A better word that "testament" is "covenant", reflecting God's new covenant with man upon sending Jesus to Earth. The books of the New Testament (NT) fall into four categories: the Gospels or the story of Christ, the Acts of the early church, Paul's letters to various churches and the Apocalypse.
The first Gospel written is probably the one by John Mark, even though it traditionally comes fourth in the NT. John Mark was supposed to be a disciple of Peter and it appears to have been the primary source for the authors of Matthew and Luke because of various correlations among them that do not appear in Luke. John also delves more into Jesus' early ministry than the other Gospels do.
Most of the letters by Paul are meant to correct abuses and disorder that arose in the early church in an affectionate manner and allow a fuller discourse in more abstract terms.
Because of Christianity's rapid spread, a great demand for printed Scriptures arose. As these could only be produced through copying by hand, mistakes and deliberate alterations arose in the surviving copies. Before the Gospels, the Bible to early Christians consisted of the OT and the remembered words of Jesus, as described in the Acts.
No comments:
Post a Comment