Any physical buildings from the place itself or other non document evidence for it?
there is no more periferial evidence for thucydides or Herodotus (both ancient history) than there is for the Bible. You can look at archaelogy to find the cities etc, people groups. But not more so than one can also do with the Holy Scriptures.
So we must toss out all ancient history in order for your premise to be true.
namely that we need an original versus the copies.
here is more that attest to what I am saying:
"John Warwick Montgomery says that "to be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament."
Sir Frederic G. Kenyon, who was the director and principal librarian of the British Museum and second to none in authority for issuing statements about MSS, says, "...besides number, the manuscripts of the New Testament differ from those of the classical authors, and this time the difference is clear gain. In no other case is the interval of time between the composition of the book and the date of the earliest extant manuscripts so short as in that of the New Testament. The books of the New Testament were written in the latter part of the first century; the earliest extant manuscripts (trifling scraps excepted) are of the fourth century - say from 250 to 300 years later. (chester beaty paprus is even newer)
"This may sound a considerable interval, but it is nothing to that which parts most of the great classical authors from their earliest manuscripts. We believe that we have in all essentials an accurate text of the seven extant plays of Sophocles; yet the earliest substantial manuscript upon which it is based was written more than 1400 years after the poet's death."
Kenyon continues in The Bible and Archaeology: "The interval then between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established."
...
F. F. Bruce in The New Testament Documents vividly pictures the comparison between the New Testament and ancient historical writings: "Perhaps we can appreciate how wealthy the New Testament is in manuscript attestation if we compare the textual material for other ancient historical works. For Caesar's Gallic Wars (composed between 58 and 50 BC) there are several extant MSS, but only nine or ten are good, and the oldest is some 900 years later than Caesar's day. Of the 142 books of the Roman history of Livy (59 BC-AD 17), only 35 survive; these are known to us from not more than 20 MSS of any consequence, only one of which, and that containing fragments of Books II-IV, is as old as the fourth century. Of the 14 books of the histories of Tacitus (ca. AD 100) only four and a half survive; of the 16 books of his Annuals, 10 survive in full and two in part. The text of these extant portions of his two great historical works depends entirely on two MSS, one of the ninth century and one of the eleventh.
"The extant MSS of his minor works (Dialogues de Oratoribus, Agricola, Germania) all descend from a codex of the tenth century. The History of Thucydides (ca. 460-400 BC) is known to us from scraps, belonging to about the beginning of the Christian era. The same is true of the History of Herodotus (BC 488-428). Yet no classical scholar would listen to an argument that the authenticity of Herodotus or Thucydides is in doubt because the earliest MSS of their works which are of any use to us are over 1,300 years later than the originals."
Greenlee writes in Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism about the time gap between the original MS (the autograph) and the extant MS (the oldest copy surviving), saying that "the oldest known MSS of most of the Greek classical authors are dated a thousand years or more after the author's death. The time interval for the Latin authors is somewhat less, varying down to a minimum of three centuries in the case of Virgil. In the case of the New Testament, however, two of the most important MSS were written within 300 years after the New Testament was completed, and some virtually complete N.T. books as well as extensive fragmentary MSS of many parts of the N.T. date back to one century from the original writings."
Greenlee adds that "since scholars accept as generally trustworthy the writings of the ancient classics even though the earliest MSS were written so long after the original writings and the number of extant MSS is in many instances so small, it is clear that the reliability of the text of the N.T. is likewise assured."
Bruce Metzger in The Text of the New Testament cogently writes of the comparison: "The works of several ancient authors are preserved to us by the thinnest possible thread of transmission. For example, the compendious history of Rome by Belleius Paterculus survived to modern times in only one incomplete manuscript, from which the edito princeps wa made - and this lone manuscript was lost in the seventeenth century after being copied by Bealus Rhenanus at Amerbach. Even the Annals of the famous historian Tacitus is extant, so far as the first six books are concerned, in but a single manuscript, dating from the ninth century. In 1870 the only known manuscript of the Epistle to Diognetus, an early Christian composition which editors usually include in the corpus of Apostolic Fathers, perished in a fire at the municipal library in Strasbourg. In contrast with these figures, the textual critic of the New Testament is embarrassed by the wealth of his material".
above quotes from:
Evidence ch. 4 - Reliability of the Bible
