New Testament
Second division of the Christian biblical canon / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The New Testament[lower-alpha 1] (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events relating to first-century Christianity. The New Testament's background, the first division of the Christian Bible, is called the Old Testament, which is based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible; together they are regarded as sacred scripture by Christians.[1]
The New Testament is a collection of Christian texts originally written in the Koine Greek language, at different times by various authors. While the Old Testament canon varies somewhat between different Christian denominations, the 27-book canon of the New Testament has been almost universally recognized within Christianity[2] since at least Late Antiquity. Thus, in almost all Christian traditions today, the New Testament consists of 27 books:
- 4 canonical gospels by the "Four Evangelists" (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John)
- The Acts of the Apostles
- 13 Pauline epistles
- The Epistle to the Hebrews
- 7 general epistles
- The Book of Revelation
The earliest known complete list of the 27 books is found in a letter written by Athanasius, a 4th-century bishop of Alexandria, dated to 367 AD.[3] The 27-book New Testament was first formally canonized during the councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) in North Africa. Pope Innocent I ratified the same canon in 405, but it is probable that a Council in Rome in 382 under Pope Damasus I gave the same list first. These councils also provided the canon of the Old Testament, which included the deuterocanonical books.[4]
There is no scholarly consensus on the date of composition of the latest New Testament texts. John A. T. Robinson, Dan Wallace, and William F. Albright dated all the books of the New Testament before 70 AD.[5] Many other scholars, such as Bart D. Ehrman and Stephen L. Harris, date some New Testament texts much later than this;[6][7][8] Richard Pervo dated Luke–Acts to c. 115 AD,[9] and David Trobisch places Acts in the mid-to-late second century, contemporaneous with the publication of the first New Testament canon.[10]
The New Oxford Annotated Bible claims, "Scholars generally agree that the Gospels were written forty to sixty years after the death of Jesus. They thus do not present eyewitness or contemporary accounts of Jesus's life and teaching."[11][12] The ESV Study Bible claims the following (as one argument for gospel authenticity): Because Luke, as a second generation Christian, claims to have retrieved eyewitness testimony (Luke 1:1–4), in addition to having traveled with Paul the Apostle (Acts 16:10–17; arguing for an authorship date of c. AD 62[13]), which is corroborated by Paul's Letter to the Colossians (Col. 4:14), Letter to Philemon (Philem. 23–24), and Second Letter to Timothy (2 Tim. 4:11),[lower-alpha 2] the gospel account of Luke "was received as having apostolic endorsement and authority from Paul and as a trustworthy record of the gospel that Paul preached" (e.g. Rom. 2:16, according to Eusebius in Ecclesiastical History 3.4.8).[14]
The word testament
The word testament in the expression "New Testament" refers to a new covenant that Christians believe completes or fulfils the Mosaic covenant (the old covenant) that Yahweh (the national god of Israel) made with the people of Israel on Mount Sinai through Moses, described in the books of the Old Testament.[15] Christians traditionally view this new covenant as being prophesied in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Jeremiah:[16]
Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; forasmuch as they broke My covenant, although I was a lord over them, saith the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the LORD, I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people; and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying: 'Know the LORD'; for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more.
The word covenant means 'agreement' (from Latin con-venio 'to agree' lit. 'to come together'): the use of the word testament, which describes the different idea of written instructions for inheritance after death, to refer to the covenant with Israel in the Old Testament, is foreign to the original Hebrew word brit (בְּרִית) describing it, which only means 'alliance, covenant, pact' and never 'inheritance instructions after death'.[17][18] This use comes from the transcription of Latin testamentum 'will (left after death)',[19] a literal translation of Greek diatheke (διαθήκη) 'will (left after death)',[20] which is the word used to translate Hebrew brit in the Septuagint.[21]
The choice of this word diatheke, by the Jewish translators of the Septuagint in Alexandria in the 3rd and 2nd century BCE, has been understood in Christian theology to imply a reinterpreted view of the Old Testament covenant with Israel as possessing characteristics of a 'will left after death' (the death of Jesus) and has generated considerable attention from biblical scholars and theologians:[22] in contrast to the Jewish usage where brit was the usual Hebrew word used to refer to pacts, alliances and covenants in general, like a common pact between two individuals,[lower-alpha 3] and to the one between God and Israel in particular,[lower-alpha 4] in the Greek world diatheke was virtually never used to refer to an alliance or covenant (one exception is noted in a passage from Aristophanes)[15] and referred instead to a will left after the death of a person. There is scholarly debate[23][22] as to the reason why the translators of the Septuagint chose the term diatheke to translate Hebrew brit, instead of another Greek word generally used to refer to an alliance or covenant.
The phrase New Testament as the collection of scriptures
The use of the phrase "New Testament" (Koine Greek: Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, Hē Kainḕ Diathḗkē) to describe a collection of first and second-century Christian Greek scriptures can be traced back to Tertullian in his work Against Praxeas.[24][25][26] Irenaeus uses the phrase "New Testament" several times, but does not use it in reference to any written text.[25] In Against Marcion, written c. 208 AD, Tertullian writes of:[27]
the Divine Word, who is doubly edged with the two testaments of the law and the gospel.
And Tertullian continues later in the book, writing:[28][lower-alpha 5]
it is certain that the whole aim at which he [Marcion] has strenuously laboured, even in the drawing up of his Antitheses, centres in this, that he may establish a diversity between the Old and the New Testaments, so that his own Christ may be separate from the Creator, as belonging to this rival God, and as alien from the law and the prophets.
By the 4th century, the existence—even if not the exact contents—of both an Old and New Testament had been established. Lactantius, a 3rd–4th century Christian author wrote in his early-4th-century Latin Institutiones Divinae (Divine Institutes):[29]
But all scripture is divided into two Testaments. That which preceded the advent and passion of Christ—that is, the law and the prophets—is called the Old; but those things which were written after His resurrection are named the New Testament. The Jews make use of the Old, we of the New: but yet they are not discordant, for the New is the fulfilling of the Old, and in both there is the same testator, even Christ, who, having suffered death for us, made us heirs of His everlasting kingdom, the people of the Jews being deprived and disinherited. As the prophet Jeremiah testifies when he speaks such things: "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new testament to the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not according to the testament which I made to their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; for they continued not in my testament, and I disregarded them, saith the Lord."[30] ... For that which He said above, that He would make a new testament to the house of Judah, shows that the old testament which was given by Moses was not perfect; but that which was to be given by Christ would be complete.
Eusebius describes the collection of Christian writings as "covenanted" (ἐνδιαθήκη) books in Hist. Eccl. 3.3.1–7; 3.25.3; 5.8.1; 6.25.1.