Early Christianity

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.

When we compare the Bible to other manuscripts from antiquity, we learn that the copies of the Bible were written close to the date of the original copy. New Testament writings were composed within a few decades of the events they describe. The earliest complete copy of the entire New Testament goes back to the 5th century. Partial copies of the New Testament go back even further to 71-100 AD. In addition, there are abundant amounts of little details in the New Testament that are hard to write about unless the writer was present in the time the event took place. For example, in Acts 28 Luke mentions a Roman official named Paul Publus, the chief official of the island. We know from the

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.

The Christian Bible consists of all the Jewish Hebrew texts but they are arranged in a different manner so it makes a total of 39 books that are together known as the ‘old testament’. The Christian New Testament consists of 27 books that contain early Christian writings (Hayes 3). The Protestants count a total of 39 books, Catholics 46 while the Orthodox Christians count up to 53 books as part of their Holy Bible (Just). For Christians, the New Testament takes precedence over the Old Testament (read Hebrew text) and they use the reading of the New Testament to confirm the text of the Old Testament. For Jews however the Hebrew text is the supreme scripture and they rely on it fully for their religious understanding (Gravett, Bohmbach, Greifenhagen

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

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

The Bible is made up of a collection of books.The New Testament includes several different genres of literature (Harris,2014). At least four genres consist of, the gospels,historical,letters,and apocalyptic. The gospels are the first genre which appears in the first four books of the bible. Matthew,Mark,Luke,and John gives the accounts of the life of Jesus Christ in different perspectives. The gospels are not like any other type of literature,it is defined by its subject matter,the life of Jesus (Harris,2014).The other books are considered historical texts. Additional books were letters of epistles. The letters by Paul were a major unit of the collection Revelations. There are twenty-seven documents in the New Testament which fits into one

Around 200 BC, the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew, the language of the Jewish people, into Greek. This translation enabled the common people to read and understand the Scriptures. After Jesus’ resurrection, the apostles wrote down the account of Jesus’ life and ministry in the Gospels. They wrote in Greek because it was the common language of the people. The letters written to the churches that sprang up all over the world were also written in Greek. As the years progressed the common language shifted from Greek to Latin. As a result, the common people could not read or understand the Scriptures in Greek. Therefore, Athanasius decided to translate the Bible into the common language of the people. Since Athanasius’ translation

Teabing started talking to sophie about the origin of jesus and how the Roman Empire took advantage of him. “Jesus Christ was a historical figure of staggering influence … as a descendant of the lines of king Solomon and King David, Jesus possessed the rightful claim to the throne of the king of the Jews”.(303) It is a known fact that Jesus is the descendant of Prophet David and Prophet Solomon which made the Roman fear from the influence Christ had on the public and his many followers and had to take proaction from him. Tea bing then proceeds with explaining to sophie why constantan who was a Pagan collected and picked what was put in the New Testament A.K.A The Bible. ‘'He was a life long pagan who was baptized on his deathbed … Rome official religion

The evolution of the Bible begins one hundred and fifty years after Jesus’ birth with Marcion of Pontus, a Christian theologian and heretic. He was a faithful Christian but was dissatisfied with the Jewish scripture because he believed that the God in the Old Testament was too harsh and legalistic. The God in the Hebrew Bible was not the same God depicted by Jesus was the God that he believed in. Without the churches consent, Marcion removed all traces of the Hebrew text (the Old Testament) from his bible. Of course, at the time, people did not take well to his alteration but he was a catalyst for the evolution of the Christian bible we know today.

The Church was much different in the early days. There was strict discipline, an awareness of what it meant to be Christian and many other things which made the Church beautiful. Although the structure and teachings of the Church have remained the same, many attractive characteristics have been lost..

He made it clear that if his testimony came from himself it would be false (John 5:31). Jesus justified his testimony by confirming it from the Old Testament (John 5:39). It’s unmistakable how Jesus viewed his relationship with the Old Testament.

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).

John 14: 26 states but the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you (). This verse is an explanation from Christ about the role of the Holy Spirit in teaching and recalling events that took place during his time on earth. It is through the witness of the Spirit that man can determine the “wheat from the chaff.”() The early church had the writing of the Old Testament but did not have a formal set of canonized books regarding the Messiah to draw their inspiration from. Though they had letters from Apostles there were many heretical writings that were circulating throughout the lands that were teaching doctrine different from those who knew Christ personally. Josephus stated that no one had been bold enough to add, take away, or change the wording in the Old Testament scripture (), this was what the Church was looking for in forming a canon that related to the teaching of Christ; a type of written text that would be foundational therefore no one would want to take away or add to it.

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.