As I come to the end of this book, I offer some reflections.

In the first place, I am struck by how little we know (certainly how little I know) about almost everything I have written about. Given the tiny number of manuscripts to have survived from antiquity, our theories can be no more than provisional attempts to understand these fragments of the textual tradition. This is not to denigrate either the quality of past and present research, or to say that nothing can be said about anything. But time and again, whether collecting information on manuscripts or on versions or on the forms of the text known to us, I have come upon the edge of voids which I could not cross. Some may be due to gaps in my knowledge. Others I believe to be at least currently impassable. Writing this has therefore been an exercise in humility.

Secondly, the study of the documents of the New Testament writings and their texts is flourishing. In the variety of ways of studying the manuscripts and the texts and in the vitality of various projects conceived and being executed on the largest scale, there are more grounds for optimism than for gloom. There are many recent studies which offer fresh insights.

That said, there remain a number of rather important matters which need study sooner rather than later, and I set out some of them here, in the hope that either potential research students or older scholars will be minded to take them up.