The Historical Context of the New Testamentt

The Development of the New Testament
Christianity began with a scripture, the Hebrew Bible which they accepted. The process of the shaping of the New Testament began as stories about Jesus, as well as sayings of Jesus, some oral, some written, were preserved among those who believed that Jesus was the messiah. (33 C.E.) Included was the development of the traditions concerning his death and resurrection.

Paul, a convert to Christianity after the death of Christ and a major figure in the rise and spread of Christianity, wrote letters to communities where the early churches had been established (either by him or other Christians) and had begun to grow. Jesus' sayings began to be applied with the authority of scripture. (49 C.E.) As the eyewitnesses to many of the events of Jesus' life began to die, the stories about, and the sayings of, Jesus were placed into a written form, a primitive, early form of what would come to be the gospels.(2) Further letters and other accounts about Jesus were produced, also. (80 C.E.) The only apocalyptic work in the New Testament was produced probably under the influence of persecution by the Romans. (100 C.E.) Paul's letters were also being used with the authority of scripture by this time.

By 150 C.E., in addition to the Gospels and letters of Paul, some of the other works now in the New Testament were being used, with the Hebrew Bible, as scripture. Other works which are not included in the New Testament also continued to be used, but by 393 C.E. the twenty-seven books which make up the New Testament in its present form were universally agreed upon.

Textual History
Bible focuses on the preservation and transmission of the Bible in the original languages (Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek) and to translation of to Bible into other languages. Since we have no "original" texts, we are dependent on manuscripts copied and passed on and early translations from original languages into other ancient languages.

Until the late 1940's with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest complete Hebrew manuscript available for textual study dated from around 1000 C.E. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in caves along the shores of the Dead Sea gave us manuscripts from c.a. 200-100 B.C.E., over 1000 years older than the previous manuscripts. Portions of every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther were discovered there and illustrated the high degree of accuracy of the transmission of the text from 200 B.C.E. to 1000 C.E.

The textual history of the New Testament is also complex, with at least 5,000 known handwritten manuscripts, no two of which are exactly alike. Fortunately, most of the differences are of minor significance in determining the basic meaning of the texts. Again, almost all good modern translations will indicate in the notes at the bottom of the page the readings of other manuscripts and versions where there is disagreement. Good modern translations rest on the study of these manuscripts and versions and it's highly likely that the first author-editors of the biblical books would recognize these texts as close to those they worked with or produced.

(1) See, for example, Matthew 18 in the New Revised Standard Version, where several references to "the church" are attributed to Jesus. The church had not come into existence until some time after Jesus's life and death.

(2) Most New Testament scholars accept that the gospels are composed of several sources. The most widely recognized theory argues for Mark as the first gospel, followed by Matthew and Luke, who based their gospels on Mark, and also shared a common sayings of Jesus source called Q (from the German quelle, "source"). They included material from independent sources called M and L, respectively. When the gospels in their present form were completed and by whom cannot be determined with any real certainty