Connotations Of The New Testament

In the New Testament the books are divided into five categories, which are The Gospel, The Acts of the Apostles, Letter, The Catholic Epistles and The Book of Revelation. The Gospel is the teaching of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles refer to the spread of Christianity. Letter refer to a document that is written for a particular event. The Catholic Epistles are a series of books in the form of letters in the New Testament. The Book of Revelation is the closing book of the New Testament.

When we open the New Testament, we find four books called "gospels" - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. All four present compelling accounts of the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the long-awaited Jewish Messiah (the Christ) and Son of God.

The third section dissects the formation of the New Testament with more historical context and views of other writings defined as Gnostic writing. Bruce explains the spoken words of the apostles carried as much authority as their written words and gives an in depth explanation how the Gospels and Pauline writings were viewed by the Church Fathers. The rest of the section demonstrates the Church Fathers and their views of what was to be considered scripture and the councils that affirmed the inspired scripture.

“The Church has always and everywhere maintained, and continues to maintain, the apostolic origin of the four Gospels. The apostles preached, as Christ had charged them to do, and then, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they and others of the apostolic age handed on to us in writing the same message they had preached, the

[1] With all these various locations, facts, perspectives, identities, and languages that compile the Christian biblical text how can Christians know that the 27 books are the right 27 books? Again, the question of the canon, therefore, is at the very center of how biblical authority is established. [2] Even though the Bible has been established and authenticated for several centuries, the Christian community continues to circulate debate on the New Testament canon. In the introduction of the book (pp 15-24) Kruger states there are various reasons why this conversation is still happening. First, modern critical scholarship has continued to raise doubts about the authorship and date of numerous New Testament books, attributing them to later, pseudonymous authors. Throughout the text many of the models date the completed canon to the fourth century. Second, the later century and a half have been filled with sensational discoveries of apocryphal materials that have raised new questions about which books should be included in the canon. The discoveries of apocryphal gospels such as the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Thomas, the Secret gospel of Mark, and most recently, the Gospels of Judas have raised questions about the state of

Ch. 1: What is the New Testament? In this chapter, Ehrman discusses the origins of the New Testament. He starts off with the diversity of early Christianity and the large amount of Christian documents that were written during the second century. Ehrman also discusses which Christian literature became canon, including the gospels written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as well as the epistles and book of revelation.

In the Catholic faith, the Protestant belief of “sola scriptura” or “scripture alone” is to be used along with the Magisterial authority of those in the church such as the Pope and Bishops, which is a long standing belief from the church’s founding in 33 AD. The Protestant Bible and The Catholic Bible both use the same New Testament, which was defined by Athanasius in 367, but use a different Old Testament. The Protestant Old Testament is different than the Catholic Old Testament because of the history of the founding of the Protestant faith. The Protestant Old testament comes from the Hebrew Bible which was decided to have 24 books, with this canon being accepted at the Councils of Jamnia in 90-118 AD. (Coffman)

The bible is a unique book that describes God, His will, power, and qualities. It divided into two main parts which we call the Old and New Testaments. Even though they both reveal true knowledge about God and have much in common, there are plentiful differences between them like who are God’s people, the laws, and the sacrifices.

Many of the books from the New Testament are from the apostles or from authors who interacted personally with them. Examples of this include Matthew and John, two of Jesus' apostles who each wrote one of the Gospels. Then there are

This first volume contains 39 books, and 929 chapters: almost identical to the Tanakh or the Hebrew Bible. Interpretation of the scriptures are more about God ‘The Father’, himself, but lays the foundation for the second volume the New Testament. Originally written in Greek about 45 AD, this volume contains 27 books and 260 chapters. Its scriptures tell the story of the life of Jesus, believed by Christians to be the Messiah, Son of God in human form, and sent by God to fulfill the promises and prophesies of the Old Testament.

According to our text, the New Testament is comprised of four primary literary forms: Gospels, History, Letters and Apocalyptic (Harris, 2014). The Gospels was made up of four books written by four separate authors who tell of Jesus from four individual viewpoints based upon their understanding of who Jesus was, yet it does not cover the lifespan of Jesus, only certain accounts. Therefore, it is not considered historical or a biography but is defined as ‘sui generis’. The historical counts of the life of Christ is noted in the book of Acts. This book tells of the history of the early church but by all accounts doesn’t use traditional criteria most often noted in historical writings. The Epistles are known as letters. These letters were thought to be written by Paul and his followers. The letters were often written to the various churches rather than people or individuals. They were also written to address issues, concerns or to offer praise for specific acts or behaviors. Thus, letters or epistles addressing sin were more of the rebuking nature to bring correction and accountability in the effort to restore the parishioners to appropriate, God-fearing behaviors. Whereas, other letters may be to praise churches for exemplifying model behaviors that could be used for strong witnessing. The latter form is known as the apocalyptic writings. This form tends to deal with the End Times and was suspected to have been written during the time of church persecution. The book of Revelation in particular, was written around the 1st century when Christians were said to have been killed for their faith. It is during this time that the question was raised regarding God’s role and whether or not he would win. It was stated emphatically that God would win and would redeem his people.ReferenceHarris, S. L., (2014). The New Testament: A Student’s Introduction (8th ed.). Dubuque:McGraw-Hill Education.

The New Testament was canonized over a period of approximately four hundred years (Stotesberg). From AD 50-125, the books which in the end constitute the New Testament were written. Simultaneously, other books, which did not end up being included in the final canon, were produced. These books are the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, I Clement, the seven letters of Ignatius of Antioch, etc. (“Development of the Difficult Canon”). As more and more books were written, Christians realized that it was imperative that they gather and consolidate this material before it became lost. Sometime before AD 100, ten of Paul’s letters were gathered and combined into their own canon. The Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were combined to form another canon soon after the canonization of Paul’s letters. The Gospels and Paul’s letters became the main body of a new group of Scriptures that would soon become the New Testament. Soon Acts, I Peter, I John, and Revelation were inserted into this body of Scripture. Following this, the rest of the books were added to the New Testament (Barker).

The New Testament is a collection of books which contains the writings concerning the significant events in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. These books appeared after the physical death of Jesus Christ. In this regard, Jesus had left no records concerning him, and all that is written about him depends wholly on what other people have written about him. The first four books of the New Testament are part of the several biographies of Jesus which were written by the end of the first century of the era of Christianity. Then before any of these biographies have been drafted, there were Christian communities which were being instructed through epistles on how to live like Jesus and how to solve their problem like Christians. A good number of these letters were written by a man called Paul. After Paul death, some other new leaders of the Christian movement continued to write letters to the churches to encourage and strengthen them. As Christians grew in number persecution arose, and some letters have been drafted to support them and also to counter the false doctrines. These letters are part of the New Testament. The twenty-seven books of the New Testament were selected from the list of writings in that period (Bruce, 1988)

During the early history of the church, there was no such thing as a New Testament “canon.” The selection of books that were to be included or excluded from the texts used by the church was the responsibility of each individual church body, and thus varied greatly from location to location. Because there was no canon – (books considered

The Old Testament is made up of forty six books while the New Testament is made up of twenty seven books, with a total of seventy three books in all. The Bible was written by forty different authors from all walks of life, who wrote this with the inspiration about God and God’s people. Moses and Apostle Paul were the two main contributors in writing the bible. Moses wrote the first five books in the Bible and referred to it as the Pentateuch while Apostle Paul wrote fourteen books in the New Testament.