Chapter Six

What is the New Testament?

So far, we have been considering the existence of the God who we defined to be, ‘the uncreated creator’. This is important because whatever else the Christian God might be, he is at least that. This must be our starting point. We have argued that it is reasonable to believe that this God exists and to believe that he is the designer of the universe, and that he designed it for a purpose – the purpose of creating life – not necessarily human life – but life.

As William Craig put it:

We may therefore infer that a personal creator of the universe exists, who is uncaused, beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and unimaginably powerful. This as Thomas Aquinas was wont to remark, is what everybody refers to as God.

The ‘personal’ bit might be a bit more justifiable now!

Now, it’s time to consider the God that St Peter and St Paul define as, ‘the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Peter 1:3; Ephesians 1:3). According to Christianity, the uncreated creator and designer of the universe, and this Christian God, are one and the same.

What is the evidence for this? In short, the evidence is Jesus Christ himself. Jesus was born in 8BC, or soon afterwards, and grew up in the village of Nazareth in Galilee, in the north of Israel, and so he is often called Jesus of Nazareth. He travelled around the countryside and the towns of that region, including most particularly the city of Jerusalem in Judea, the southern part of Israel. Jerusalem was the centre of the Jewish faith at that time, as it is now. There he was killed, by crucifixion, around AD30. After his death, Jesus’ disciples claimed that he rose from the dead. Belief in the resurrection of Jesus is central to Christianity.

‘And what is the evidence for Jesus Christ himself?’ you might very reasonably ask. I will focus mostly on the New Testament as the evidence for Jesus and his life and teaching, together with other ancient documents which relate to it. I will often call the New Testament the NT for short. There is other evidence, such as the evidence from religious experience, which is important, and to which we will return later, but for now, it’s the NT which we will consider. First of all, what is the New Testament? I’m afraid that the answer to this question is inevitably going to be a bit of a list, but persevere until the end of the chapter, and I promise you that you will be amazingly well informed about the NT!

 

What is in the New Testament?

The Christian Bible, often referred to as the scriptures, which literally means ‘the writings’, is divided into two parts: the Old Testament, and the New Testament. The Old Testament is also called the Hebrew Bible, since it is the scripture of the Jewish faith, from which came the Christian one. Jesus himself, and almost all the NT writers were Jewish. All the NT writers considered the Hebrew Bible to be scripture. People who follow the Jewish faith today do not believe in Jesus, and do not believe that the New Testament is scripture. The word Bible literally means ‘the books’. The New Testament contains 27 books, and there are 39 universally recognised books in the Old Testament. Some churches also recognise additional Old Testament books which are found in some printed bibles but not others. How do you remember this? If you look at the name New Testament you will see that the first word contains three letters and the second contains nine. The same is true of the name Old Testament. Thus, there are 3 x 9 = 27 books in the New and 39 in the Old Testament. If nothing else, knowing that is useful for pub quizzes.

The New Testament begins with the four gospels, the first four books. The word gospel literally means the good news. We should say that there are not four gospels, there are four accounts of the one gospel; but mostly people just call them the four gospels. They are: the Gospel according to Matthew, the Gospel according to Mark, the Gospel according to Luke, and the Gospel according to John; but again, like most people, we’ll just call them Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The four gospels contain biographical details of Jesus life as well as his teachings. As a way of remembering the names, I find the mnemonic, ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, went to bed with trousers on’ to be useful; a little bit irreverent perhaps, but that’s why it‘s a good mnemonic.

The gospels are followed by the Acts of the Apostles, usually just called Acts, which is the story of the early church up to the year AD62 or thereabouts. It was also written by Luke. Luke wrote more of the NT than anyone else. Then come the 13 letters of St Paul, in order of length (longest to shortest), the anonymous letter to the Hebrews, the letter of James, two letters of St Peter, three of St John, and one of St Jude. Most of these are letters written to the earliest churches, spread over the ancient Roman world, which deal with Christian teaching but also practical matters. Finally comes the Apocalypse, the Revelation to St John. Yes, that’s the apocalypse with the four horsemen in it!  Some of St Paul’s letters are co-authored by Sosthenes, Timothy, and Silvanus. Four of the letters are personal letters from Paul: two to Timothy, one to Titus, and the other is from Paul to Philemon, to plead for his friend Onesimus, an escaped slave, that Philemon should show him kindness and take him back as a fellow Christian and brother.

Some have argued the author of Hebrews was Priscilla, a prominent figure in the early church, who is mentioned several times in Acts. In chapter 18, for example, we learn that, with her husband Aquila, she was a travelling companion of St Paul (v18), and teacher of the faith (vs 24-26), and like Paul, a tentmaker (vs2-4). Paul also mentions her in his letters. That Priscilla is the author or Hebrews is a minority view, but a case can be made (Hoppin). If correct, it would explain why the book is anonymous. Getting a book into Holy Scripture written by a woman in the patriarchal world of the Roman Empire might have been a bit of a hard sell. Patriarchal the world of the New Testament writers may have been, but nevertheless women played a key role in the gospels and in the early church, as we shall see. If you want a preview, try Chapter 16 of Paul’s letter to the Romans, that is to the churches in the city of Rome. Firstly, Paul commends Phoebe to the Christians in Rome, who is apparently the one introducing the letter. She is a deacon in the church in Cenchreae, and a benefactor of Paul and many others. Paul then greets some of the leading people in the church at Rome including Priscilla, whom you know about, Mary, Junia (an apostle), Tryphena, Tryphosa, Persis and Julia. Tryphena and Tryphosa have not been in the list of top ten girls’ names for a while, but you never know, they might make a come back!

We refer to a particular place in the NT by giving the name of the book, the chapter, and the verse. Luke 2:1 means the gospel of Luke, chapter two, verse one. 1 Cor 13: 4-6, 13 means the first letter of St Paul to the Corinthians, chapter thirteen, verses four to six and thirteen. If you’ve ever been to a school nativity play, or a church wedding, you will almost certainly have heard those verses. Then there is the more personal 2 Tim 1: 1-5: the second letter of St Paul to Timothy, chapter one, verses one to five. The chapter and verse numbers are not part of the original text. They were added later for obvious reasons. The original text, written in Greek, also had no paragraphs, no punctuation, no lower-case letters, and usually no spaces between the words. If you think that’s confusing, the Old Testament, originally written in Hebrew, is worse. It has no vowels either. These days, it’s all very easy. If you put a bible reference into an internet search engine, the verses will appear immediately – all from the comfort of your own armchair. It’s good to have your own printed copy of the Bible as well of course!

All of the gospels and letters were written down by a professional scribe, known as an amanuensis, as was the usual practice. The letter of St Paul to the Romans, for example, was written by Tertius. He says ‘hi’ in Romans 16:22. Two of the most prominent exceptions are: firstly Galatians 6:11f; Paul was so annoyed with the Galatians that he decided to write that bit himself, in extra big letters; and secondly Philemon 19, where Paul makes a solemn promise in his own hand.

So, who were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Paul, James, Peter, John, and Jude, Sosthenes, Timothy and Silvanus; and for that matter Priscilla? How did they come to write their gospels and letters? In what way are they evidence? Should we trust them? We’ll start by describing what the NT writers themselves say about how the NT was written and we’ll add some comments by other ancient writers. This will give us the traditional view. In the following chapters, we can look at alternative, more sceptical views of how the NT came to be, and we can assess how credible these alternative views are. There’s no need to discuss those for the moment though; you need to know what the traditional view is before considering the alternatives to it; but it will all help to assess whether or not the NT is a reliable source of historical evidence about Jesus, what he did, and what he had to say.

 

Why all this messing about? Why not just believe it?

Perhaps some might consider it inappropriate, or even disrespectful, to treat the NT merely as historical evidence, as if it were no different to other ancient documents; it is holy scripture after all. But being holy scripture and being historical evidence are not mutually exclusive. No disrespect is intended! In this book I consider the value of the New Testament as historical evidence. That’s not because I don’t think it’s holy scripture, inspired by God. I do think so, and I hope that you eventually come to agree. Whatever else the NT might be, though, it is evidence, and in a book whose purpose is to persuade the reader that Christianity is rational, evidence is the place to start.

It may be that you were already quite happy to accept the NT books as evidence for what Jesus said and did, and you might even wonder why I think it is necessary to justify that idea. If that applies to you then - good for you I say! I do not mean to suggest by examining and evaluating the reliability of Matthew et al. as evidence, that I think they might be unreliable and therefore should be regarded with suspicion. That is not my point at all! I write what follows below in the spirit of nullius in verba, take nobody’s word for it; a principle which should be liberally and equally applied to everything, even to things which we regard as trustworthy, perhaps even especially those things. This is not done in a spirit of suspicion, but rather in a spirit of confidence that the truth has nothing to fear from a healthy scepticism.

On the other hand, perhaps you are one of those who are open to the idea of the gospels as reliable evidence, but who need reasons to see it that way. If so, then I believe that an evaluation of the NT as evidence will help you. It will not prove that the gospels are true, but it will, I hope, set you free from unnecessary and unwarranted doubts about them, and allow you to go on from there and begin to see them as inspired. As renowned Victorian preacher Charles Spurgeon put in a sermon in 1886, in a quote which exists in many different forms, ‘the gospel is like a lion. It does not need defending. Let it out of its cage [of unwarranted doubts], and it will defend itself.’

Then there are, of course, those who insist that the NT is of no value whatsoever as evidence, who need to be challenged. Richard Dawkins writes:

All [the four gospels] have the status of legends, as factually dubious as the as the stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round table. … [Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code] is indeed fabricated from start to finish: invented made up fiction. In that respect it is exactly like the gospels. The only difference between the Da Vinci Code and the gospels is that is that the gospels are ancient fiction and the Da Vinci Code is modern fiction (Dawkins, 122-123).

All I will say to that is nullius in verba, take no one’s word for it, not even when the word comes from Professor Dawkins!

I also would not want to suggest, by all this talk of assessing evidence, that reading the NT is some sort of dry, academic exercise, or akin to a detective conducting a forensic examination of a crime scene. The NT is truly an inspiration for so many things. I once came across a young woman who was just beginning to discover the Christian faith. She did not have a copy of the New Testament, just a small book of quotations from the gospels. ‘These are amazing,’ she said. ‘Yes, they are,’ I replied. ‘I particularly like this,’ she said, reading out loud:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.

Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake,

for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. (Matt 5:3-10)

It was a revelation for me, to whom those words were and are so familiar, to see them through the eyes of one who was seeing them for the first time: she brought home to me, just in case I had forgotten, the depth and power and the truth of Jesus’ words.  Yes, the NT is evidence, but also so much more.

 

Who wrote the New Testament and when?

The four gospel writers are rather shy. They don’t draw attention to themselves at all, quite the opposite. In a modern book, there is usually a section on or inside the cover called ‘about the author’. There is nothing like that in any of the gospels; none of the authors identify themselves. So, in spite of the prominence of the gospels in Christianity - they are always front and centre stage - the gospel writers themselves remain behind the scenes, and they aren’t coming out for a curtain call. Details about them, therefore, tend to be rather elusive. Presumably the original readers knew who the authors were and this information was passed on, although we don’t know exactly how. We can say though that is no evidence that they were ever called anything other than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Let’s begin with Luke. The Gospel according to Luke opens with these words, in which he explains how he wrote his gospel:

Since many have undertaken to set in order a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write to you in order, most excellent Theophilus; that you might know the certainty concerning the things in which you were instructed. Luke 1:1-4.

In Acts, Luke makes it clearer what he meant by ‘those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses’. From his many disciples, Jesus chose twelve in particular to be his inner circle. One of them, Judas Iscariot, fell away. Jesus appointed the remaining eleven as apostles with St Peter and their leader. The word apostle means, one who is sent out. Another man was chosen to replace Judas.

When they had come in, they went up into the upper room where they were staying; that is Peter, John, James, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas the son of James … along with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his [Jesus’] brothers. In these days, Peter stood up in the middle of the disciples (and the number of names was about one hundred twenty), and said … ‘Of the men therefore who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John, to the day that he was received up from us, of these one must become a witness with us of his resurrection.’

They put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also called Justus, and Matthias … They drew lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was counted with the eleven apostles. (Acts 1:13-26)

These twelve became the main leaders of the early church, the chief authority on the story and teaching of Jesus, and principal guardians of it’s transmission. Luke was not disciple of Jesus; he never met him. He was a companion of St Paul, and is, presumably, the same Luke who is mentioned several times in Paul’s letters (Philemon 24, Col 4:14 and 2 Tim 4:11). He is an eyewitness himself, but only of some of journeys of St Paul which he describes later on in Acts. To Luke we shall return, but what about the others?

What about Mark and Matthew? Papias was Bishop of Hierapolis, in what is now Turkey, who lived c. AD60 – c. AD130. He was a hearer of Ariston and John the elder, disciples of Jesus, but not apostles, and the daughters of Philip (Acts 21:8-9). He collected traditions from the disciples of the apostles (Bauckham, 12-21). The writings of Papias, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna, along with the anonymous ‘Didache’ (did a kay) are our main contemporary historical sources concerning Christianity at the end of the first century and beginning of the second (Stevenson, 7-17).

Papias writes:

John the Elder mentioned that Mark, who was Peter’s interpreter, wrote down everything he remembered about what the Lord said and did, though not in a specific order. Mark himself had not heard or followed the Lord directly but later became associated with Peter. Peter tailored his teachings to the needs of the moment rather than organizing the Lord’s sayings systematically. Therefore, Mark did nothing wrong by recording events as he remembered them, aiming to be accurate and not omit or falsify anything he heard.

Eusebius HE, iii.39 (adapted from Stevenson, 47-49)

So, according to Papias, Mark’s gospel is based on the preaching of Peter, the leader of the apostles. Eric Morecambe, in his famous sketch with Andre Previn, once played Grieg’s piano concerto with ‘all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.’  In would seem that Mark tells us all the right stories, but not necessarily in the order in which they happened. We can take it that John the Elder knew the right order.

Who was Mark? The name Mark appears in the NT several times, and it’s hard to know whether these verses are referring to the same person, or to different people; but John, also called Mark, in Acts seems to fit the bill:

Thinking about that, he [Peter] came to the house of Mary, the mother of John who was called Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying. When Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a servant girl named Rhoda came to answer. When she recognized Peter’s voice, she didn’t open the gate for joy, but ran in, and reported that Peter was standing in front of the gate. (Acts 12:12-14)

Someone called Mark was with Peter when he wrote his first letter, whom Peter calls his ‘son’, which appears to be a term of affection, and doesn’t mean his literal son (1 Peter 5:13).

Papias wrote five books collectively called, ‘the Expositions of the Dominical Oracles’. Unfortunately, they are now lost. We know about them mainly from the historian Eusebius of Caesaria who wrote around AD320, although there are some shorter quotations in other earlier writers. For the writings of Papias, we are mostly reliant on what Eusebius decided to give us, and the only comment we get from Eusebius on what Papias says about Matthew is:

Here is the statement about Matthew:

Matthew compiled the oracles in Hebrew, and everyone interpreted them as best they could.

Eusebius HE, iii.39 (adapted from Stephenson, 49)

Eusebius also mentions that Papias quotes from the letter of Peter and the letter of John. And that’s your lot as far as Papias is concerned. It’s frustrating, but typical when you are dealing with ancient history. As we noted in chapter 2, almost everything from the ancient world is now lost, and historians must work with the evidence which has survived by chance, by robustness, or which has been carefully preserved. We must rely on the people who were there at the time, what they decided to tell us, and what they let slip by accident. Richard Bauckham remarks, ‘it [Papias’ collection of books] is one of those lost works that historians of early Christianity could most wish to see recovered from a forgotten library or the sands of Egypt. It might well solve many of our problems about the origins of the gospels’ (Bauckham, 12). This recalls Darwin’s frustration with the limitations of the evidence from the fossil record, which we also noted in chapter 2.

Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.

The Origin of Species. Chapter 10 (Darwin, 347)

As we noted then, sometimes, you have to work with the evidence you have, and not wait for the evidence you would ideally like to have. A judgement needs to be made about how significant the gaps in the evidence are.

Is Papias correct about Mark and Matthew? How can we tell? Other ancient writers confirm what Papias said (Wiles and Santer, 128), but they knew Papias’ writing, so that is only semi-independent corroboration; but in ancient history you take what you’re given and are grateful, as parents use to say. Probably not yours though, if you are under sixty!

There is additional support for what Papias says. Most scholars consider that both Luke and Matthew used Mark as a source when they were writing their gospels. If one had used Mark as a source, that might be considered a coincidence; for two of them to do so begins to look systematic. If this belief is true, then this shows that Mark’s gospel became accepted as authoritative quickly, widely, and early, otherwise Matthew and Luke would not have used it, and certainly not both of them. There must have been a reason for this. If everyone knew that Mark was based on Peter’s testimony, that would explain it. There is no other obvious explanation. There is also internal evidence (Bauckham, 155-180). Bruce Metzger says ‘Its colloquial style and graphic description of incidents in which Simon Peter figures prominently, or which must have had special interest for him … give the impression of being derived directly from the reminiscence of Peter himself’ (Metzger, p115). Odd comments which single out Peter, such as: ‘Simon [Peter] and those who were with him searched for him [Jesus]’ (Mark 1:36) and, ‘But go, tell his disciples and Peter’ (Mark 16:7) and other similar remarks also perhaps give the game away.

And who is the writer of the fourth gospel? Once again, the writer is elusive. The gospel is the testimony of an eyewitness who is identified only by the enigmatic phrases: ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’ and ‘the one who leaned on Jesus’ breast at the supper’. In the last two verses we read:

This is the disciple who testifies about these things, and wrote these things. We know that his witness is true. There are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they would all be written, I suppose that even the world itself wouldn’t have room for the books that would be written. (John 21:24-25)

Luke says his gospel is based on the evidence of eyewitnesses, who were with Jesus from the beginning; Papias tells us that Mark’s gospel is based on the preaching of Peter, the chief apostle; but John’s is the only gospel where the ‘one who wrote these things’ is himself an eyewitness. Traditionally the beloved disciple, and the author of the three letters from John, is considered to be John the Apostle, and a case for that identification is still made (Blomberg, p206); but Bauckham, argues that the beloved disciple is another John, the John the Elder known to Papias (Bauckham, p412ff). For what it’s worth, I am inclined to believe him, but you pays your money and you makes your choice.

But perhaps, it’s not so important who the authors of the gospels were. These are the books that the churches, founded in the time of the apostles, regarded as telling the authentic story of Jesus, and that’s the endorsement that matters.

The author of the letter of James is, presumably, James the brother of the Lord, a prominent leader of the Church in Jerusalem. He is mentioned in Acts (e.g. Acts 15:13-21) and the letters of St Paul (Gal 1:19, 1 Corinthians 15:3–8).

Jude, author of the short letter which is the last of the letters in the NT, is the brother of James, presumably the same James, and thus presumably also the brother of Jesus.

And finally, there is Paul. Paul is called an apostle, but he was not one of the twelve apostles. As far as we know, he never met Jesus. There is a description of Paul in the so called ‘Acts of Paul’. This is an apocryphal book, written in the mid second century, which may nevertheless have preserved a genuine tradition about him. He was: ‘a man small in size, with meeting eyebrows, with a rather large nose, bald-headed, bowlegged, strongly built, full of grace, for at times he looked like a man, and at times he had the face of an angel’ (Bruce, p34). Don’t take that description too seriously, but it is not inconsistent with Paul’s own description of himself (2 Cor 10:10).  

Paul’s story is told by Luke in Acts, and also by Paul himself in in his letters. Paul was born in Tarsus, in the Roman province of Cilicia, in what is now Turkey. He was a devout Jew, and was educated in Jerusalem under the famous rabbi Gamaliel. I say devout, but fanatical would be more accurate. He was an enthusiastic persecutor of the first Christians. He was on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus in Syria to continue his campaign of persecution there, when he had an experience of the risen Christ, and a 180-degree conversion. The story is the origin of the phrase ‘Damascene conversion’. When, after some time, Paul returned to Jerusalem, naturally the Christians there were suspicious; but Joseph, nicknamed Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, persuaded them that Paul really had changed. There he spent 15 days staying with Peter and spoke with James, the brother of the Lord. Paul travelled widely in the eastern Roman empire, travelling with amongst others, the aforementioned John also called Mark, Barnabas, Luke, Titus and Timothy, Pricilla and Aquila, eventually arriving in the city of Rome itself in the early sixties; not the nineteen sixties with Beatles and the moon landing in, just the sixties. He founded many churches, and wrote letters to them which were copied and distributed to churches throughout the empire. Thirteen of them are now in the NT. If you find his letters hard to understand, don’t worry; you’re in good company (2 Pet 3:16).

The letters of Paul were written from the late AD40s to the late AD60s. As well as not telling us their names, the gospel writers did not tell us when they wrote; but external and internal evidence can give us an idea. Acts does not mention the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70 by the Romans, an earth-shattering event for the Jews, and for the early church. It does not mention the death of Paul or Peter, the two main characters in the book; or the death of James the brother of the Lord in AD 62, although he does mention other martyrdoms, most notably that of James, the son of Zebedee, one of the twelve apostles in an earlier persecution. The failure to mention any one of these events would be a remarkable omission in a history of the early church, let alone all of them. Does this mean that Luke wrote Acts before AD 62, and therefore the Gospel before that; meaning that Mark was written before that, since Luke used it as one of his sources? Could be! However, this is an argument from silence, which is always a dangerous game, and so the majority of historians ignore that and date Mark to just before AD 70, Matthew a little later, Luke around 80AD; and John towards the end of the century (Metzger, p115). Some say that since the gospels were written some 30 to 60 years after the events they describe, they can’t possibly be reliable. This is nonsense. Modern scholars of ancient history are writing 2,000 years or more after the events they describe! That does not make their histories unreliable. It’s all about the quality of their sources. It is very significant, though, that all the NT books were completed within the lifetime of people who knew Jesus, and that the core books of the NT were in use within the churches founded by the apostles, the best sources, well within living memory of them.

 

How were the twenty-seven books collected together into the NT canon?

That neatly brings us to the turn of the century, which is called the sub apostolic age. This is the age of Papias, Ignatius, Clement and Polycarp, people whose lives overlapped with the lives of the apostles. All the NT books were complete at this stage, but they were not collected together into the New Testament as we now know it. The letters of Paul and other NT writers were read in churches as they are now (Col. 4:16; 1 Thess. 5:27; Rev. 1:3ff); in fact, 2 Peter 3:15 and 16 shows that Paul’s letters were not only widely distributed but also considered scriptures from an early date. But letters by others were also read in church, the letters of Ignatius, Clement and Polycarp, for example. Although the apostles are gone at this point, their influence is still very much alive. Papias writes:

If someone who had been a follower of the elders happened to come by, I would ask about the teachings of the elders—what Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, John, Matthew, or any of the Lord's disciples had said. I would also inquire about the teachings of Ariston or John the Elder, disciples of the Lord. I believed that spoken words, which are alive and enduring, were more valuable to me than written texts.

Eusebius HE, iii.39 (adapted from Stevenson, 47)

Note that the apostles are dead, but John the Elder and Ariston are still alive at this point.

There is, at this point in history, no New Testament canon, that is, no official list of the 27 books that are recognised today. At this stage of the Church’s development, there didn’t need to be. The books existed alongside the spoken words which are alive and enduring, the ‘living voice’. The churches founded by the apostles followed the faith of the apostles which is, in essence, the Christianity which we see today. We might call this apostolic Christianity or orthodox Christianity. I will call it New Testament Christianity since the twenty-seven NT books are the ones chosen by the apostolic church, over a period of time, as the authoritative sources for the content of the Christian faith. The NT is the foundation of the teaching in all mainstream Churches today, whatever their differences might be.

The canon was not decided upon by official body, not least because there was no official body at the time that could do such a thing. It evolved, but as is the case of the human eye, because of the limitations of the evidence, we cannot now trace the precise evolutionary path by which this happened, only the broad outline of it. It did not evolve by natural selection or survival of the fittest, although some have made that comparison (Metzger, p319). It evolved by a process of discernment. The canon of the NT is one of histories’ most exclusive clubs; it was not easy to get in. It is the A list plus. Bruce Metzger writes:

As far as can be determined, the chief criterion for acceptance of particular writings as sacred, authoritative, and worthy of being read in services of worship was conformity to what was called the rule of faith (regula fidei), that is the congruity of a given writing with the basic Christian tradition recognised as normative for the church. Another criterion was apostolic authorship. This requirement, however was not applied in a narrow sense, for in the case of two of the Gospels, the tradition of apostolic atmosphere and association (Mark with Peter and Luke with Paul) vouched for their authority. Other tests of canonicity included the question of a book’s continuous acceptance and usage in the churches as a sign of its value

(Metzger, 317-318).

By the end of the second century the NT canon had evolved into more or less the form it has today. The lists of books produced by prominent writers, and the books that they quote in their writings, include of most of the books that we recognise now. A few books took longer to be universally recognised, most notably the letter of James. The Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Didache, were books that some recognised, but they were not in the end accepted into the canon (Meztger, p310-317; Bruce, p 26-31). The first official church council to define the canon of the NT was held in North Africa at Hippo Regius in AD393. It was not imposing something new upon the Christian communities, as some mischievously suggest. It codified what was already the general practice of those communities, and had been for a very long time (Bruce, 33).

So, there you have it: that, according to the NT writers themselves, and other ancient writers, is how the NT came to be. Next up: is the NT reliable evidence for the life and teaching of Jesus and the history of the early church?

Summary

We have now moved on from the idea of God as simply ‘the uncreated creator’. For the remainder of the book, we consider the God that St Peter and St Paul call, ‘the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’. According to Christianity, the uncreated creator and designer of the universe, and this Christian God, are one and the same.

The most important evidence for this is Jesus himself, and the most important evidence for Jesus is found in the New Testament.

The chapter describes the contents of the New Testament; it is a useful introduction for those who are not very familiar with it. It describes the traditional view of how the New Testament came to be written, and how the twenty-seven books were collected together into the canon of scripture which we know today.

The Christian Bible is made up of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament together with the thirty-nine universally recognised books of the Old Testament. The first four books in the New Testament are the gospels according to, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These are the main sources for the story and teaching of Jesus. These are followed by Acts, also written by Luke, which describes the early history of the Church. Then come the thirteen letters of St Paul and the other letters including the anonymous letter to the Hebrews, and the letter of James the brother of the Lord. These were written to the earliest Christian communities. They contain core Christian teachings, and also deal with practical matters. Finally, there is the book of Revelation.

 

Works Cited

Bauckham, R. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. 2^nd ed., Wm.B Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2017

Blomberg, Craig. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. 2^nd ed., Apollos. 2007

Bruce, F.F. The NewTestament Documents: Are They Reliable? 6^th Ed., Inter-Varsity Press, 2000.

Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. Paperback edition, Harper Collins Publishers, 2011.

Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. 10^th Anniversary Ed., Transworld Publishers 2016

Hoppin, Ruth. Priscilla's Letter: Finding the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Lost Coast Press 2000.

Metzger, Bruce M. The New Testament: Its Background, Growth and Content. 3^rd ed., Abingdon Press 2003

Stevenson, J. A New Eusebius: Documents Illustrating the History of the Church to AD337. 2^nd ed., revised by W.H.C. Frend, SPCK, 1987.

Wiles, Maurice and Mark Santer. Documents in Early Christian Thought. Cambridge University Press, 1975.