Summary: Bible - New Testament

The GIST

New Testament, the second division of the Christian Bible, is a small library: twenty-seven writings in everyday Greek, by various authors, about the teaching and person of Jesus and about the first generations of people who followed him. It holds four gospels, one book of history called the Acts of the Apostles, twenty-one letters, and a closing vision, the Book of Revelation. Together with the Old Testament, which is based mainly on the Hebrew Bible, it forms the sacred scripture of Christianity.

There is no single author to name. The books were all or nearly all written, it is thought, by Jewish followers of Jesus living in the Roman Empire, and many are dated by literary analysis to the middle and later decades of the first century. Nobody sat down to write "the New Testament". The collection took shape over centuries of use, argument and sifting, and the list of twenty-seven was formally settled only late in the fourth century. To read it is to read the documents from which a world religion grew, and to see how a community decided which of its many writings spoke for it.

What It Says

The name. The word "testament" is itself a claim. It points to a new covenant that Christians believe completes or fulfils the covenant God made with Israel through Moses at Mount Sinai. Christians have traditionally found this new covenant foretold in the Book of Jeremiah, in a passage promising a law written on the heart: "I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it". Judaism has traditionally disagreed with that reading. The English word comes by a winding road. The Hebrew term means a pact or alliance. The Jewish translators who put the scriptures into Greek chose a word that ordinarily meant a will left after death, Latin copied it as testamentum, and Christian theology made something of the link between a will and the death of Jesus. The phrase "New Testament" for a set of writings can be traced to Tertullian, around the start of the third century.

The four gospels. The collection opens with four accounts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. "Gospel" comes from an Old English word for good news: the news of the coming kingdom of God's Messiah and of redemption through the life and death of Jesus, which is the heart of the Christian message.

Each gospel has its own shape. Matthew begins with a genealogy and a birth story that includes the visit of the magi and a flight into Egypt, and ends with the risen Jesus sending out his disciples. Mark begins with the preaching of John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus; in its original text it ends at the empty tomb, with no appearances of the risen Jesus. Luke is ascribed to a companion of the apostle Paul, described as a physician, who was not one of the Twelve. John begins with a philosophical prologue and ends with appearances of the risen Jesus.

Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels, because they tell many of the same stories, often in the same order and sometimes in the same words. Most scholars hold that Mark was written first. Many argue that Matthew and Luke used Mark together with a lost source known as Q, though theories that do without Q are gaining ground. John is quite different, and scholars have long debated whether its author knew the other three. The gospels themselves are anonymous. Their names come from church tradition and were attached, scholars think, by the middle of the second century. These four were not the only gospels written. Others circulated, among them the Gospel of Thomas, and Luke's own opening mentions earlier accounts.

The Acts of the Apostles. The fifth book continues the story after the death and resurrection of Jesus, following the work of the apostles. It is a sequel to the Gospel of Luke. Both are addressed to a certain Theophilus, and the preface to Acts refers back to "my former book". Scholars generally conclude that the two share one author and speak of them as Luke–Acts. Tradition names him as Luke, Paul's companion. Critical opinion has been divided on that, though most scholars still think the author had met Paul. The most probable date is put at around 80 to 90 AD, with some arguing for much later.

The letters of Paul. Thirteen books present Paul the Apostle as their author. Nine are addressed to churches in particular cities or regions: Romans, the two letters to the Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and the two to the Thessalonians. They were written to deal with problems those communities actually faced, and their recurring themes are the believers' relationship to the wider pagan society, to Judaism and to one another. Four more are addressed to individuals. Three of these, the two letters to Timothy and the one to Titus, are called the Pastoral epistles, because they are written to men charged with the care of churches and deal with Christian living, doctrine and leadership. The fourth is the brief letter to Philemon.

Paul's letters are the oldest writings in the collection. The first letter to the Thessalonians is thought likely to be the earliest of all, from around 52 AD. Scholars count seven letters as "undisputed": Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon. The other six are debated. Many scholars defend Ephesians, Colossians and 2 Thessalonians as Paul's; most regard the Pastorals as written in his name by others, though some defend those too.

Hebrews. This letter addresses a Jewish audience who had come to believe that Jesus was the Messiah foretold in the Hebrew scriptures. It argues that the new covenant and the ministry of Jesus are superior to the covenant of the Mosaic law, and presses the practical consequences. It names no author. For centuries the church counted it as a fourteenth letter of Paul, a view supported by Jerome and Augustine and maintained until the Reformation, and its anonymity made its acceptance difficult. Contemporary scholars generally reject Paul as its writer because of its distinctive style and theology. In the third century Origen had already said the last word on the matter: "Men of old have handed it down as Paul's, but who wrote the Epistle God only knows."

The catholic epistles. Seven shorter writings follow, called "catholic" in the old sense of general or universal, because they are addressed to the church at large. They are the letter of James, often identified with James the brother of Jesus; two letters under the name of Peter, the second of which is widely thought not to be his; three ascribed to John; and the letter of Jude, written under the name of the brother of Jesus and James. The authorship of several is disputed.

Revelation. The last book is the Apocalypse of John, counted as prophetic or apocalyptic literature. It opens with letters to seven congregations in Asia Minor and then becomes an apocalypse, an unveiling of divine mysteries, in a style popular in ancient Judaism and Christianity. Its author calls himself John and says he received his vision on the island of Patmos. Tradition identified him with John the Apostle; modern scholars are divided, and the language makes it unlikely that he also wrote the Gospel of John. Some date the book to about 81 to 96 AD and others to around 68.

Why It Matters

How the list was made. The process was long. In the first centuries many books were treated as inspired and there was no agreed canon. Paul's letters were circulating, perhaps as a collection, by the end of the first century. Around 140 a teacher named Marcion proposed a canon of his own, an edited Luke and ten letters of Paul, with the Old Testament rejected altogether. He was repudiated, and several scholars argue that the church defined its own list partly in answer to him. Around 180 Irenaeus insisted on four gospels and no more, comparing them to the four winds and four zones of the world. The Muratorian fragment may preserve the earliest mainstream list. In the third century Origen may already have used the same twenty-seven books, though Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John and Revelation were still disputed. Around 300 Eusebius sorted the writings into accepted, disputed and rejected.

In 367 Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, listed in an Easter letter exactly the twenty-seven books now in use. The Synod of Hippo in 393 may have been the first council to accept that list, and councils at Carthage in 397 and 419 confirmed it. Christian scholars say these bodies were not creating something new but ratifying what the church already held. Even the order of the books has varied. Paul's letters were arranged in an early edition roughly from longest to shortest, and Luther's Bible placed Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation last, reflecting his views on their standing in the canon.

Language and text. Jesus is generally thought to have spoken mainly Aramaic, but the books were written in Koine Greek. Their style differs from the polished literary Greek of the period. Some scholars explain this by the Jewish background of the authors, steeped in the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures; others say it is simply the Greek of daily life, like that found in private letters and receipts preserved in Egypt. The text has come down through thousands of manuscripts with variations among them, the earliest surviving copies dating from the late second to early third century, and textual critics work to recover its earliest form.

How it is received. The Catholic and Orthodox churches, evangelicals and many other Protestants regard the New Testament as inspired scripture. Catholics and Orthodox receive it together with sacred tradition as a source of revelation; Protestants hold that doctrine is to be drawn from scripture alone; evangelicals and some other Protestants believe it to be without error.

Who Should Read It

Anyone who wants to understand Christianity at its source, and anyone curious about how a sacred book comes to be. It rewards being read as what it is: a collection of different voices, biographies, a history, letters and a vision, gathered because communities kept reading them. Start with a gospel and one of Paul's letters and the rest will open from there.