You should stop comparing the New Testament to other ancient documents

There’s a popular image I regularly see being passed around the internet that compares the number of New Testament manuscripts and their closeness to the original writings of those documents over and against other writings from the ancient world. Heck! If you’ve seen presentations from me given more than 5 years ago you might have even heard or seen that information from me! The message is compelling: the biblical New Testament has thousands more copies and the earliest ones are hundreds of years earlier than other ancient writings. However, I no longer use those images and I dissuade others from doing so as well. The reason? It’s a compelling but not completely accurate portrayal of the information. The Bible remains the most attested document within all of antiquity, it can stand on good arguments and defences. The comparative analysis between the New Testament and other ancient writings though, is not one of the good ones.