BSN: Factors Affecting the Gestation Period of the New Testament

The New Testament is an ancient collection of even more ancient texts. That is, the New Testament as we know first appeared in the 4th century but all 27 texts that comprise it were written by eight 1st-century men. Here are more than a dozen factors that help explain why it was a 300-year process to get from the written texts to an agreed-upon collection of them.

1. Writing was not an apostolic focus: Jesus sent his apostles to preach and teach face-to-face throughout the world. Writing was not a primary focus for them. They only wrote as the situation required. As it turned out, only a minority of them wrote at all.
2. The Authors Did Not Write in Concert. The eight men were not writing collaboratively in a single location. They were geographically spread all over the Roman empire, as were the congregations to whom and for whom they wrote. Each wrote to different groups to meet a varying and specific needs of the moment.
3. No Stated Plan for a New Testament: The 27 writings contained no instructions to produce a “New Testament.” The apostles quoted what we call the Old Testament as if it were all the Bible they needed. What kept the apostles’ writings alive was that they continued to be read in the churches along with what we call the Old Testament.
4. No Single Controlling Earthly Authority for the Christian Movement (Churches): Both the apostles and the churches for whom they wrote were geographically dispersed and organizationally independent. There was no controlling authority to envision and order a New Testament or to manage the process of compiling it.
5. The Desire for Apostolic Presence: Once the apostles had all died, what writings they left became all the more important. One by one, a church would find out that some other church had one or more of the apostles’ writings…and copies would be made. But it took several generations to fully realize just how unique the apostolic generation had been.
6. The Uniqueness of Apostolic Thought: Churches came to see the apostles as a one-generation phenomenon. Genuine and edifying Christian writings from subsequent generations were being read in church, but they were not considered on a par with what had been written in that first generation of Christianity. Thus, the writings of Jesus’ contemporaries came to be regarded as being in a class all their own.
7. Forgeries: Because of the popularity of the apostles’ writings, many forgeries arose and churches had to compare notes with each other and examine chains of custody to sort out the genuine from the false. There were far more forgeries than genuine apostolic writings. It took time to weed them out.
8. Periods of Persecution: Persecution of various churches at various times inhibited inter-church communications, thus intermittently slowing and stalling the cooperative process that had been underway since the apostles first began writing.
9. Writing Mainly for Public Consumption: One of the main purposes of synagogues and churches in the 1st-4th centuries was to allow illiterate people to regularly learn what was in written material. Compared to modern populations, ancient populations were considerably less literate; synagogues and churches functioned as equalizers, making written material accessible to everyone who came to hear them read. Readers in them functioned as translators do at the United Nations.
10. No Printing Press: There was no printing press until the 15th century, and no machine copiers until the 20th; throughout antiquity, every copy had to be handwritten. It was a time of full employment for scribes.
11. No Robust Book Trade: These ancients could not conceive of the consumer market for books that we enjoy today – including ubiquitous well-stocked bookstores as well as online purchasing ability.
12. The Codex: The codex (a manuscript book) was invented in the 1st century. Prior to this time, written materials existed almost exclusively in scroll (also called roll) form. It was not until the 4th century, however, that codex technology would allow the size required for the Bible or even the New Testament. (A scroll had never been able to hold that much text.)
13. Dramatic 4th-century Developments: In the 4th century, circumstances dramatically converged to allow the finalization of the collection. That century began with the most intense persecution Christianity had seen as an outlawed religion, but then so many people were becoming Christians that the Roman emperor Constantine was converted, Christianity was legalized, and even made the official religion of the Roman Empire before the century concluded. This extensive and extended vetting process is what has allowed the New Testament, with its 27 books and 8 authors, to stand for over 1,600 years.