bible_nt

The New Testament originally consists of 27 Greek writings, commonly called “books.” The first five writings are historical in character and the first four are called the Gospels, because they narrate the gospel, that is, the good news that God revealed Himself and accomplished man’s salvation in the person and work of Jesus Christ. All four of them relate the life and teachings Jesus; but they are not biographies in the modern sense of the word because they deal almost exclusively with the last two or three years of His life, and devote a disproportionate space to the last week of His life, His death and resurrection. They are not intended to be “Lives” of Jesus, but to present four different views of His person and work as the good news of salvation. The first three Gospels (named after their authors, Matthew, Mark, Luke), usually called the “Synoptic Gospels,” present the public ministry of Jesus; the fourth Gospel according to John deals with His person as the Son of God and His personal ministry. The fifth historical writing, the Acts of the Apostles, is actually a continuation of the third Gospel and is written by the same author, Luke the physician and companion of the Apostle Paul. It gives the rise and spread of Christianity after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, and of its extension westernly thru the Roman Empire to its capital, Rome, from Palestine during in about the first thirty years since His resurrection.

The next 21 writings of the New Testament are letters. Thirteen of these bear the name of Paul, nine of them are addressed to churches (Romans, I and II Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, I and II Thessalonians) and four to individuals (I and II Timothy, Titus, Philemon). The letter to the Hebrews is anonymous, but has frequently be ascribed to Paul or to one of his followers. It was probably written shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. to Jewish Christians called the Hebrews in Italy. The remaining letters are written various individuals; the one bearing the name of James is probably written by the brother of Jesus; the one bearing the name of Jude calls himself the brother of James; two letters bear the name of Peter; the remaining three letters do not bear a name, but because of their obvious similarity to the Gospel of John they have been attributed from early days to the Apostle John.

The last writing in the New Testament is the Apocalypse, or the book of Revelation; note that the name is Revelation (singular), not Revelations (plural). It belongs to a literary genre, which, although unfamiliar to the Greek-Roman literary world, was well-known in the Jewish and Christian world in those days, the apocalyptic, from the Greek, apokalyptein, “to unveil, reveal”; a earlier example of this genre is the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament. The New Testament book of Revelation is introduced by seven covering letters, addressed to seven churches in the province of Asia (modern western Turkey). The author of this writing is named John, who was exiled to the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea, and reports a series of visions that he had received which reveal the final triumph of Christ in the last days of this age. It ends with a vision of the final judgment, the new heavens and earth, and the New Jerusalem. The book of Revelation was written near the end of the Roman Flavian emperors (A.D. 69-96), by whom the Christians were being persecuted, to encourage them with the assurance that Christ would be finally victorious over the rulers of this world; Christ, not Caesar, had been invested by God Almighty with the sovereignty of the world.