Islam and Wikipedia!

Wikipedia has a pretty comprehensive list of known papyri, many of which date to no later than 200 A.D.  

This is particularly of interest to Muslims who argue that the Gospels that Muhammad read and approved of have since been altered. This is patently not possible since we have many many fragments and manuscripts from hundreds of years before Muhammad was even born.

But weren’t they copied by hand, over and over?

Yes, BUT ….. the fact that the early manuscripts, hidden for centuries, agree with the text of modern bibles assures us that copying was done accurately.

“In the entire 20,000 lines of text of the N.T.  only 40 lines are in doubt (about 400 words), and none affects any significant doctrine. This means that the Greek text from which we derive our New Testament translations is 99.5 percent pure.”          from FACTS for skeptics