The description of the materials in the handbooks of textual criticism follows a well-established pattern. I shall first follow that, as concisely as possible in order to provide information that will be relevant to this book, and then attempt a different approach. Individual manuscripts will not be described here. They will be introduced as they appear in subsequent chapters.

The materials are generally divided into three categories: Greek manuscripts, translations into other tongues, and quotations by early Christian writers. And each may be further divided.

Greek manuscripts

All known manuscripts are itemised in a list that is accepted as standard by everyone. The Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Münster, Westphalia, assumed reponsibility for the List, and for forty years has earned our gratitude by improving and updating it. A revised edition was published in 1994. It provides for each manuscript a number, its contents, date, the material on which it is written, the number of leaves that survive, the number of columns on a page and the number of lines in a column, the dimensions, and the library where it is held with its classmark. The List separates manuscripts into four groups: papyri, majuscules, minuscules and lectionaries. Each manuscript's number tells us to which group it belongs. This system was formulated at the end of the last century by C. R. Gregory, and replaced a more cumber-some system which had separate lists for manuscripts according to contents.