A Little Bible Handbook
Online Version
The New Testament
The New Testament is a collection of literature about Jesus of Nazareth - his life, death, and resurrection, and the events and concerns of the early Christian community which sprang up following his time on earth. Although the New Testament occupies less space in the Bible than does the Old Testament, it is the central focus of Christianity, and is therefore studied by Christians with great intensity.
The New Testament contains four main types of material: Gospel, Acts, Letters, and Apocalypse. The order in which they appear in the New Testament is not, however, the order in which they came into being.
A brief history of Jesus and his followers
Jesus was born in obscurity. It is possible that news of the birth was limited to some unknown shepherds and a trio of foreign king/scholars. When Jesus was an adult, his townsfolk were shocked that he might have pretensions of being a Rabbi (see Mark 6:1-6). Rather than being recognised as someone important, he was seen as a troublemaker, and executed. It is not likely that a vast number of reporters and scholars were carefully recording either his words or his biography for posterity. His followers were working and business people and unlikely to see themselves as biographers during his lifetime.After Jesus’ execution, extraordinary things began to happen. People saw him - alive and well. They felt themselves transformed, and began to tell the world that Jesus was the “Lord,” the “Son of God,” and that by his death and resurrection, sins were forgiven and the Kingdom of God begun. But even then, very little was written down. The earliest Christians felt that the end of the world was coming so soon that there was no time to make any arrangements at all, let alone keep a careful record.
Jesus himself seems to have taught this (Mark 13:24-30).
The first things to be written were letters: administrative letters, letters of encouragement for the fledgling church. Some by St. Paul were preserved, and now form the bulk of the New Testament. Later, when the end of the world still did not come, people began to set down Jesus’ life and his teaching in an orderly manner (see Luke 1: 1-4).
So the Gospels came into being. Mark was probably the first (of the four in the New Testament), followed shortly by Matthew and Luke. The writer of Luke’s Gospel also composed an account of the activities of the earliest Christians (see Acts 1:1).
Other letters followed, and eventually, about 90 A.D., John’s Gospel. Then a few letters appeared under the names of famous apostles, but almost certainly long after they had died (this practice was common, and respectable, in the ancient world). Finally, after more than a century, the book known as “Revelation” was composed.
All these writings co-existed with similar material, and for two hundred years the New Testament as we know it did not exist. Eventually Christian leaders made a selection (after 250 A.D.) of the best Gospels, “Acts,” letters, and the Revelation. Then the New Testament was complete.
The Gospels
These are the “biographies” of Jesus.
Something you may notice if you read through Matthew, Mark, and Luke, is how similar these three are to one another. In fact, at times they are word-for-word identical. Scholars believe that both Matthew and Luke had copies of Mark’s gospel in front of them when they wrote their own gospels. In some places, they copied what Mark had to say, rather than rewrite the story themselves. There are some other places where Matthew and Luke are identical to one another, but different from Mark. Perhaps here these writers were copying from one another, but more likely they had in their hands a book about Jesus which has since been lost.
Although they told a common story, and even borrowed from one another at times, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are also unique individuals with a particular message for their readers. Matthew has a passionate commitment to holiness, and a fascination with the way he saw the Hebrew scriptures being fulfilled in Jesus. Mark is very conscious of the titanic struggle between good and evil, and all his attention is upon the strength and passion of Christ as he faces Crucifixion. Luke sees the events of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection as the focus of all human history, and he carefully sets his story upon the world stage. Luke also has a profound interest in healing for the sick, and justice for the poor.
John’s Gospel is quite different from the other three. Where Matthew, Mark, and Luke seem a little bit like a modern biography, John’s Gospel is more like a meditation. In John, Jesus makes extended speeches. It is difficult to imagine anyone taking these down “verbatim” and preserving them intact until it was time to put together a gospel. In fact, many scholars believe that these are not historical quotes at all, but rather a poetic interpretation of the meaning of Jesus’ life and death. Some students believe these passages directly quote the risen Christ in his glory.
Of all the gospels, it is John which has most profoundly influenced the prayers and hymns of the church, and the meditation of the saints.
