The TR is consequently derived from (at most) some 20 to 25 MSS, dating from the last few centuries before the invention of printing, and not selected on any estimate of merit, but merely as being ready to the editor's hands. They may be taken as fairly representative of the great mass of Greek Testament MSS of the late Middle Ages, but not more. At present we have over 70 papyri, over 230 uncial MSS and nearly 2500 minuscules and about 1700 lectionaries. The oldest of these is a papyrus fragment of Jn 18, dated within the first half of the 2nd cent. The great Chester Beatty papyri of the Gospels and Acts and of Paul belong to the 3rd cent. The history of Textual Criticism during the past three centuries has been the history of the accumulation of all this material (and of further masses of evidence provided by ancient translations and patristic citations), and of its appliation to the discovery of the true text of the NT; and it is not surprising that such huge accessions of evidence, going back in age a thousand years or more behind the date of Erasmus' principal witnesses, should have necessitated a considerable number of alterations in the details of the TR.
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