re ancient books in article apr athos rutgers edu whheydt pbhya pacbell com wilson heydt writes as for the dating of the oldest extant texts of the nt how would you feel about the us civil war in a couple of thousand years if the only extant text was written about now now adjust for a largely illiterate population and one in which every copy of a manuscript is done by hand considerably better than i feel about say the punic wars or the peloponnesian war spelling optional or almost any other event in classical history how close to the events do you think the oldest extent manuscripts are in those cases steve schaffner sschaff unixhub slac stanford edu the opinions expressed may be mine and may not be those of slac stanford university or the doe
