If all the manuscripts were destroyed in the blink of an eye, we would still not be left without a witness. That’s because church fathers, from the late first century to the thirteenth century, quoted from the New Testament in homilies, commentaries, and theological treatises. And they did not have the gift of brevity. More than a million quotations of the New Testament by the church fathers have been collected so far. Virtually the entire New Testament could be reproduced many times over just from the quotations of these fathers.
