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48 The BiBle STyle Guide
bible society 2008
6.6 new
wave
how the new testament came together
When it comes to the New Testament, the vast majority of Christians today agree that the New
Testament contains twenty-seven books (four gospels, the book of Acts, twenty-one epistles and
the book of Revelation). However, the settling on this particular collection wasn’t as straightforward
as you might think. As with the Old Testament, theologians and historians disagree on exactly how this
happened. However, broadly it goes a bit like this:
Books Begin to Be
collected together
The New Testament itself tells us several
things about it how it began as a collection.
It shows that many accounts of the life
of Jesus had been written and that all
the letters of the apostle Paul had been
collected together. Luke’s gospel and Paul’s
letters were both quoted as ‘scripture’ (Luke
1.1–3; 2 Peter 3.16; 1 Timothy 5.18). So
the first century CE saw the beginnings of a
collection of Christian scriptures, with two
types of document – accounts of the life of
Jesus and letters.
27
new
testament
the collections
crystallise into ‘gospel
and apostle’
During the early second century CE, these
two types of New Testament document
became known as ‘Gospel and Apostle’
(like the Old Testament categories ‘Law and
the Prophets’). ‘The Gospel’ became the
name of a single collection of four written
accounts of the life of Jesus that were
attributed to the apostles Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John.
The Church historian Eusebius said that by
118 CE, missionaries were carrying copies
of ‘the Scripture of the divine gospels’ with
them. ‘Apostle’ became the name for the
collection of the letters written by Paul and
then later, for those works written by the
other apostles too.
the writing of new
material forces the
chUrch to exclUde Books
As the New Testament started to take
shape in the middle of the second century
CE, groups on the fringe of the Christian
movement started to come up with their
own versions of the Bible. They wrote their
own gospels and letters and gave them
official-sounding names such as the gospel
of Peter, the gospel of Thomas and the
third letter to the Corinthians. One fringe
leader, named Marcion, even axed all Bible
books apart from the gospel of Luke and
the letters of Paul. This really began to
muddy the waters.
It forced the mainstream Church to be
clearer about which works were from
the apostles – and which weren’t. The
Muratorian Fragment, which was written
during the late second century CE, is the
first list of accepted New Testament books.
It contains pretty much the same books as
we have now, although it left out a small
number of works that were considered
more ‘borderline’.