It is indeed a striking proof of the essential soundness of the tradition that with which all these thousands of copies, tracing their ancestry back … - Frederic G. Kenyon

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.

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.

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