The first part of that quote is from Deuteronomy 25:4 - from the sacred scriptures. The second part is from a passage which is found ONLY in Luke 10:7. Now notice that Paul refers to both as scripture. Paul considered the writings of Luke to be equal to that found in Deuteronomy.

Earliest New Testament. The earliest list of all of the New Testament books is found in a manuscript called the Muratorian fragment (A.D. 170). It is damaged. That is why it is called a fragment. The beginning has been torn off and references to some books are missing. The author of the document gave a running account of the development of the New Testament. In the document he lists the New Testament books except for Matthew, Mark, Hebrews, James, 1 & 2 Peter and 3 John. Matthew and Mark are probably missing due to the tear since the author of the Muratorian refers to the “third book of the gospel.” So only Hebrews, 1 & 2 Peter and 3 John are missing from the list. Were they part of the torn piece too? We do not know. But as early as A.D. 70-130, Hebrews, James, and 1 & 2 Peter were already quoted as being part of the New Testament (Psuedo-Barnabas, Clement of Rome). The Muratorian Fragment includes other books but clearly states they were not received.

Conclusion. The New Testament was written by the apostles who were equal to the Old Testament prophets (Eph. 3:5; 2 Peter 3:2). Both were moved by the Holy Spirit to write what God wanted written. The New Testament is endorsed by fulfilled prophecy and by the apostles. The apostle John was the last apostle when he wrote his smaller epistles and Revelation. By this time the New Testament books had been identified and endorsed.

All Those Errors. The original manuscripts written by the prophets and the apostles under the guidance of the Holy Spirit were without error. We call these original books autographs. But copies have been made over the centuries. Errors have been made in the process of copying them. Most of the errors are simple spelling errors, missing words or grammatical errors. Some intentional changes were made by the human copiers in an attempt to clarify the meaning of a passage. In a few rare cases, it is clear someone tried to change the meaning to reflect a doctrinal opinion.

Old Testament Variants. The Old Testament copies have very few variants since the Jewish rabbis had very strict rules about copying accuracy. In fact, the rabbis would destroy copies if there were too many errors. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was a major event. It provided Biblical scholars with proof that the Old Testament contained 39 books and provided thousands of manuscript fragments. Prior to that the Christian community had only three partial copies and one complete copy. With recent discoveries of Aramaic cursive copies, we now have copies dating from 250 B.C. By comparing all of these Old Testament copies, differences between the documents have been identified. These differences are called variants. There are very few variants in the Old Testament compared to the New Testament which has 200,000. Of the Old Testament variants, only sixteen are of any significance.

New Testament Variants. The New Testament has approximately 200,000 variants between 5,309 Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin Vulgates and 2,000 lectionaries. In addition to the manuscripts, we have enough quotes from all of the early fathers to completely write the New Testament except for about 11 verses. Now that is amazing.

What is a Variant? A variant is any difference between manuscripts. Let’s illustrate! Say you have three manuscripts and discover that one word is misspelled in all three manuscripts. That will be counted as three variants. But if you only found two misspellings, you will only have two variants and so on. So a single misspelling, such as a missing accent mark, across 500 manuscripts would be counted as 500 variants. Spelling errors and missing words account for the vast majority of the 200,000 variants.