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So how does all of this prove anything? Does it prove the Bible is the Word of God? If not, what's the point?

To be completely honest with you, I do not think it proves the point it seeks to prove. First of all, the fact that there are more New Testament manuscripts than any other book from antiquity only proves that very many people were interested in reading it. Further, what the above table does not state is that the manuscripts listed very frequently do not agree with each other.

The Nestle-Aland Greek-English New Testament provides on each page a list of alternate versions of each verse, when applicable. As a representative example, we could consider John 1:1-20. According to the apparatus, within this section there is one verse that has 5 different Greek variants, one that has 4 variants, three that have 3 variants, three that have 2 variants, and one that has a single variants: an average of 1.25 variants per verse. If this sample is representative, it is possible that the number of different Bible texts which could be constructed from all the various manuscripts is on the order of 1 followed by 8,000 zeroes.

Christians, I believe, have to accept the the Bible is the inspired Word of God by faith and not statistics.

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