No scholar claims we have the original manuscripts (the so-called biblical “autographs”) of the New Testament. However, acknowledging that we no longer have the autographs is different from saying we no longer have the words of the original manuscripts. It is also different from arguing there never was an original we can pursue. Just because we don’t have the original doesn’t mean we can’t work back to determining what it said, given how many copies we have. Textual criticism always worked with this