What is the New Testament?
The New Testament consists of twenty-seven books about Jesus of Nazareth and the spread of the “good news” about him beyond Galilee principally in the Mediterranean Basin. Written by various authors through the course of the first century AD, these books soon came to be regarded as authoritative and quickly acquired the status of scripture-on par with the writings of the Jewish scriptures (Hebrew Bible or Old Testament) that Jesus Christ had approved (see Luke 24-44). Some time elapsed however, between the death and resurrection of Jesus and the actual writing down of the texts that have become known as the New Testament. The books of the New Testament are divided and organized by genre or literary type: first, the four Gospels, telling the story of Jesus; next, Acts, a “historical” book about the spread of the message of Jesus through the ministry of selected apostles and missionaries; then twenty-one epistles or letters; and finally Revelation, a type of writing known as an apocalypse.
Although the Gospels appear first in sequence in the New Testament, they were written after many of the letters. The term New Testament derives from “new covenant.” In this context the books of the New Testament contains the story of how in and through Jesus of Nazareth a new covenant was revealed to Israel, replacing the “old covenant” recorded in the Jewish scriptures (hence Old Testament).
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at and is filed under Biblical Definitions, The New Testament. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.