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Old 05-11-2009, 11:46 AM
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Brother Tim Brother Tim is offline
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Gainesville, FL
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The destruction of vast numbers of manuscripts in the area of Antioch during the reign of Diocletian is well-documented. Once the persecution subsided, the copies began to multiply again. That is why there of few surviving Antiochian manuscripts prior to that time period, and an explosion afterward.

I have not found such information about the destruction of Alexandrian manuscripts. If this did indeed happen, one would assume that the scholars of the day would have set about to replace them using the surviving manuscripts, rather than abandoning those survivors to the dusty shelves of the Vatican (Vaticanus) or condemning them to the waste basket (Siniaticus).

The believing church maintained the flow and regeneration of the valid manuscripts and ignored the flawed and tampered ones. THAT, dear sir, is the reason for the vast difference in the numbers of extant copies of the NT.