The New Testament is a set of 27 ancient Greek documents representing directly the teachings of the apostles. In Acts 2:42, we’re told the early church followed the teachings of the apostles. So, if we want to follow the teachings of the early church, we need only find them in the New Testament.
By 68 a.d., though, all the writers of the New Testament were dead but two, Luke and John. Up until then, if there was a doctrinal disagreement of any note, the local church would seek out or write to an apostle for an answer.
Of course, this couldn’t be done after they were gone, so the church needed to find another way. They followed two paths. First, they decided to form local councils of pastors. The head of each of these councils would become the bishop, the catholic authority for the local area – the word “catholic” is an early term used to identify the true teachings verses the heretical doctrines. It was not the beginning of the Roman Catholic Church. The RCC simply applied the term to itself much later.
Secondly, there were the Apostolic Fathers, the disciples’ disciples: Polycarp, Ignatius, and Clement of Rome
Speaking of heresies, the early bishops had to deal with lots of them in and out of the church. Some of the bishops became heretical themselves, and some of the doctrines of the Apostolic Fathers changed
. Well, the early church had enough of this and looked for another standard for sound doctrine. They turned to the writings of the apostles. Another problem arose. There were a lot of documents by then claiming to be genuine apostolic writings like the Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Peter, the Gospel of Barnabas. Some were Christian, some heretical claiming to have been written by the apostles. So how did they sort out the inspired books from the heretical. They were actually very organized. The bishiops agreed on tests of each document to tell if it was genuine.
Did the document carry apostolic authority? We have at least two books of the New Testament, Mark and Luke, which were not written by apostles. However, Mark was a constant companion of Peter and wrote down what he heard Peter teach. Luke was a constant companion of Paul and met church leaders and apostles in his travels. Both carried apostolic authority. Both James and Jude were half brothers of Jesus, so they had credentials. James later was called an apostle (Gal. 1:19).
Other tests were if the church as a whole had accepted it, did it doctrinally match the books which were already accepted, did the message tell the truth about God? These farmed out a lot of the fake books (pseudepigrapha).
Of the 27 New Testament books we now know, 22 were known to be inspired by the middle of the second century, at least by 170 a.d when we see the Muratorian Fragment. This is the earliest list of recognized inspired books. The Books of Hebrews, James, Peter’s epistles, and one of John’s epistles were not listed, we believe. The document was torn and some of the list may be missing. There are reasons books were not include: Hebrews was not signed, so it was not immediately included. James was seen as contradicting salvation by faith alone, and the authorship of Peter’s and one of John’s epistles were questioned. Most of these five were accepted locally but not universally until the fourth century.
Even with just these 22 books, the church was well armed to fight against the heretics of the first century.
Unlike the Old Testament documents, the documents of the New Testament were not copied by scribes for the most part, at least not in the beginning. This is because, unlike the Jews, Christians did not see the New Testament documents as a book, a collection of accepted books by the church Peter himself stated Paul’s epistles were Scripture at a time when Paul was still writing them (2 Peter 3:14-16). So, many books were recognized as Scripture.
Most of these documents were shared with other Christians. They would be copied by a pastor or learned person in the church and the original returned from whence it came. If you were wealthy or important, you might have your own copy of a New Testament document. Your friend could borrow it and copy it and then return it. This made for errors and additions in many of the 24,000 manuscripts of the New Testament documents we have today.
To deal with these issues, we have textual critics who study these manuscripts along with other early church writings and try to decide what exactly the original documents said. We do not have the originals.
As a result of these textual critics, scholars are now sure 98% of what see in our New Testament was the same as the originals. The two percent contains nothing of doctrinal importance. Since the Church Fathers wrote so much and quoted so much nearly the entire New Testament could be reconstructed just from their writings. What is missing is some of the genealogies for the most part.
Why is this important?
Over the last 2,000 years God has protected the teachings of the apostles for us to read today. We can be confident that what we read is as close to the original as 2,000 years of continual scholarship can make it.
God has given us a rule, a standard, for how we are to run our lives. He has given us guidelines on nearly every facet of the Christian life, and we hold it in our hands today. Not only that, but we can pray when we read and have the author explain what He has preserved for us.
The Bible is a remarkable book. It was given to us as holy men of God were moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21). It is God breathed to teach us how we are to obey Him (2 Tim 3:16). It is God speaking to the ages through the written word.
CORRECTION: In the first publishing of this page, I said all the apostles except John had been martyred by the end of 68 a.d. That was incorrect. All the apostolic writers of the New Testament documents except John were dead by 68 a.d. Other apostles were not martyred until into the 70s a.d., and John died near the end of the first century.
Believers Armed and Dangerous 