The New Testament Text Before The Earliest Manuscripts

Muslims, atheists, and other critics often suggest that our manuscript evidence for the New Testament text isn't good enough, since the text may have been corrupted prior to the earliest copies we have. Here's a series I wrote a few years ago on the subject: part 1, part 2, part 3. The third post discusses corroboration of the reliability of the New Testament text from early non-Christian sources. That's an issue seldom addressed in discussions of textual transmission, but it's highly significant.