of writing, more cursive in nature, emerged in roughly AD 800, it's called miniscule, and we have 2,856 of these, then there are also lectionaries, which contain New Testament Scripture in the sequence it was to be read in the early churches at appropriate times during the year, a total of 2,403 of these have been cataloged, that puts the total of Greek manuscripts at 5,664, in addition to the Greek documents, there are thousands of other ancient New Testament manuscripts in other languages, there are 8,000-10,000 Latin Vulgate manuscripts, plus a total of 8,000 in Ethiopic, Slavic and Armenian, in all, there are about 24,000 manuscripts in existence, in terms of multiplicity of manuscripts and the time gap between the originals and our first copies, how does the New Testament stack up against other well-known works of antiquity? we can have great confidence in the fidelity with which this material has come down to us, especially compared with any other ancient literary work, there is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament, in no other case is the interval of time between the composition of the book and the date of the earliest manuscripts so short as in that of the New Testament