The last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed.

Seldom can two such epoch-making events have occurred in successive years as happened then. In 1453 the Turks stormed Constantinople and finally destroyed the Greek Empire, driving out Greek scholars, who carried the knowledge of Greek language and literature to the western world; and in 1454 the first document known to us appeared from the printing press at Mainz.

The apostles were scattered, and even the leaders of the Church in Jerusalem had neither the power nor the means to impose uniformity.In these circumstances, we must imagine the literature of Christianity as spreading gradually, irregularly, and in a manner which variations inevitable.

Throughout, the work of Tyndale formed the foundation, and more than anyone else he established the rhythms and furnished much of the language which is familiar to us in the Authorised Version.

It is from the graves and ruins and rubbish-heaps of Egypt that writings have been restored to us in great numbers.

The aim of the scholarly editor is not to produce the the easiest text for the reader, but to get as near as he can to the text of the author.

The New Testament was not produced as a single work issued by an authoritative Church for the instruction of its members. The four Gospels were composed in different times and places over perhaps a third of a century, and for a time circulated separately among a number of other narratives of our Lord's life (of which the newly discovered fragment of an unknown gospel may have been one).