Manuscript Evidence:
The number of extant New Testament manuscripts far out-weighs the number of classical ancient manuscripts available to us today, such as Tacitus' Annals of Imperial Rome; Josephus' The Jewish War; and Homer's Iliad. According to NT scholars, there are well over 5300 partial and complete New Testaments Manuscripts, which includes approximately 10,000 Latin translations; 9000 Ethiopian, Slavic, and Armenian translations. In sum, the number of extant partial or complete manuscripts at our disposal total approximately 24,000.
In contrast, concerning the classical works of antiquity, the length of time between the originals' and their subsequent copies' is roughly 500 - 1000 years. Whereas, the length of time between the original New Testament writings or autograph's, and extant copies is approximately 200 years. Thus, no other ancient texts are as well preserved as the New Testament.
Most liberal scholars would not argue over the accuracy or content of ancient classical works, but their perspective in regards to the NT is quite different. They are quick to find fault and criticize the NT more easily than they are to support it. If they were to suspend their tainted view's and examine this objectively, they would realize that this is nothing but the result of bias attitudes towards the Bible. In fact, two scholars who lend themselves to the field of Biblical Higher-Criticism had this to say concerning the reliability of New Testamentmanuscripts, in comparison to other ancient classical works:
1) John A.T. Robinson explains, "The Wealth of manuscripts, and above all the narrow interval of time between the writing and the earliest extant copies, make it by far the best attested text of any ancient writing in the world").
2) "Classical authors are often represented by but one surviving manuscript; if there are half dozen or more, one can speak of a rather advantageous situation for reconstructing the text. But there are nearly five thousand manuscripts of the NT in Greek… The only surviving manuscripts of classical authors often come from the Middle Ages, but the manuscript tradition of the NT begins as early as the end of II CE; it is therefore separate by only a century or so from the time at which the autographs [originals] were written. Thus it seems that NT textual criticism possesses a base which is far more advantageous than that for the textual criticism of classical authors".
Updating the Manuscript Evidence for the New Testament
http://www.normgeisler.com/…/Norman%20Geisler%20-%20Updatin…
Manuscript evidence for superior New Testament reliability
http://carm.org/manuscript-evidence
The Historical Reliability of the New Testament
http://www.biblicaltheology.com/Research/MartinezR02.html
Dating the Oldest New Testament Manuscripts
http://library.duke.edu/…/sc…/papyrus/texts/manuscripts.html
The Earliest New Testament Manuscripts
The Integrity of the New Testament - Special 2013 Series
http://www.bible.ca/…/topical-the-earliest-new-testament-ma…
New Testament Manuscripts vs. Classical works of Antiquity
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