CHAPTER TWO
The New Testament as a Book

At the heart of both Judaism and Christianity is the belief that God’s truth is found in a book—sacred writings that are honored, studied, and obeyed (or not) and that outlast every generation of their believers. “All humanity is grass. . . . The grass withers, . . . but the word of our God remains forever” (Isa. 40:6–8). In the previous chapter we discussed what it means to call the New Testament “Scripture.” In this chapter we will address key issues concerning the New Testament as a book: the reliability of the ancient manuscripts, differences among translations and editions, and the impact of binding together the apostles’ writings into one volume.

From Speaking to Manuscripts to a Book

As with the Old Testament, the New Testament did not begin as writing. Both Testaments began with historical events, memories about these events, and then people discussing the meaning and interpretation of these events. Some of these memories and oral interpretations came from authoritative leaders, inspired by God through the Holy Spirit to record in writing what happened and how to understand the significance. These writings included both generic and detailed accounts of historical events as well as poems, songs, prophecies, sermons, letters, and proverbs. Sometimes these were written down by an authoritative prophet, king, priest, or apostle, and sometimes by their disciples.

For the New Testament, this progression from oral traditions to written records materialized very quickly—within twenty to seventy-five years and within the lifetime of the first generation of people who experienced Jesus. In the case of the Gospels particularly, influential disciples gathered the memories and traditions about what Jesus said and did, and they produced theological interpretations of these in the form of four biographies (see chap. 5). One of these disciples, Luke, also wrote a companion volume, the book of Acts, that explains the birth of the church and the events of its first decades (see chap. 10). Several of the leading, authoritative disciples (called apostles) traveled widely, preaching the gospel and establishing Christian churches. As they did so, they often wrote letters explaining theological ideas, exhorting people to godliness and faithfulness, and addressing moral and doctrinal problems that arose. Some of these letters (“epistles”) are very personal (e.g., Galatians, Philemon), while others are more generalized and were intended for circulation among a larger number of people and churches (e.g., James, Revelation).

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The New Testament’s Table of Contents

Each document in the New Testament started as an individual text, but eventually they were collected into what became a standard grouping and ordering. The New Testament consists of twenty-seven different documents, organized not chronologically but according to genre and author. There is also an intentional pattern: four biographies about Jesus followed by the continuing story in Acts, followed by Paul’s nine letters to seven different churches, Paul’s four letters to individuals, the Letter to the Hebrews, seven general letters, and the book of Revelation, which is addressed to seven churches.

The four Gospels—The largest section of the New Testament contains four overlapping stories that describe Jesus’s life and teaching. The authors traditionally are understood to be two of Jesus’s original disciples (Matthew and John) and two students of the apostles Peter (Mark) and Paul (Luke).

The book of Acts—Also written by the Gospel author Luke, this book continues the story of some of Jesus’s disciples after his resurrection, recounting how the church grew and spread throughout the Roman world, with particular emphasis on Peter and then Paul.

The apostle Paul’s letters to churches—The early Christian missionary Paul started churches all over the Roman world. He subsequently wrote letters to these people to encourage and teach them. We have nine of these letters, each bearing the name of the city or area of the church’s location, organized by length from longest to shortest: Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, and 2 Thessalonians.

The apostle Paul’s letters to individuals—Paul also wrote letters to individual disciples, offering instructions and encouragement. We have four of these personal letters, again organized according to length: 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon.

The Letter to the Hebrews—Some people link this letter to Paul, but we don’t know for certain who wrote it. This highly structured piece gives a Greek and Christian reinterpretation of key aspects of the Hebrew Scriptures, hence its name.

The General or Catholic Letters—This group consists of seven letters that are named according to their authors. They are no less important than the letters written by Paul, but they are called “general” or “catholic” (meaning “universal”) because they seem to be intended for a wider readership and application. These letters are James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Jude.

The book of Revelation—The New Testament collection ends with a very different kind of document, one that combines the letter form with another type of ancient writing, the apocalypse. An apocalypse uses poetic and allegorical images to describe the world from a heavenly perspective, revealing to God’s faithful people what is happening now and in the future under God’s control.

In every case the written form of these biographies, teachings, and letters was recorded as a manuscript—that is, a handwritten document on some type of paper (papyrus) or, a more expensive option, a kind of leather (vellum). These manuscripts were then courier-borne to other places, where they were copied by hand so that they could be preserved and read aloud in the churches. As a result, these texts that eventually became the New Testament spread like wildfire as Christians traveled throughout the Greco-Roman Empire, calling people to believe in the risen Christ.

As Christianity continued to grow, and as the apostles’ generation began to die (often as martyrs), the need arose to preserve and clarify which manuscripts were really from apostles—meaning that they were authoritative and worthy of maintaining in the church. Several false teachers and errors had arisen in the church (Matt. 7:15; Rom. 16:17–18; Gal. 1:7–8), and these people and their disciples wrote letters and treatises as well. Therefore, an authoritative list of which documents were trustworthy and beneficial was needed. This kind of list is called a canon.

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Canon Lists

A “canon list” is a list of books that an author or a council has determined are authoritative because they make up what should be in the Bible. For the Christian Bible (both Old and New Testaments together), many canon lists were made throughout the first several centuries of the church. This included lists by Greek authors such as Melito of Sardis, Eusebius, and Athanasius, and Latin leaders including Hilary, Jerome, Augustine, and Pope Innocent I.

These lists are not always identical, but they do show a growing consensus about which books were regarded as biblical. The canonical books were not the only books that were read by Christians, however. Other works, such as Wisdom of Solomon and the Shepherd of Hermas, were still seen as beneficial and worth reading, even if they were not always considered part of the canon.

Even though the canon lists became more standard in the Middle Ages, distinct branches of the church (Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox) had some differences. With the Reformation in the sixteenth century, canon lists became a hot issue again, with Protestants often arguing for the exclusion of some books that the Roman Catholic tradition included in its canon.1

Texts were canonized not just through putting their titles on a list but also through binding and publishing an authorized group of documents together. By putting several texts together with the stamp of approval from recognized authorities, the collection verified these documents as official and authoritative. A canon book gave people a reliable, authoritative collection of texts to study.

The physical mechanics of creating such a clearly demarcated collection, however, proved very difficult with scrolls. Rolled pieces of parchment (scrolls) can easily get separated from one another, and one can lose track of which texts were supposed to be included, not to mention the hassle of trying to find a section to read by unrolling a long document. In the first couple of centuries AD, however, a newer technology was on the rise: the technique of slicing manuscripts into pieces and then sewing or gluing them together in a stack. This produced something called a codex, and it is the earliest form of what today we would call a book. (If you look closely at the binding on a modern book, you will see that the technique is still very much the same.)

Christians were some of the earliest adopters of this new binding and publishing technique, and the significance was great. Selected manuscripts could be collected, organized, titled, and distributed in one piece. This happened with the Gospels, which soon began circulating as the Fourfold Gospel Book (see chap. 5). This happened with the letters by Paul, which were collected—maybe by Paul himself—and given various titles and an order. The other parts of the New Testament canon took shape as well, as we can see in some early and large whole-Bible codices. Very significantly, the codex enabled Christians to bind together not only the authoritative New Testament books themselves but also the New Testament canon with the Jewish Scriptures (later called the Old Testament). This created a twofold canon that honored the Old Testament as authoritative, while also setting the New Testament documents on the same level of authority and inspiration.

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The Whole-Bible Codices

While we have many individual manuscripts of the New Testament writings from the first few centuries AD, some of the most important witnesses we have to the New Testament come from the large whole-Bible codices (bound books) from the third and fourth centuries. These are called majuscules, because they are written entirely in capital Greek letters with no spaces between the words. They were written on vellum by professional scribes. These include:

Codex Vaticanus—ca. AD 325; oldest of the majuscules; preserved in the Vatican Library

Codex Sinaiticus—ca. AD 350; discovered at St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai

Codex Alexandrinus—ca. AD 425; named for its earlier location in Alexandria, Egypt

Codex Ephraemi—ca. AD 450; so named because it was discovered on manuscripts under the writings of the theologian Ephrem of Syria

These beautiful, expensive, handcrafted books show how Christians thought about their Holy Scriptures—the Old Testament and New Testament together, preserved with great care.

The recent digitization project on Codex Sinaiticus has produced high-quality interactive images of this important book (http://www.codexsinaiticus.org).

Figure 2.1. Codex Sinaiticus (AD 350) [The British Library [Add MS 43725, f.244.v].]

Are These Old Texts Reliable? The Art and Science of Textual Criticism

Before the printing press was invented in the fifteenth century, all textual reproductions were created by hand, one copy at a time. Even with modern printing technologies it is easy for errors and derivations from the original to creep in. The same thing was true in the ancient world with the hand copying of manuscripts. The process of canonization highlights which books, letters, and biographies are authoritative and worthy of preservation and study. The study of textual criticism seeks to establish the most reliable version of the content and wording of each of these books. “Criticism” here does not mean a posture of judgment or an assumption of inaccuracy, but instead the scholarly practices and techniques used to make reasonable decisions about the accuracy of the manuscripts.

Are the Greek texts that we now call the New Testament accurate compared to what was originally written and distributed? In short, the answer is a confident yes. This can be argued for several reasons. First, Christianity, rooted in Jewish heritage, shares with Judaism the religious and cultural values to preserve sacred texts and to care very much about the particular wording. As this was true for the Jews, so it was naturally true from the beginning for Christianity.

Second, Christianity spread rapidly and deeply throughout the ancient world, resulting in multiple copies of the New Testament texts being made and distributed, thus providing us with many manuscripts to compare and evaluate. The long-term impact of Christianity on the Mediterranean basin and throughout Europe meant that the lengthy time between Jesus and the printing press was filled with thousands of people and institutions that dedicated themselves to the preservation and accurate reproduction of the biblical texts.

Third, stemming from the second point, at the sheer material level the fact is that we have many and varied manuscript witnesses to the ancient New Testament texts. This mass of manuscripts (numbering nearly six thousand and dating back to the second century AD) consists of papyri, majuscules, minuscules, lectionaries, and translations into other languages, including Latin, Coptic, and Syriac. Beyond this, the extant writings of the church’s prominent theologians and preachers of the first centuries (often called the church fathers) constantly quote the biblical texts, giving us another point of comparison to what the original documents likely said.

Fourth, based on this large body of manuscript witnesses, scholars have developed sophisticated procedures by which they are classified and compared and their relationships to one another analyzed. This work has been done since ancient times and by a wide variety of scholars all over the world, resulting in many critical editions of the Greek New Testament that provide reconstructed Greek texts that are recognized as reliable.

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Types of Ancient Manuscripts

Many different types of manuscripts developed before the age of the printing press:

Papyri—Manuscripts written on an early form of paper (papyrus) made from a reed plant. Some of the earliest portions of the New Testament are on papyrus, some as early as the second century AD.

Majuscules—Manuscripts written in a style of all capital letters. These date especially from the fourth to eighth century.

Minuscules—Manuscripts, usually on parchment, written in a small cursive style of Greek letters. We have thousands of minuscules, most dating from the eleventh to thirteenth century.

Lectionaries—Books of biblical readings to be used in worship services. These were written in many different styles and languages, and most date from the eleventh to thirteenth century.

Figure 2.2. Papyrus with parts of John 16 (third century) [The British Library [Papyrus 2484, f.1v].]

A critical edition of the Greek New Testament is a reconstructed text that scholars put together based on these ancient manuscripts, providing a text that a committee has decided is most likely original. Critical editions also include examples of variants, wording that is different in some manuscripts but that has been decided to be not original. These editions frequently include notes that indicate how confident the scholars are on different variants and their reasoning for the decisions they have made in creating their text.

Figure 2.3. Jaharis Byzantine Lectionary (ca. 1100) [The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Purchase, Mary and Michael Jaharis Gift and Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 2007.]

The fact that we have so many different manuscripts means that every page of our modern critical editions of the Greek New Testament has a wide variety of alternative readings (variants). It has been estimated that about 12 percent of all the words of the New Testament have some alternative reading. This may sound surprising, and some scholars have used this statistic in a misleading way. But the reality is that there are so many variants precisely because we have such a wealth of manuscripts; this is a positive effect, not a negative one. More importantly, only about 1.5 percent of the New Testament could be classified as having significant variants, meaning that some thought is required to determine which is the best reading. The vast majority of variants are obvious and insignificant differences such as misspellings, alternate spellings, or the accidental repeating of a word or line—all common errors that occur in manuscript reproduction. Only about one out of every one thousand words in the New Testament provides substantial difficulties to determine which wording is original, and very few of these have any significant effect on the meaning. Such difficult variants usually consist of complications in determining which of similar words like “your” and “our” was original. Of the difficult variants, not one affects any major Christian doctrine or understanding. Thus, we can have more than reasonable confidence in the faithfulness of our critical editions.

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A Typical Manuscript Transmission Difficulty

In 1 John 1:4 we have a variant that is representative of the text-critical decisions that are made in the production of critical editions. Most editions understand the original Greek to read: “And we write these things to you in order that our joy might be full.” This reading is supported by the highest quality and earliest manuscripts. However, a lot of manuscripts present the text differently: “And we write these things to you in order that your joy might be full.” Which is right: “our joy” or “your joy”?

Text-critical scholars reason through this question in this way: On the grounds of looking at the best manuscripts, “our joy” is more likely, even though many later manuscripts do have “your joy.” Other considerations also suggest that “our joy” is more likely original: (1) “your joy” is what one expects more naturally, so it is far more likely that over time scribes would accidentally or intentionally move from “our” to “your,” not the other way around; (2) John 16:24 speaks of “your joy,” and this has likely influenced readers to assume that this is what 1 John says as well.

Thus, while the “our joy” versus “your joy” is a textual variant that is not perfectly clear, it is easy to make reasonable arguments for the superiority of the one reading over the other. Moreover, this example is typical of how variants have no significant theological effect on our understanding of the New Testament’s message. Finally, we may note that the process of wrestling with the best variant reading is a communal one, open to a wide range of scholars and their readers. This increases our confidence in the reliability of our critical Greek New Testaments.

Of course, as with any field of study, there are deeper levels of nuance and complexity than this overview can provide. The scholarly discipline of textual criticism and related fields is always undergoing revisions and improvements, even today. More manuscripts are regularly discovered and cataloged, and scholars debate fine details of different approaches. All of this is good and inspires confidence in the reliability of our New Testament texts.

The Myriad of Translations and Editions of the New Testament

We have mentioned already that because of the rapid and geographically expansive spread of Christianity, combined with Christianity’s valuing of sacred writings, very quickly there appeared many manuscript copies of the New Testament writings. Some New Testament writers even give directions for their letters to be copied and sent on to other cities to spread the message and teachings (Col. 4:16; 1 Thess. 5:27). This meant that the New Testament writings were soon translated into other languages as part of the church’s missionary efforts. This follows the model of Judaism in the Second Temple period (see chap. 3), which also made translations of the Hebrew Scriptures (into Aramaic, Greek, etc.) so that believers could read them in their native tongues. (This is very different from Islam, which does not allow the Qur’an to be officially translated into any other language.)

This copying and translation of the two-part Christian Scriptures has continued mostly unabated throughout the centuries. Today the entire New Testament has been translated into over 1,500 languages, and portions of the Bible into another thousand-plus languages. Large organizations such as Wycliffe Bible Translators are dedicated to the difficult and demanding work of translating the Bible into every one of the approximately 7,100 living languages. The English language is particularly rich in Bible translations (estimated at around 900 versions since Tyndale’s first English translation in 1526), each with its own goals, philosophy of translation, and pros and cons.

Starting in the ancient world, copies of New Testament texts began to contain little headings that describe the contents of each section of the text, such as “Jesus Stills the Storm” right before the text of Mark 4:35–41. These types of headings or titles are found in almost every version of the New Testament today, guiding readers in identifying and interpreting each section. By the Middle Ages, manuscripts also began to demarcate larger sections within New Testament books, and when Bibles were first printed in mass, a system of chapter and verse notation became increasingly standardized. Today, every New Testament book can be referenced by a name and numbering system that may seem odd at first, but this standard format makes it easy for everyone to locate specific sayings within the texts and to discuss them. Each New Testament book is divided into chapters, and then each chapter into verses. Thus we can say, “Matthew 5:48,” meaning the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 5, verse 48.

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“Minority Report” New Testament Versions

Although almost all printed New Testaments today follow a traditional ordering of the books, use standardized chapter and verse divisions, and provide descriptive titles for separate sections of the stories or letters, there are some versions that seek to offer an alternative and fresh approach to guide readers.

Some publishers have produced “manuscript Bibles” that remove all chapter and verse notations and instead present the New Testament texts in a singular flow. This makes the stories and letters look and feel more like a modern book. In recent years some have also attempted to rearrange the books of the New Testament (and the whole Bible) according to a structure other than the traditional canonical form, often based on the perceived chronological order of the writings.

Because the standard chapter and verse divisions are sometimes misleading and distracting, the “manuscript Bibles” can provide a fresh and more engaging experience of reading, though they are not practical for referencing. The attempts at reordering the New Testament books can likewise provide an interesting and fresh reading experience, especially for those who are long accustomed to the New Testament.

While there are some helpful aspects to these minority-report editions of the New Testament, readers (and publishers) shouldn’t begin to see these editions as superior to the traditional canonical forms. There are good reasons that the New Testament canon has been ordered and read the way it has, and alternative orderings of the books are no less an interpretation than the traditional approach.

There are many versions of the Bible and the New Testament that serve different purposes. There are diglot versions that provide two languages that can be compared. There are study Bibles, which provide the biblical text along with notes written by scholars (usually from a certain theological perspective) to guide readers in their interpretation. Red-letter editions of the New Testament, in which Jesus’s words are printed red to make them stand out from the black print, first appeared in 1899. Children’s Bibles range from easier-to-read translations of the whole Bible to retellings of select stories, complete with illustrations.

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The Greek Language of the New Testament

Various forms of the Greek language have existed for thousands of years due to the great influence of Greek culture spanning from the ancient world to today. By the time of Jesus, a common (Greek, koinē) form of Greek was spoken throughout the whole Mediterranean world and into the Middle East because it allowed governance and trade to occur throughout the Roman Empire. Koine Greek is a simplified hybrid of several dialects of Greek.

The New Testament is written in this form of Greek, with variations based on the educational level and background of the individual New Testament authors. New Testament Greek also shows heavy influence of the Greek version of the Old Testament (the Septuagint) in terms of style and vocabulary.

Christianity’s production of its sacred writings in common Greek rather than the Hebrew of the Old Testament enabled it to spread rapidly throughout the ancient world among gentiles, not just Jews, and to transform the variety of cultures it encountered.

The New Testament as a Library

This chapter is titled “The New Testament as a Book” because this is how readers experience these New Testament writings collected from eight or nine different authors: they are gathered together into one volume. This “book,” however, is not like most books we see. The New Testament is more like a little library dedicated to one topic, with appropriate and helpful diversity within it. It’s somewhat like a music library within a university, with a diversity of volumes collected around a field of study. This New Testament library includes different genres of literature: biographies, stories, wisdom teachings, letters designed to correct and train, personal correspondence, and fantastical visions to inspire hope.

Yet there is unity in this New Testament library. This unity within diversity can be seen historically, literarily, and theologically. Historically, the New Testament documents come from a short period of time, sharing the culture and geography of Hellenistic Judaism in the first-century Greco-Roman world. Literarily, the New Testament texts share the common Greek language of the day (with some authors obviously more skilled and educated than others) and use conventional genres and styles. Theologically, the New Testament library is intensely focused on the person and work of Jesus Christ, shaped and shepherded by the apostles’ teachings.

To change the image: the New Testament is like a choir singing in many parts, interlacing harmony, rhythm, and melody—but singing together as one, directed by one conductor, God himself. These complementary images of the New Testament as a unified choir and a topical library are important to remember as we step, as readers, into the world of the New Testament.

Christian Reading Questions

1. Consider the earliest period of the church, when memories and oral interpretations preceded many of the New Testament writings. How do you think that life as a Christian then differed from a current Christian life?
2. Discuss the diverse genres of writing in the New Testament. Why do you think this diversity adds value to the New Testament?
3. How has textual criticism increased our confidence in the accuracy of the New Testament that we read today?
4. What translation and type of Bible do you read from? What are some of its advantages and disadvantages?