How many manuscripts of the Greek New Testament exist today?
Jacob Peterson’s chapter, “Math Myths: How Many Manuscripts We Have and Why More Isn’t Always Better” in Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism attempts to shed some light on this question. It’s a complicated question because of double- (and triple-, etc.) counts, lost manuscripts, etc. Here is a summary from the Key Takeaways in his chapter:
Most manuscripts of the New Testament are only manuscripts of part of the New Testament, and providing an exact count of them is a fool’s errand. It is best to say that there are about fifty-three hundred Greek New Testament manuscripts in existence, although fifty-one hundred might be the safer estimate.
Or to provide a comparison that might make it easier to remember (because, as my pastor taught me when I started learning Greek, the weirder the analogy, the more likely it is that you will remember it), there are about half as many Greek New Testament manuscripts as there are people in Tennesseewho voted for Kanye West:
