Chapter 7: How the New Testament Was Written

Jesus wrote no book

Jesus himself left no written book. The only time Scripture records him writing is in the dust (John 8:6). He taught, and he trained witnesses. But he promised that the Holy Spirit would equip them for the task of bearing witness accurately: “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26). And, “when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13). Here is the basis for the New Testament’s authority: the apostles, taught and reminded by the Spirit, were authorized to give the church the teaching of Christ in permanent form.

Eyewitnesses and careful historians

The New Testament writers present themselves as witnesses, not as inventors of myths. Luke writes that “many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word,” and that he has “had perfect understanding of all things from the very first,” so that Theophilus “mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed” (Luke 1:1-4). John writes, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life” (1 John 1:1). Peter says, “we have not followed cunningly devised fables… but were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16). The purpose is stated: “these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name” (John 20:31).

An apostle was someone who had seen the risen Lord and been sent by him (Acts 1:21-22; 1 Corinthians 9:1; 15:7-9). That is why the church recognised apostolic origin as the key test of a New Testament book.

The order of writing

The books were not written in the order in which they now stand. Dates are debated, and evangelical scholars hold a range of views. A common reckoning is as follows.

Paul’s letters are among the earliest writings, from about AD 48–64. Many scholars place 1 Thessalonians around AD 50, and Galatians and the Corinthian letters in the following years. Paul wrote to churches and individuals, and told them to share the letters: “when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans” (Colossians 4:16; 1 Thessalonians 5:27).

The Gospels. Many conservative scholars date Mark, Matthew, and Luke between about AD 50 and 70, and John in the 80s or 90s; others place the Synoptic Gospels somewhat later. Early church tradition tied each to an eyewitness. Papias, bishop of Hierapolis (c. AD 110), said that Mark, Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately Peter’s recollections and that Matthew compiled the sayings of the Lord in the Hebrew language (Papias, cited in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.39). Irenaeus (c. AD 180) added that Luke set down the gospel preached by Paul, and that John, the disciple of the Lord, published his Gospel at Ephesus (Irenaeus, Haer. 3.1.1).

Acts was written by Luke as the second volume of his work (Acts 1:1) and carries the story of the church from the ascension to Paul’s imprisonment in Rome, probably in the early 60s.

The General Epistles: James, 1–2 Peter, 1–3 John, and Jude, in the decades between about AD 45 and 95. Hebrews is anonymous, and its author is not known with certainty; the church recognised it through its apostolic content.

Revelation was written by John on Patmos, according to Irenaeus “towards the end of Domitian’s reign” (about AD 95; Irenaeus, Haer. 5.30.3).

The earliest Christians already treated these writings as Scripture

Within the New Testament itself, apostolic writings were already being placed alongside the Old Testament. Paul quotes Deuteronomy 25:4 and Luke 10:7 together and calls both “the scripture” (1 Timothy 5:18). Peter says that Paul’s letters contain things hard to understand “which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:16), which puts Paul’s epistles among “the other scriptures.” Paul tells the Thessalonians that they received his message “not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God” (1 Thessalonians 2:13). John closes the whole Bible with a warning in the tradition of Deuteronomy 4:2 and Proverbs 30:5-6 against adding to or taking from “the words of the prophecy of this book” (Revelation 22:18-19).

The writings circulated, were copied, and were read aloud in worship. Justin Martyr, writing in Rome about AD 150, records that on Sundays “the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits” (Justin, 1 Apol. 67). Before there were canon lists, there was a practice: these writings were read in worship as the Word of God.

Summary. The New Testament was written within a single lifetime, by apostles and their close associates, who were eyewitnesses or had access to eyewitnesses. These writings were quickly recognized as Scripture and circulated among the churches.