Early Christianity

The Old Testament books are written in many different literary styles such as historical, prophetic, or biographical. Between the Old and New Testaments there were four hundred years during which time books were not written. As the New Testament begins, it starts with four books commonly known as the Gospels. These gospels are a biography of the life and works of Jesus Christ himself. The remainder of the Bible contains mostly letters to various people and churches throughout Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy. These are letters of encouragement to the early churches of the world and many Christians who may have been imprisoned or in captivity in several countries. Still one question that plagues the minds of several modern day Christians is, how did the modern day Bible come to be? The Old Testament had been decided upon long ago. Elders in the Jewish church met and decided 39 different books in all. These books had been written over the span of several centuries and became what is today known as the Old Testament. The New Testament was somewhat similar. During the time shortly after Jesus, there was controversy over the books that were truly from God and those that were not. The early church hierarchy settled this dispute during the second, third and fourth centuries. During this time, councils, consisting of church elders, met periodically to determine which books had true divine inspiration and which were frauds. In the mid-fourth century, the New

Before the gospels and Pauline epistles, early church Christians related to the Old Testament as Scripture and viewed their Christian walk as the fulfillment of the promises made to Israel from the Old Testament, which foretold of the coming age of the Messiah. The first New Testament Christians understood the importance of the Old Testament; it was their “Bible” they preached from. Just as in the early church, Christians today need the Old Testament for preaching and in which to reference and understand Christ’s purpose for why he came.

Lastly we can look at the manuscripts and compare it to what we have today to make sure the meaning has not changed. There are more than 5,000 copies of the whole New Testament, also there are several thousands of fragments. These numbers may not seem like a lot, however compared to other works in ancient history these numbers outweigh the manuscripts for other works. For example there are 700 copies of Homers laid and only one copy of Aristotle's work. So when it comes to manuscript evidence, the New Testament definitely has numbers on its side. An interning fact is that in the early centuries of the Christian church a great number of scholars quoted the New Testament. The scholars quoted the New Testament so many times that almost every verse in all 27 books has been quoted. Another important fact is that 500 people saw Christ risen from the dead. This is huge thing to see, one of those people had to have read the book about Jesus rising from the dead. That person didn't object to anything he/she read. Now moving on to the Old Testament, the Old Testament makes claims about Jesus such as him turning water to

The New Testament, sometimes called the Greek Testament or Greek Scriptures, and sometimes also New Covenant which is the literary translation of the Greek language, is the name given to the final portion of the Christian Bible. It was written by various authors after 45 AD and before 140 AD. Its books were collected into one single volume over a long period of several centuries. The New Testament is more or less the root of the Christian religion, which has played a major role in shaping modern Western morality and culture.

Unlike Mythology, narratives of the Bible are actual events that took place dating back to the beginning of time. The conception of The Holy Bible’s compilation started thousands of years ago in the land of Egypt. Initially, the Old Testament Scriptures were written in the Hebrew language, however, they were later translated to the Greek. At the onset of the New Testament writings, they were originally recorded in the Greek language. Forty men transcribed the voice of God, which resulted in sixty-six books of the Holy Bible. The Holy Scriptures explained the creations, formation of the world, God, God’s chosen people, sin, and the plan of salvation as well.

The early churched mentioned in Acts 2:1, demonstrates what it is like to be brave through faith in Jesus, was a model of unity in believers, and showed the power of prayer while they nervously anticipated the arrival of the Holy Ghost. These people were the body of Christ coming together in its infant and earliest form. Jesus had been crucified by the local authorities less than two months previous to this, and at this point the disciples no longer had their leader to guide them. Yet, rather than allowing the negative feelings of doubt, fear, or anxiety to limit their capabilities, the disciples spent their time together in prayer and expecting the coming of the Helper. It would have been easy for any number of the disciples to go about with their everyday lives as they lived before they experienced Jesus, but they allowed their faith in what was promised to them to empower them to be courageous in

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).

did, both during Jesus’ lifetime and afterward. In his book, The New Testament: A Historical

Many scholars claim the New Testament is not reliable for many reasons. Some claim that the Bible is not reliably transmitted because it's like the telephone game. Others say that the Bible has been copied so many times there is no way it's accurate. When examining documents like the Bible, we can find out it's reliability by asking some fundamental questions. Was the document written close to the events it describes? Is the document able to be corroborated by multiple external sources? Has the document been reliably transmitted or copied? If we answer yes to these questions, we determine the document is reliable.

The art of writing has been used through out the world even before the time of Moses. People have been writing things down since the dawn of time, with all different types of materials. According to the book, the Old Testament was originally written on leather, while the New Testament was inked on papyrus. Although this is what the old and New Testament are written on, there are two major divisions of the New Testament: the uncials and cursives or

Besides the Greek evidence, there are nearly 30,000 versional copies (e.g., Latin, Coptic, and Syriac), and over 1,000,000 quotations from the NT in the church Fathers. Many of them by people that I have already quoted for you abovce... 2) Also withing the New Testament itself.. it has 27 different documents written in the first Century A.D.. These writings contain the story of the life of Jesus and the beginnings of the Christian church from about 4 B.C. until the decade of the A.D. nineties, ( according to liberal scholarship)... And these were eye witnessess acounts who gave firsthand testimony the what they had seen and heard. ( 1 John

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.

Have you ever wondered how Christianity was spread in the early stages? and what influenced it? Rome held a huge part in both of these things. The Roman emperors, culture, and the Roman religion all were things that influenced early Christianity very much.

Initially, communities of early Christian believers were able to choose their own leaders; however, as centuries passed, the practice of having secular rulers choose appoint church leaders became routine. These appointed leaders were eventually able to establish permanent institutions, which not only expressed Christian values, but also drew from many Greco-Roman Traditions. The creation of Nicene Creed and the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church and the Byzantine Christian (Orthodox) Church allowed the Christian church to expand and thrive.

Throughout history, Christianity always had a reputation, or a “name” following it. Different perspectives approached the reputation that was attached to Christianity in different manners. Justin Martyr and Porphyry had objectives when defining whether this “name” really defined Christianity and the past. They wondered whether the past really represented Christianity. Additionally they honed in on the question of was the past that people represented as Christianity really the roots of Christianity? All around Porphyry and Justin was perceptions of what Christianity rooted from and stood for.