The “New Testament” is the second part of the Christian Bible. Its twenty-seven books continue the story of God’s people begun in the Old Testament (the Jewish Scriptures). The word “testament” comes from a Latin word that means “will,” which was used to translate the Greek word diatheke, which means “will” or “agreement” (covenant).

The Old Testament tells of the agreement God made with the people of Israel. This agreement was based, in large part, on the Law of Moses. Those who obeyed God and lived according to this Law were God’s people. But about six hundred years before the time of Jesus, the prophet Jeremiah announced a “new agreement” based on an inward relationship with God (Jer 31:31-34). Christian writers of the New Testament used the language of a “new agreement” to describe what God had done in Jesus (1 Cor 8:7-13; 9:15-17; 11:25; 12:24-27). The apostle Paul says that this new agreement is not based on written law but comes from God’s Spirit and brings new life (2 Cor 3:6-15; Gal 3:10-14).

The books of the New Testament were written during a period of about one hundred years following the time of Jesus. Many of the books focus on Jesus of Nazareth, who was born to Jewish parents and declared by Christians to be the Chosen One (“Messiah”), or Savior (Mark 8:29; 14:61,62; Luke 2:11; John 20:30,31; Acts 3:18-21).

The four Gospels, (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), tell about the life and teachings of Jesus, each from a different perspective. Acts tells how the earliest apostles (the term means envoys or ambassadors) preached the good news about Jesus and spread his message in the decades following Jesus. The letters of the New Testament provide an understanding of the ways the message of Jesus was being preached and interpreted during the first years of the early church as the good news about Jesus was being taken to new lands. They also give some clues about what the earliest Christians were experiencing. Revelation, the last book in the New Testament, ends with the hope of a future in which God will bring a new heaven and new earth.

It is impossible to give an exact date for the writings of the New Testament books, but most scholars now agree that some of the letters of Paul are the oldest of the New Testament writings. The Gospels and Acts were written later. Mark, probably the first Gospel to be put in writing, was most likely written sometime after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

Though Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic, the books of the New Testament were first written in the “everyday” Greek of that time. The New Testament writers also were familiar with the Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures (called the Septuagint). A number of quotations found in the New Testament come directly from this Greek translation, while others were translated into Greek from the Hebrew of the Jewish Scriptures.

The original manuscripts of the New Testament deteriorated or were destroyed long ago. But hand-made copies of the text of these books were made repeatedly down through the centuries. The earliest copy of the entire Greek New Testament dates from the fourth century, and the earliest fragment of a New Testament book dates from around A.D. 125. Also of value to biblical scholars are early translations of New Testament writings into Coptic, Syriac, and Latin. It took over three hundred years before the twenty-seven books that make up the New Testament became the accepted list followed in our Bibles today. (See also the article called “How the Bible Came to Us.”)