Hebrew Bible Vs The New Testament

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.

Marcion believed that the Jewish Scriptures only concerned the covenant between God and the Jews of Israel, and therefore was no longer valid for the Christian church. In his mind, these were two very separate Gods. When noticing that several of Paul’s writings made mention of the God of Israel, Marcion claimed that those writings were not Paul’s original texts, and should be considered counterfeit. Marcion’s views of Paul’s “forged” portions of his letters can be attributed to what many theologians today might call the Slippery Slope Argument. In this case, Marcion chose not to trust in the inerrancy of what God had spoken to Paul. Paul’s writing’s were flawed, or someone must have tampered with them. This lack of trust in inerrancy would ultimately allow Marcion to fall down a “slippery slope”, giving way to forsake other important Christian foundational truths.

Robert Gundry presents a more critical review of N.T. Wright’s “How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels.” During his public ministry, Jesus taught extensively in words and deeds about the kingdom of God. In How God Became King, N.T. Wright

Throughout the New Testament Gospels, an abundance of enriching, soulful narratives thrive and live on through their cultivated messages of hope, compassion, miracles, and redemption. Recalling in detail the heroic life and journey of Jesus Christ, expounding his teachings and philosophy, and revealing hidden components of God’s divine nature, the Gospels are rife with symbolism and potent imagery which are accessible to people of every faith. The timeline of Jesus Christ’s life, miracle healings, administered sermons, and selfless service to the people he met and interacted with is encapsulated in the storyline of four texts within the Christian Bible which have been juxtaposed with one another. When these are read together, one can observe many fascinating parallels and similarities that make it difficult to dispute the information or messages about the life of Jesus Christ which the Gospels disseminate. There are specific passages in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John which reveal the fundamental aspects of what it means to be a disciple, and furthermore, what it means to be a human being. This essay will address discipleship and human nature as they appear in three passages, Mark 5: 1-20, Mark 5: 35-43, and Matthew… By way of thorough examination and formal analysis of the scriptural text, definitions of what it means to be a true disciple and a true human being will be discussed.

The most known books of the New Testament are the Gospels. These four books are written by four different people, yet they all align with the same content. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John present the good news as eyewitnesses. Although the canon was not yet formed, the agreement by the four men on the actual occurrence of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus aligned to the others. The Gospel had been known in the churches. Alexander Souter states, The Gospel was something well known in the churches, a document or body of documents, to which it was sufficient to appeal without further specification.” The letters written by Paul in the New

Much of the New Testament talks about the life of Jesus, and these books were written by Jesus' disciples. The original texts that made up the Bible are gone or lost, and have been copied various times to preserve the teachings.

A gospel involves the words and good deeds of Jesus and there forms are not shaped by biographical consideration but by their author’s theological viewpoints or a study of God. By placing the four gospels at the beginning of the New Testament, there are four different interpretations by four different authors.

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.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the first books of the New Testament within the Bible, The Gospels as they are so called. The words of the Gospels tell of the teachings of Jesus and his disciples and they bring the word of God to others through the land. Now, the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called synoptic gospels as they are all very similar as to the way the stories are structured, worded, and similarity in context. As for the book of John, this book differs a bit with its structure being different than the 3 before and also its perception, or depiction, of Christ.

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.

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).

Andreas J. Kostenberger on the other hand, says in his introduction "Very possibly written by John the apostle as the culmination of his long life and ministry( critical and postmodern objections the Gospel's apostolic authorship notwithstanding)..."

Each of the four Gospels contains points in ecclesiology. In the Great Commission, Jesus’ last instruction to the Apostles is to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing and teaching people (Matthew 28:19-20). For Jesus’ mission to continue and for his Church to grow, discipleship is necessary. Discipleship is a prominent theme in all four Gospels, for purposes of this essay, only the Gospels of John and Luke-Acts will be analyzed. The similarities regarding discipleship in these Gospels include images of the net and fishing, and the sheep/shepherd/sheepfold. The differences include the preparing of the Twelve to carry on Jesus' ministry in Luke, and service to the community and passing of authority in John's Gospel.

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