Chez Chesler

The recent Max Max movie has me thinking about Josephus, and scholarly debates about forgeries therein. In modern times, if it's published, there are thousands of copies of it. Even Shakespeare's works were published in his lifetime, or soon thereafter, in the Folios. But when we're readling with ancient manuscripts, those that pre-date movable type or the printing press at all, there are very limited numbers of copies. Roger Pearse is apparently a British software engineer who has studied the Classics and the early Christian church. In reading what he writes, it appears that in all of the Roman libraries there were very few copies of Josephus' works, and that hardly any of the originals survive, and even very few copies of copies of copies survived from then until past the Middle Ages. Is that the case? Pearse describes various manuscripts, and, similar to how DNA markers are traced, how various examples may be considered to be related, copies of one to the other. I understand that this is why a find like the Dead Sea Scrolls is so valuable. In absolute numbers, how many copies of a work like Josephus, or any of the other ancient texts which I would have studied if I'd had a classical Liberal Arts education, existing at any time? Pearse relates some of this in http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/manuscripts/index.htm (In particular, is what is the line coming from a contemporary Greek copy? And what's a good modern edition of any or all those translations? Whiston's English isn't so easy either.)