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While the average work of antiquity has no witnesses until five hundred years after its production, the New Testament boasts numerous witnesses within the first hundred years, and many more within two hundred more years, from a wide geographical area. As noted, we have entire copies of the complete New Testament from as early as the start of the fourth century, and papyri fragments of individual books have been dated to the earliest years of the second century, an unheard-of treasure trove, historically speaking. As these earlier and earlier manuscripts have been found, they have shown that the text popular in the medieval period is not radically altered but is the very same primitive text of the New Testament.