Bill,
There were and are copies, mainly sections of text or books, of the Bible previous to the Gutenburg printed Bible.
Actually there exist today about 25,000 ancient manuscripts of the New Testament alone in various languages. Now these manuscripts all wouldn't be complete sets of text,a complete Gutenberg have you, but they do overlap and give us an extremely high confidence level because of the variety in various language groups.
Here's the run down:
Extant Greek Manuscripts:
Unicials 307
Miniscules 2,860
Lectionaries 2,410
Papyri 109
Manuscripts in othr Languages:
Latin Vulgate 10,000+
Ethiopic 2,000+
Slavic 4,101+
Armenian 2,587
Syriac Pashetta 350+
Bohairic 100
Arabic 75
Old Latin 50
Anglo Saxon 7
Gothiac 6
Sogdian 3
Old Syriac 2
Persian 2
Frankish 1
Total 24,970+
There are much fewer Old Testament manuscripts because of the passage of time but we do know that the New Testament quotes from the Old Testament are extremely accurate, there are really only a handful problem texts.
Prior to Gutenburg the manuscripts were hand copied by a very laborious and precise process.
Josh McDowell's book, "The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict",or one of it's preceding versions is an excelent source for further insight into your question.
Hope this answers your question without boring you with trivia.
There were and are copies, mainly sections of text or books, of the Bible previous to the Gutenburg printed Bible.
Actually there exist today about 25,000 ancient manuscripts of the New Testament alone in various languages. Now these manuscripts all wouldn't be complete sets of text,a complete Gutenberg have you, but they do overlap and give us an extremely high confidence level because of the variety in various language groups.
Here's the run down:
Extant Greek Manuscripts:
Unicials 307
Miniscules 2,860
Lectionaries 2,410
Papyri 109
Manuscripts in othr Languages:
Latin Vulgate 10,000+
Ethiopic 2,000+
Slavic 4,101+
Armenian 2,587
Syriac Pashetta 350+
Bohairic 100
Arabic 75
Old Latin 50
Anglo Saxon 7
Gothiac 6
Sogdian 3
Old Syriac 2
Persian 2
Frankish 1
Total 24,970+
There are much fewer Old Testament manuscripts because of the passage of time but we do know that the New Testament quotes from the Old Testament are extremely accurate, there are really only a handful problem texts.
Prior to Gutenburg the manuscripts were hand copied by a very laborious and precise process.
Josh McDowell's book, "The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict",or one of it's preceding versions is an excelent source for further insight into your question.
Hope this answers your question without boring you with trivia.
