October 19

Jeremiah 33:1-34:22; 1 Timothy 4:1-16; Psalm 89:1-13; Proverbs 25:23-24

I’ve been wanting to write about the New Testament as a whole for a while, but each day it’s my turn to blog, I find something in the Scripture reading of that day that I “simply have to write about.” Now don’t get me wrong, today’s passages are great, too, it’s just that it’s already the middle of October so I feel like I need to seize the moment.

If you’ll recall, I wrote about the historic manuscripts and the preservation of the Old Testament in a post on March 16. I thought I’d do something similar with the New Testament texts, as well as give some basic overview of how the New Testament was put together in the first place.

Have you ever thought about that? Why, for example, is Matthew the first gospel? Some books are obvious, like Genesis and Revelation; but we are probably so familiar with the order of the Bible that we don’t even stop to think about why it was arranged that way.

The first recorded mention of the need to “canonize” the New Testament (meaning an-agreed-upon set of texts that the community would deem as authoritative) was in AD 140. Considering the last of the apostles died around AD 70, that’s very soon! By the 3^rd century and the rise of the Apostolic Fathers (“a term traditionally used to designate the collection of the earliest extant Christian writings outside the New Testament” [The Apostolic Fathers, 1]), the 27 books of the New Testament were basically established. 

Matthew was originally placed first because at that time, it was thought to have been written first. But as more textual evaluation occurred, scholars began to realize that Mark was most likely first, as so much of Luke and Matthew use Mark as their starting point. Acts comes after the Gospels because it continues the story; but then the epistles are arranged, surprisingly, not by date or content, but rather by length. They are grouped by author, and then arranged from largest to smallest. Paul’s letters come first, probably because he was the most prolific writer. And Romans appears first because it’s the longest of his letters, followed by 1 and 2 Corinthians, which are the second longest. And so on.

Okay, now on to how the New Testament has been preserved. There is a TON I could say about this but because I know not everyone is the geek that I am, I’ll try to just hit the main points. There are three classes of “witnesses” for our New Testament manuscript, which basically means three sources: Greek manuscripts (of which there are 5,000, each containing all or part of the NT), the ancient translations into other languages (don’t you love to think about the NT being translated into other languages even hundreds of years ago?), and the quotations from the NT made by early writers.

I can’t go into detail about each one of these sources, so I’ll just mention two of the most important Greek papyrus manuscripts of the NT. They are called the Chester Beatty (the name of the person who acquired them) Biblical papyri. The first one contained all four Gospels and Acts and dates back to the first half of the 3^rd century; the second papyrus contained ten epistles of Paul and dates from around the year 200. Can you believe that? We have something that’s less than 200 years from Christ on which to base our Scriptures. I love it! God not only gave his Word to human authors, but he also made sure it was preserved for future generations.

If you’re interested in more about how the New Testament came to be and the ancient manuscripts scholars used to translate and create the Bible as we know it, I’d recommend The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, by Bruce Metzger. Much of the above information is based off that book and it’s truly fascinating. At least, it’s fascinating to a geek like me.

So be encouraged, my friends. God’s word has been protected and preserved so that we could read it and be changed by it, which is exactly what we’re doing!

Carry on!

- Esther McCurry

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