The New Testament

I. Name; 
II. Description; 
III. Origin; 
IV. Transmission of the Text; 
V. Contents, History, and Doctrine.

I. NAME

Testament come from testamentum, the word by which the Latin 
ecclesiastical writers translated the Greek diatheke. With the 
profane authors this latter term means always, one passage of 
Aristophanes perhaps excepted, the legal disposition a man makes 
of his goods for after his death. However, at an early date, the 
Alexandrian translators of the Scripture, known as the Septuagint, 
employed the word as the equivalent of the Hebrew berith, which 
means a pact, an alliance, more especially the alliance of Yahweh 
with Israel. In St. Paul (I Cor., xi, 25) Jesus Christ uses the 
words "new testament" as meaning the alliance established by 
Himself between God and the world, and this is called "new" as 
opposed to that of which Moses was the mediator. Later on, the 
name of testament was given to the collection of sacred texts 
containing the history and the doctrine of the two alliances; here 
again and for the same reason we meet the distinction between the 
Old and New Testaments. In this meaning the expression Old 
Testament (he palaia diatheke) is found for the first time in 
Melito of Sardis, towards the year 170. There are reasons for 
thinking that at this date the corresponding word "testamentum" 
was already in use amongst the Latins. In any case it was common 
in the time of Tertullian.

II. DESCRIPTION

The New Testament, as usually received in the Christian Churches, 
is made up of twenty-seven different books attributed to eight 
different authors, six of whom are numbered among the Apostles 
(Matthew, John, Paul, James, Peter, Jude) and two among their 
immediate disciples (Mark, Luke). If we consider only the contents 
and the literary form of these writings they may be divided into 
historical books (Gospels and Acts), didactic books (Epistles), a 
prophetical book (Apocalypse). Before the name of the New 
Testament had come into use the writers of the latter half of the 
second century used to say "Gospel and Apostolic writings" or 
simply "the Gospel and the Apostle", meaning the Apostle St. Paul. 
The Gospels are subdivided into two groups, those which are 
commonly called synoptic (Matthew, Mark, Luke), because their 
narratives are parallel, and the fourth Gospel (that of St. John), 
which to a certain extent completes the first three. They relate 
to the life and personal teaching of Jesus Christ. The Acts of the 
Apostles, as is sufficiently indicated by the title, relates the 
preaching and the labours of the Apostles. It narrates the 
foundation of the Churches of Palestine and Syria only; in it 
mention is made of Peter, John, James, Paul, and Barnabas; 
afterwards, the author devotes sixteen chapters out of the twenty-
eight to the missions of St. Paul to the Greco-Romans. There are 
thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, and perhaps fourteen, if, with the 
Council of Trent, we consider him the author of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews. They are, with the exception of this last-mentioned, 
addressed to particular Churches (Rom.; I, II Cor.; Gal.; Ephes.; 
Philip.; Colos.; I, II Thess.) or to individuals (I, II Tim.; 
Tit.; Philem.). The seven Epistles that follow (James; I, II 
Peter; I, II, III John; Jude) are called "Catholic", because most 
of them are addressed to the faithful in general. The Apocalypse 
addressed to the seven Churches of Asia Minor (Ephesus, Smyrna, 
Pergamus, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea) resembles in 
some ways a collective letter. It contains a vision which St. John 
had at Patmos concerning the interior state of the above-mentioned 
communities, the struggle of the Church with pagan Rome, and the 
final destiny of the New Jerusalem.

III. ORIGIN

The New Testament was not written all at once. The books that 
compose it appeared one after another in the space of fifty years, 
i.e. in the second half of the first century. Written in different 
and distant countries and addressed to particular Churches, they 
took some time to spread throughout the whole of Christendom, and 
a much longer time to become accepted. The unification of the 
canon was not accomplished without much controversy (see CANON OF 
THE HOLY SCRIPTURES). Still it can be said that from the third 
century, or perhaps earlier, the existence of all the books that 
to-day form our New Testament was everywhere known, although they 
were not all universally admitted, at least as certainly 
canonical. However, uniformity existed in the West from the fourth 
century. The East had to await the seventh century to see an end 
to all doubts on the subject. In early times the questions of 
canonicity and authenticity were not discussed separately and 
independently of each other, the latter being readily brought 
forward as a reason for the former; but in the fourth century, the 
canonicity was held, especially by St. Jerome, on account of 
ecclesiastical prescription and, by the fact, the authenticity of 
the contested books became of minor importance. We have to come 
down to the sixteenth century to hear the question repeated, 
whether the Epistle to the Hebrews was written by St. Paul, or the 
Epistles called Catholic were in reality composed by the Apostles 
whose names they bear. Some Humanists, as Erasmus and Cardinal 
Cajetan, revived the objections mentioned by St. Jerome, and which 
are based on the style of these writings. To this Luther added the 
inadmissibility of the doctrine, as regards the Epistle of St. 
James. However, it was practically the Lutherans alone who sought 
to diminish the traditional Canon, which the Council of Trent was 
to define in 1546.

It was reserved to modern times, especially to our own days, to 
dispute and deny the truth of the opinion received from the 
ancients concerning the origin of the books of the New Testament. 
This doubt and the negation regarding the authors had their 
primary cause in the religious incredulity of the eighteenth 
century. These witnesses to the truth of a religion no longer 
believed were inconvenient, if it was true that they had seen and 
heard what they related. Little time was needed to find, in 
analyzing them, indications of a later origin. The conclusions of 
the Tubingen school, which brought down to the second century, the 
compositions of all the New Testament except four Epistles of St. 
Paul (Rom.; Gal.; I, II Cor.), was very common thirty or forty 
years ago, in so-called critical circles (see Dict. apolog. de la 
foi catholique, I, 771-6). When the crisis of militant incredulity 
had passed, the problem of the New Testament began to be examined 
more calmly, and especially more methodically. From the critical 
studies of the past half century we may draw the following 
conclusion, which is now in its general outlines admitted by all: 
It was a mistake to have attributed the origin of Christian 
literature to a later date; these texts, on the whole, date back 
to the second half of the first century; consequently they are the 
work of a generation that counted a good number of direct 
witnesses of the life of Jesus Christ. From stage to stage, from