The New Testament we have today is a collection of writings that have been gathered and edited. The titles, the fixed number of books, and the uniform arrangement in our modern editions could not possibly have originated with the individual authors. The New Testament was designed by editors (we sometimes call them "redactors") who selected a number of Christian writings, formulated the titles, arranged the books in a specific pattern, and published the collection. (Textual elements that do not derive from the authors but were added by later editors will be called “redactional elements” in the following text.) 

The question about when and where the New Testament originated can therefore be formulated more precisely in this way: When and where did the editorial frame originate?

The evidence to be considered may be divided into three categories: (1) manuscripts of the New Testament, (2) quotations and references to the New Testament in documents and literature from the first centuries, and (3) the literary evidence of the New Testament itself.

Traditionally the evidence of the Church Fathers (category two) has played the most important role in constructing this argument. Much valuable research had been done on this kind of evidence at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries by Theodor Zahn and Adolf von Harnack (Germany), Brooke Foss Westcott (Great Britain), and A. Loisy (France). But discoveries of numerous manuscripts of the New Testament during the past five decades put us into a new and more favorable position. Instead of speculating about the content of the New Testament in the second and third centuries, we now can look at original copies of some of the books of that time which were unknown only half a century ago. Some of the older theories can now be disproved, especially the idea of a constant development of the New Testament over several centuries from varying collections of Christian literature to our canonical collection of twenty-seven books.

Manuscripts

The picture we get from the manuscript tradition is very uniform. The New Testament consists of twenty-seven separate writings. Each writing has a title. The titles combine the single books into four collections that are clearly discernible in the manuscript tradition: (1) the four Gospels, (2) Acts and the seven general Epistles, (3) the fourteen Letters of Paul, and (4) the Revelation of John. These four units were usually copied as separate collections. Often two or three of these units were combined, but less than two percent of the extant manuscripts have all four parts in one single volume.

There are two major differences between the New Testament of the early church (until the seventh century) and our modern editions. First, the book of Acts is always bound together with the seven general Epistles. Only from the seventh century on is there evidence from Greek manuscripts that the Pauline letter collection is inserted between the book of Acts and the general Epistles. Second, within the Letters of Paul, the Letter to the Hebrews was originally placed in the middle of the collection between 2 Thessalonians and 1 Timothy, thus forming the last letter to congregations. Under the influence of a medieval edition of the Christian Bible that originated in Byzantium, the Letter to the Hebrews was placed at the end of the collection after Paul’s Letter to Philemon.

Note on the Letter to the Hebrews: Three out of almost eight hundred manuscripts of the Letters of Paul show clear indications that the Letter to the Hebrews at some time was not part of the Pauline letter collection (D 05, fifth century; F 010 and G 012, both from the ninth century). These three manuscripts are bilingual editions, that is, they provide the Greek text and a Latin translation. It seems that lacking the Letter to the Hebrews is somehow connected to a well-documented Latin rejection of the Letter based on the supposed non-Pauline authorship of this writing. Editions without Hebrews certainly do not represent the mainstream of the Greek manuscript tradition.

Apart from these two differences, the New Testament of the early church presents within the collections the same number of writings with the same titles in the same order as our modern editions. The order of the collections, however, may vary, with the Letters of Paul preceding the praxapostolos (the technical name for the collection containing Acts and the general Epistles).

In addition there are two features that affect the whole New Testament and could only have been added by editors when the collection was put together: the use of the codex (book) instead of the scroll and a uniform system of abbreviations for certain words, the so-called nomina sacra (only the first and the last letters are written and a line is drawn above the abbreviated word), which cannot be paralleled in the literature of the first and second centuries.

The two oldest copies of the whole Christian Bible including the Old Testament that have survived to this day were written in the fourth century: Codex Sinaiticus (01) and Codex Vaticanus (B 02). Fragments of forty-eight New Testament manuscripts of the second and third centuries are known today; forty-four stem from codices. The four existing scroll fragments are copies that were written by their owners for private use. They were not professionally produced and sold.

These fragments contain texts from all four units of the New Testament, and there are no major variants to the titles or alternatives to the system of the nomina sacra. The two witnesses that provide an alternative arrangement do not preserve an old tradition. Their system of arrangement probably originated during the production of the specific manuscript (p46; p72).

The fragment that usually is considered to be the oldest (dated about 125) is p52, a fragment of a codex leaf with text from John 18. However, like most New Testament fragments, the dating relies only on paleographical considerations (paleography describes, deciphers, and dates ancient handwriting), which cannot be any closer than within a range of fifty years. It is not safe to base a theory of the formation of the New Testament exclusively on the dating of p52. This fragment could just as well have been written at the end of the first century as in the middle of the second.

Quotations and References

Most of the papyri dating from the second and third centuries were discovered during the twentieth century. Before that time, exegetes could work only from quotations or references to the New Testament in the writings of the early church. The redactional frame of the New Testament is well attested all over the ancient Christian world by the end of the second century and the beginning of the third. Clement of Alexandria (about 150-215) in Egypt, Tertullian of Carthage (about 160-220) in North Africa, Irenaeus of Lyons (about 180) in France, and Origen (about 185-254) in Egypt and Palestine are all familiar with the New Testament writings and cite them by their familiar titles.

A probable date for the first edition, therefore, cannot easily be assumed any later than about 150. Corroborating evidence is found in the works of Justin Martyr, which were written between 150 and 160 in Rome and seem to presuppose the Christian Bible, and in the Muratorian Canon, a list of New Testament books with introductory remarks that traditionally is placed at Rome about 180 (date and provenance have been challenged in recent years) and Melito of Sardis (about 170).

The work of these Church Fathers explicitly demonstrates that the New Testament was extensively used to fight movements challenging the emerging Catholic Christianity. It therefore is plausible to suspect that the theological controversies that engaged the church during the second century influenced strongly the formation of the New Testament. On the other hand, the manuscript evidence shows that the critical remarks on the authorship or canonicity found in the writings of the church should better be interpreted as a reaction to the New Testament and not as the description of the content of the New Testament. For example, if Origenes, who died in 254, questioned the Pauline authorship of the Letter to the Hebrews (Eusebius, H.E. 6:25:11.14), this does not mean that the Letter to the Hebrews was not part of his New Testament. Questioning the authenticity of New Testament writings has been popular among Christian scholars ever since that time.

Literary Features

Despite the very early attestation in manuscripts and the corroborating evidence of Christian writers of the second century, the redactional frame of the New Testament probably is the most important source to shed some light on its formation.

The title New Testament, which is supported without variants by the later manuscript tradition (the witnesses up to the fourth century are too fragmentary to preserve any overall title of the collection), is used by Tertullian, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen. This evidence indicates that it was part of the first edition. The redactional frame therefore clearly conveys to readers that the New Testament is to be seen as a unity with the Greek Jewish Bible, to which the editors of the first Christian Bible gave the title Old Testament. The New Testament never existed without the Old Testament.

All the titles of the separate writings imply the name of an author, even where the text itself does not mention a name, as is the case with all four Gospels, the book of Acts, the three Letters of John, and the Letter to the Hebrews (the oldest witnesses also omit the address in the text of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians). The names probably provide an important clue to the redactional concept of the New Testament. Either the eight authors are connected to the Jerusalem apostles—James and Jude (the brothers of Jesus), John, Peter, Matthew—or they are connected to Paul, like Luke. And Mark is as familiar with Paul as he is with Peter. This assumption is corroborated by the book of Acts, which from a literary critical point of view forms the heart of the New Testament. The first part of Acts concentrates on the Jerusalem authorities, who are the authors of the immediately following general Letters, James, John and Peter; the second part concentrates on Paul, the best documented author of the New Testament.

In his Letter to the Galatians Paul recounts a heavy argument with the apostle Peter that was caused by disciples of James, and he reproaches him (Gal 2.11-21). The redactional frame of the New Testament seems to take this quarrel very seriously, because the selection of authors clearly opposes the idea that Paul was more important than the Jerusalem authorities and vice versa.

Marcion

The intention of the redactional frame of the New Testament is so important because it sheds some light on the time, date, and situation where the New Testament originated. Marcion, one of the most imposing figures of second-century Christianity, was born in northern Asia Minor and about 140 came to Rome, where he was excommunicated from the Roman church about 144. This made him an influential opponent to the emerging Catholic Christian Church, the members of which are the first documented readers of the canonical edition of the New Testament. Marcion held views exactly opposite to the editors of the New Testament. From the safe information provided by the writers of the church (much of their polemical comments are probably of no historical value), it is clear that Marcion denied the use of the Jewish Bible as being relevant to Christians. Furthermore, he did not respect the authority of the Jerusalem apostles, who opposed Paul in Antioch according to the Letter to the Galatians. And third, he had edited and published an edition of apostolic writings that was originally very successful. This edition included ten Letters of Paul, starting with the Letter to the Galatians (Hebrews, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus were missing), and one anonymous gospel which Marcion considered to represent the gospel Paul had preached and which was very similar but not identical to the canonical Gospel of Luke. These controversies between the church of Marcion and the emerging Catholic Christian Church suggest placing the formation of the Christian Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, in the vicinity of Rome and Asia Minor, where both movements were heavily supported, and suggest a date around A.D. 150.

Since many of the New Testament writings claim or imply that they were written either from or to Rome or Asia Minor (the last letters of Paul and Peter, 2 Timothy and 2 Peter, both suggest being written from Rome to Asia Minor; the mention of Babylon in 1 Peter 5.13 and in Revelation probably designates Rome), these conclusions are corroborated by the literary evidence at least to some extent.