Introductory Reflection: A Survey Of The New Testament

Canon originally meant a rod or ruler for measuring objects, now it means the application to the books of the Bible. Canon becomes more and more important is because of the church needed. For example: standards for worship and models for prayers, liturgies, and sermons, reading material, a theological standard and a set text to translate. Heresy also plays a decisive role in the necessity of a canon. Around the year 144 Marcion an author from Rome had teachings that appeared to be Christian, but were actually teachings of a violent opponent of the evil deity of law who dominated the Old

The canon books were prized text that was held in high regards to wisdom and history of the culture. The content of these books was from the laws of Moses to the birth and death of humanity and all that was in between, about a three-thousand-year timeframe. The preservation of these scriptures including additions to, removal of, or any alterations to the text was guarded by the authors, even

For as long as records have been maintained, the Bible remains the bestselling book worldwide, year after year (Jeynes, 2012). One might be curious about the reasons it is popular, or more importantly, how did it come about. Called the canon of Scriptures, or a ‘list’, it is the compilation of biblical books regarded by Christians as “uniquely authoritative” (Klein, Blomberg, & Hubbard, Jr., 1993, p. 103). It includes 66 books encompassing thousands of years of history, written in multiple genres, and authored by many individuals. Inclusion into the canon required the necessity of scripture to meet specific criteria. Careful study dictated what became standard for believers (Klein, Blomberg, & Hubbard, Jr., 1993). A person’s understanding of the canonization of the Bible will affect how they will view the validity and authoritativeness of God’s Word.

The New Testament is characterized by the existence of imperative Biblical figures, with the likes of Jesus Christ, the Apostles, among many others. Peter was among Jesus’ first disciples. From his turning point, as manifested in the book of John 21, to his progress as a dedicated leader as manifested in Acts, to his final emergence as a co-elder as manifested in the Epistles of 1st and 2nd Peter, Peter exhibited traits of a transformational and charismatic biblical figure (Neil & William 409).

Most of the 4 gospels took place between the time period of 6-60 AD. The New Testament contains 27 books, although some of them are not quite books but long letters. Many of which were addressed to important leaders in that day. Numerous critics of the Bible claim there are too many errors for the New Testiment to be considered the reconstructed full document original and reliable. But over 80 percent of the mistakes

The first amendment is one of the most used amendments today. Everyone in the world uses it and sometimes takes advantage of it and most times uses it when needed to. The Bill Of Rights was created on December 15th of 1779 and was created to make some rules in the future because no one had the freedom to do anything. Most were punished if they spoke their opinion, they did not even have the right to choose their own religion. But that all changed when James Madison wrote the Bill of Rights which is our first ten amendments. The First Amendment is and always will be the most used amendment today.

The relationship between the Old and New Testament and the Old and New Covenant. The new covenant does not oppose the old however, it builds upon the ideas of the old testament. The New Covenant in Christ is described as “the culminating point of the promises of salvation of the Old Covenant”. The New covenant is based upon the old, only building upon the same ideas and expanding. In the Old Testament there is a deeply rooted kinship between Judaism and Christianity. The old testament brought up basic tension between the

2. The Hebrew Bible is the TNK, which, in Christianity, is known as the Old Testament. The term TNK stands for the Torah, the law; Neviim, the prophets; and Ketuvim, the writings. The Protestant Old Testament is the same as the TNK, but they are divided differently. That's why the Protestant Old Testament has 39 books and the TNK includes 24. The Catholic and Orthodox editions of the Old Testament include the Apocrypha, because it was written in Greek, which was the major language in those religious denominations. The TNK, on the other hand, does not include the seven books of the

The religion was very well known and organized throughout the society. (Ehrman, 450) Because of this, the few early Christian writers began to feel “threatened” and needed to raise Christianity up by dragging Judaism down with public knowledge hence the creation of public writings. All of the writings had different focuses when it came to the part of Judaism it was degrading and as mentioned became more aggressive as time went on. For example, the book of Hebrews makes the claim that Judaism is the precursor to Christianity and that Jesus Christ is superior to all Jewish religious figures, (Ehrman, 449) while the letter of Barnabas claimed that the Judaist religion is a false religion and they have no right to the scriptures intended because of the now rising of Christianity. (Ehrman, 447) Although both pieces degrade Judaism you can see a clear difference in where the book of Hebrews just claims that Christianity is superior to Judaism versus the letter of Barnabas that develops a clear attack on the Jewish religion by prosecuting them as a false religion. Although the writers of each of these pieces could not predict the future outcomes for both religions, the authors must take responsibility for what began the prosecution of the Jews and the devastation they both lead

Evolution is the development of different kinds of living organisms which have advanced from earlier forms during the history of the Earth. In other words, small modifications have occurred by the biological traits becoming either more or less common in a population as a function resulting from the inherited traits on the differential reproductive success of organisms interacting with their environment. Human evolution is a lengthy process of change, although scientific evidence demonstrates that the physical and behavioural traits of all living humans are extremely closely related. Numerous similar and uniquely different hominid species have existed throughout evolution, leaving Homo sapiens as the only existing hominid species

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.

Bruce offers a solid explanation of the formation of the canon chronologically starting with the Hebrew scriptures (p. 21) until the 4th century where church councils started to present the first spoken finished canon (p. 97). Bruce shows the importance of the Old Testament scriptures, but writes most about the New Testament. He not only shows how the New Testament came to be a canon but offers a deep analysis of non-canonical scripture called the Apocrypha (pp. 48, 90-93).

Concentrated effort was made to establish the authoritative collection of inspired books of the Bible into the Canon during the fourth century; however, there had been earlier attempts to list the acceptable books. The Muratorian Canon had listed all the books of the Bible except for 1 John, 1 and 2 Peter, Hebrews and James around A.D. 180, and the Syriac Version of the Canon lists all of the books except Revelation in the third century. The apocryphal writings were seen as less than inspired by the fourth century, and many of the books previously held in high regard were beginning to disappear, as the formal establishment of Canon began. Both the East and the West Churches established their Canons in the fourth century on the criterion of maintaining a connection to the apostles or their immediate disciples in the collection of writings. Athanasius of Alexandria listed the complete 27 books of the New Testament for the Eastern Church, while Jerome listed just 39 Old Testament books with our present-day 27 New Testament ones for the West Church. The resulting Vulgate Bible, translated by Jerome to Latin, was used throughout the Christian world. The Synods of Carthage confirmed the 27 books of the New Testament of

Throughout the bible, and reading it once more by Marcus Borg, a common idea as it relates to a religious experience, is that the Bible is a human product. Throughout chapter two, Borg continuously describes the Bible as being a product of humans. He explains on page 22 that he sees scripture through the lens of the Bible being a human product, meaning that it is the “product of two ancient communities” (22). He believed that what the Bible explains things to be are words from the communities of ancient Israel and the early Christian movement. “We cannot talk about God (or anything else) except with the words, symbols, stories, concepts, and categories known to us, for they are the only language we have”, made me think about the idea that

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).