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Gospels and Epistles. Beginning around the middle of the 1st century and continuing into the 2nd and 3rd centuries, numerous books including epistles (letters) and gospels were written about Jesus and his Apostles and disciples, incorporating oral tradition, purported eyewitness accounts, and hypothetical early writings lost today. The earliest known epistles were probably written in the period AD 48-65, and included those attributed to the missionary Paul and to James, the brother of Jesus. The first known gospel, accredited by early church fathers to an associate and translator of the Apostle Peter named Mark, was likely written around AD 65-75. The first gospel was followed a decade or so later by gospels ascribed to the Apostle Matthew and a gentile named Luke, possibly an associate of Paul. The last canonical gospel was that attributed to the Apostle John, believed by most scholars to have been completed near the end of the 1st century. Dates Epistles and Gospels Were Written. The dates of the writing of the four canonical gospels (hereinafter referred to as “Gospels” with a capital G) and of the rest of the New Testament books are unknown. Even if we knew the exact dates of completion, we still would not know when they were first drafted in whole or in part. None of the Gospels and epistles records the AD 70 Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, so they all could have been written before AD 70. However, most scholars believe that nearly all the books and epistles, except those ascribed to James and Paul, were completed after the fall of Jerusalem. The dating of Matthew, Luke, and the Luke sequel Acts hinges on the dating of Mark, from which the authors of Matthew and Luke copied substantial material. The dating of Mark depends, in part, on whether the quote of Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the temple (Mark 13:2) was composed before or after the actual event. Early church fathers wrote that the Gospel of John was written after Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Virtually all modern New Testament scholars agree that John was completed last, based on its unique content and style. The dates of Paul’s epistles are deduced by scholars from information about Paul and his missionary journeys in Acts and Paul’s epistles themselves. Researchers’ estimated completion dates vary widely. From a random sampling of suggested dates or date ranges by different Bible scholars in various online and printed publications, the author calculated average-early and average-late completion years for the James and Pauline epistles and the four Gospels, yielding the following results: Epistle of James: AD 46-52 Epistles of Paul: AD 50-67 Gospel of Mark: AD 64-74 Gospel of Matthew: AD 73-90 Gospel of Luke: AD 74-84 Gospel of John: AD 88-101 This survey-based dating provides a reasonable approximation of the order in which the books were written. The first of Paul’s epistles (Galatians and 1 and 2 Thessalonians) were penned around AD 50, and some early source material for the Gospels may already have been circulating in written form by then. The dates for the Epistle of James assumes that the letter was written by James, the brother of Jesus; but many scholars believe it was pseudonymously authored near the end of the 1st century. Each Gospel may have been written in stages with more than one version, making dating even more challenging. For general purposes of evaluation in this book, the assumed order of substantial completion of the James epistle, the early epistles of Paul, and the four Gospels is as follows (depicted graphically in Appendix A): Epistle of James and early epistles of Paul: AD 50-60s Gospel of Mark: AD 60s-70s Gospel of Luke and Gospel of Matthew: AD 70s-80s Gospel of John: AD 90s All the Gospels experienced some degree of subsequent editing after completion, as evidenced by variant readings of passages recorded in the writings of early church fathers and in thousands of extant manuscripts. New Testament Sources. Though the original sources of most of the information in the New Testament are unknown, Bible scholars generally suppose that the information was gleaned from multiple sources, such as: (1) eyewitness and non-eyewitness word-of-mouth accounts (i.e., oral tradition); (2) Hebrew Scriptures (typically quoted from the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible produced in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC); (3) one or more lost early gospels (“proto-gospels”); and (4) hypothetical written compilations of Jesus’ miracles, parables, and sayings, including a collection of his sayings known as the Q source, Q document, Q gospel or simply Q (from the German word Quell, meaning “Source”). Selective information from these and other sources (which most Christians believe included divine revelation and inspiration) was creatively assembled, adapted, and amplified by the various authors to convey their theological, philosophical, and political points of view. Once each book was completed and accepted within the community for which it was written, it underwent hand-copying onto papyrus for duplication and circulation. Some books, including those eventually selected for the New Testament, gained widespread acceptance in churches and by the 4th century were being copied by scribes onto parchment (thin, stiff, flat writing material made from the prepared skins of calves, sheep, or goats), undergoing edits and corrections along the way. Centuries of copying, editing, and translation into additional languages led to the multiple text versions today. Earliest Copies. Unfortunately, we have no original copy of any of the books of the New Testament. Except for a few papyrus fragments written in Koine Greek that date as early as the 2nd century, the earliest surviving copies of the books were produced during the early-3rd to mid-4th centuries, all copies having textual variations. The twenty-seven-book New Testament canon was officially affirmed by church leaders at late-4th-century councils (or synods) at Rome, Hippo, and Carthage, although the Greek bishop Irenaeus by the end of the 2nd century quoted from nearly all the books that would later be included in the New Testament. Irenaeus did not quote from Philemon, 3 John, and Jude, and it is unclear whether he quoted from Hebrews, James, and 2 Peter. Authenticity of Paul’s Epistles. Paul’s epistles, many of which were read in churches as Scripture by the end of the 1st century, were readily accepted into the canon, even though Paul never met Jesus the man and no one in the New Testament ever called Paul an Apostle. Paul assigned himself that title. Paul said of the gospel he preached, “For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:12). Paul’s authorship of six of the thirteen Pauline letters in the New Testament is disputed by about half of modern scholars, believing them not to have been written by Paul, but by others, perhaps his disciples, as late as the 2nd century. In addition, few modern scholars accept that Paul wrote Hebrews. The following seven Pauline epistles are the only books in the entire Christian Bible (Old and New Testaments) that enjoy almost universal scholarly agreement on their authorship: Romans 1 Corinthians 2 Corinthians Galatians Philippians 1 Thessalonians Philemon Anonymous and Pseudonymous Books. Except for the above seven Pauline epistles, the authorship of the other books of the New Testament is academically disputed. During the 2nd century, the other books were ascribed to Apostles or their close associates by early church fathers, including Papias, Tatian, and Irenaeus. In their assignments, they interpreted certain references in the books as evidence of authorship and they relied on oral tradition and hearsay. For every argument supporting each authorship, there are compelling reasons why the ascribed author could not have been the real author. The Gospel writers did not name themselves; they did not claim to be eyewitnesses; and they all wrote in the third person. The authors of the epistles of James, Jude, and Peter identified themselves by first name, while the author of the epistles of John referred to himself as “the elder.” There is no scholarly consensus on the authorship of these letters, but most modern scholars conclude that they were written pseudonymously. Authorship of Mark and Matthew. According to the 4th-century church historian Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History (3:39.15-16), the first known mention of the authorship of the canonical Gospels was made by Papias in his Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord in the early 2nd century. Eusebius quoted Papias as writing: And the presbyter [John] said this: “Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him. But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers], but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord’s sayings. Wherefore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them. For one thing he took especial care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements.” [This is what is related by Papias regarding Mark; but with regard to Matthew he has made the following Statements]: “Matthew put together the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could.” (Translation from The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. A. Cleveland Coxe, Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. New York: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885) The Papias writings referenced by Eusebius are unfortunately lost today. Scholars question whether Papias knew the Apostle John, or whether his information came from a presbyter (elder) named John who was not the Apostle. Also, it is unclear if the writings mentioned by Papias were the canonical Gospels of Mark and Matthew, or if they were earlier writings that served as a source for the authors of the canonical Gospels. “Memoirs of the Apostles” and the Diatessaron. Around the middle of the 2nd century, Christian apologist and philosopher Justin Martyr referenced what he called the “memoirs of the apostles” in his First Apology and Dialogue with Trypho. Justin did not attribute these memoirs to particular individuals. His quotes and details from these writings closely resembled passages found in the canonical Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke (referred to as the Synoptic Gospels because they contain many of the same stories with the same or similar wordings). Later in the 2nd century (c. AD 160-180), Tatian, an Assyrian Christian and disciple of Justin, composed the Diatessaron—a harmony of the four Gospels bearing the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Paul, Mark, and Luke. Almost 60 percent of the New Testament text is attributed to Paul, Mark, and Luke. None of these people claimed to have met the human Jesus or witnessed his life events. Paul mentioned learning his gospel from Jesus Christ, the heavenly spirit, rather than from man. According to 2nd-century bishop Papias, Mark wrote down what he learned from the Apostle Peter’s recollections and teachings. The Luke author stated that he carefully investigated accounts “handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word” (Luke 1:2-3). However, it remains unknown when and where he conducted this investigation and who, or what, his sources were. His inquiry apparently was not very thorough, for he failed to turn up a trove of information later reported in the Gospel of John. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul mentioned “Barnabas’ cousin Mark,” a Jewish coworker, and “Luke, the beloved physician,” both of whom were among those with him in Rome during his house arrest (Colossians 4:10-14). In his letter to Philemon, Paul referred to Mark and Luke as fellow workers who sent greetings along with his fellow prisoner Epaphras in Rome (Philemon 1:23-24). Despite this, the Gospels ascribed to Mark and Luke do not seem to align with Paul’s teachings on salvation by faith apart from works and Jesus’ existence before the creation of the world. If these authors knew and followed Paul, they evidently were not on board with his doctrines of “faith-alone salvation” and the preexistence of Christ. In the Mark and Luke Gospels, Jesus taught that a person’s attitudes and righteous behavior (love of God, love for fellow man, and the keeping of God’s commandments) were the requirements for entrance into the kingdom of God (heaven). In his first epistle, Peter referred to “my son, Mark” (1 Peter 5:13), but Mark was a common name in those days, so it is not a given that this Mark, the “son of Peter,” and Barnabas’ cousin Mark named in Paul’s letters were the same person. Author of Mark. The author of the Gospel of Mark likely was not the Jewish associate of Peter and Paul (called John Mark in Acts), evident from errors in Palestinian geography and Jewish Law within the Mark Gospel, which the author of the Gospel of Matthew, believed to be Jewish, corrected. One probable reason the early 2nd-century church fathers promoted Mark as the writer of the Gospel was that, according to Acts 4:13, the Apostle Peter was “uneducated and untrained.” He would have been challenged to fluently write a book in Greek. By ascribing the Gospel to Mark, Peter’s translator, it would have been accepted as having the authority of Peter, one of Jesus’ Twelve Apostles and an initial leader of the church in Jerusalem and later the church at Rome—even though Peter was probably deceased at the time the Gospel was completed. As a side note, the Mark account of Jesus walking on the sea did not mention Peter’s failure to walk on water due to his lack of faith, which the later Gospel of Matthew made a prominent part of the story. Author of Luke and Acts. The author of Luke—the longest Gospel containing the longest chapter in the New Testament—drew material from Mark, the hypothetical sayings gospel Q, the Septuagint, and unknown sources of unique information not found in Mark and Matthew. He was credited by the 2nd-century bishop Irenaeus with reporting Paul’s teachings in Acts after Paul and Peter’s deaths. Nearly all scholars concur that Luke and Acts were written by the same author because both books are addressed to an unknown person named Theophilus, meaning “friend of God” (Luke 1:3 and Acts 1:1), and they share a similar refined Koine Greek writing style. However, contradictions arising between Acts’ reporting on Paul and Paul’s own statements in his epistles cast doubt that Luke, the physician and companion of Paul, wrote Acts and Luke. For example, Acts 9 states that Paul after his conversion met the Apostles in Jerusalem, but Paul in Galatians 1 said he met with no one, went to Arabia for three years, returned to Damascus, and then three years later went to Jerusalem and met with Peter and Jesus’ brother James. Acts reports on the post-resurrection activities of the Apostles, the early Jewish Christian church, and the conversion of Paul. It also describes the expansion of Christianity to the gentiles from Antioch (where followers of Jesus were first called Christians) to Rome, where according to church tradition, Peter led a community of believers and became the first bishop of Rome (pope). Acts and Luke together comprise over 27 percent of the New Testament, distinguishing their author as the most prolific writer in the New Testament. Author of Matthew. Although Papias attributed an early gospel written in Hebrew to the Apostle Matthew, no solid evidence links the Apostle to the Greek Gospel of Matthew. Scholars generally agree that the author was probably a Greek-speaking Jewish Christian in the latter part of the 1st century writing in a Jewish community in Syria. While some of the narrative stands out as unique among the four Gospels, most of Matthew’s content is borrowed from earlier sources, including Mark, Q, and the Septuagint. Matthew is the most “Jewish” of all the Gospels, written by a Jew exclusively for a Jewish audience. It focuses on Jesus’ kingly mission to the Jews and their misguided rejection of him, targeting the Pharisees as Jesus’ main antagonists. The Sadducees, the sect that included the chief priests who delivered Jesus over to Pilate, were in fact more powerful than the Pharisees before the fall of Jerusalem and destruction of the temple in AD 70. Matthew is believed to have been written after the destruction of the temple when the Pharisees had assumed the dominant Jewish leadership role. Author of John. The authorship of the Gospel of John, the last canonical Gospel, completed near the end of the 1st century, has been debated among scholars. Possible authors include John the Apostle, son of Zebedee; John of Patmos, who may have written the Book of Revelation; John the Presbyter (aka John the Elder), written about by Papias and Eusebius; John the Evangelist, in church tradition identified with John the Apostle, John of Patmos or John the Presbyter; the “disciple whom Jesus loved,” referred to several times in the John Gospel but never named; and a group of authors in a hypothetical “Johannine community” possibly located in Ephesus or Damascus. If the Gospel of John were written partly or entirely by the Apostle John, he would have likely required scribal and editorial assistance, since John and Peter were both described in Acts 4:13 as unschooled and John would have been very old. Most scholars do not believe that the Apostle John wrote the Gospel, but think it was written by more than one author in stages and was preceded by two or three versions. Some scholars doubt the authenticity of Chapter 21 describing Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance to his disciples in Galilee, because Chapter 20 stylistically concludes as an ending. The story of Jesus defending the woman caught in adultery in Chapters 7 and 8 does not appear in the earliest Gospel of John manuscripts. Koine Greek. The original New Testament manuscripts were probably penned on papyrus in Koine Greek, the common regional form of Greek spoken and written between 300 BC and AD 300. In Koine Greek there were no lowercase letters, spacings between words, or chapter or verse divisions, and rarely any punctuation marks. The oldest extant complete and nearly complete copies of the New Testament are contained within the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus—Bibles from the 4th century, both handwritten in Koine Greek with uncial letters scribed on parchment prepared from the skins of hundreds of calves, sheep, or goats. An Aramaic copy of the New Testament from the 5th century exists in the British Library. In it, Jesus says it is harder for a rich man to enter heaven than for a rope to go through the eye of a needle. In most English translations, the word “camel” replaces “rope.” Both a rope and a camel are hard to pass through a needle’s eye, so the overall meaning of the verse is the same, but the symbolism could be different. In support of the word “camel,” as early as the 9th century, some early apologists taught that there was a gate in Jerusalem called the Eye of the Needle through which a camel could not pass without first having its baggage removed. An alternative explanation for the translation variance is that the Greek words for “camel” and “rope” are very similar, with only a character’s difference; and the Aramaic words for “camel” and “rope” are identical, showing the difficulty of translating from Aramaic to Greek. The word might have been better translated as “rope” or “rope made from camel hair” which, with effort, could be unstranded and passed through the eye of a large needle. Sources for Matthew and Luke. Bible scholars generally agree that the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke were independently developed for separate Christian communities at about the same time, and that they both copied most of their stories from the earlier Mark Gospel. Matthew duplicated nearly 90 percent of Mark, while Luke repeated only about 50 percent, each choosing material discriminately and making selective modifications. Both Matthew and Luke copied over 200 parallel passages from the hypothetical Q document, composed mostly of the sayings of Jesus. The parallel passages, which do not appear in Mark, include the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, the Golden Rule and the “you cannot serve God and mammon” passage. Matthew and Luke also drew about one-quarter of their material from a shared third source document or tradition. Only about 20 percent of Matthew and 35 percent of Luke is content original to their authors, tailored for their respective audiences—Matthew for a Jewish community and Luke for a gentile community. Gospel of Matthew. The author of Matthew modified and supplemented details from Mark and Q. He began his gospel with a birth narrative and a genealogy tracing Jesus’ ancestry back to Abraham, the father of the Jewish people. He presented more of Jesus’ teachings, cited numerous references to Hebrew Scriptures, and included reports of Jesus’ appearances after the resurrection. (There were no post-resurrection appearances of Jesus in the original Mark Gospel.) In the Matthew birth narrative, the virgin-born infant Jesus was adored by gift-bearing “Magi from the East” before Joseph and Mary with Jesus fled to Egypt to escape King Herod’s massacre of boys under two years old. The narrative emphasizes Jesus as the prophesied Jewish Messiah and king of Israel descended from King David, and a deliverer of Israel comparable to Moses. Matthew selectively altered certain passages he borrowed from Mark for various reasons. For example, he revised Jesus’ teachings regarding marriage and divorce in Mark 10:11-12 by deleting Jesus’ instruction “and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery” because the author knew that in Jewish Law a woman could not initiate divorce proceedings. He also added Jesus’ clarification that marriage applies only to men who “can accept this statement” and “to whom it has been given,” excusing eunuchs “who were born that way” or “were made eunuchs by men” and “men who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:9-12). In Mark, people at a synagogue asked, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?” (Mark 6:3); Matthew changed the question to: “Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary, and His brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?” (Matthew 13:55), thus eliminating the inference that the future king of Israel was a lowly manual laborer. (Joseph, the father, was apparently deceased at the time of the story.) Matthew expanded the Mark story of Jesus walking on the sea to include Jesus rescuing a faithless Peter from sinking and added that after Jesus calmed the wind, “those who were in the boat worshiped Him, saying ‘You are certainly God’s Son’” (Matthew 14:28-33). In Mark, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, requested of Jesus: “Grant that we may sit, one on Your right and one on Your left, in Your glory” (Mark 10:35-37). Matthew altered the story to read: “Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to Jesus with her sons” and requested, “Command that in Your kingdom these two sons of mine may sit one on Your right and one on Your left” (Matthew 20:20-21). These and other examples of Matthew modifications and additions to Mark are listed in Appendix C. Gospel of Luke. Like Matthew, Luke begins with a virgin birth narrative and genealogy to establish Jesus as the Messiah, but provides different details from Matthew. Luke traces Jesus’ ancestry all the way back to Adam to show Jesus’ importance to all humanity—Jews and gentiles—not just to the Jewish nation. Luke’s genealogy follows the line of David’s son Nathan, whereas Matthew traces Jesus’ lineage through David’s son Solomon and other Jewish kings to show his royal pedigree. In Luke, Jesus was born in a place with a manger and was visited by shepherds, consistent with the Luke Gospel’s emphasis on Jesus’ empathy for the poor. And in Luke there is no mention of an infant massacre by King Herod, which in Matthew prompted the family to relocate to Egypt. The few consistencies between the two birth narratives include: (1) Jesus’ mother Mary virginally conceived by the Holy Spirit during the reign of King Herod; (2) Mary was betrothed to Joseph, a descendant of David and Abraham; (3) Jesus was born in Bethlehem; and (4) the family ended up in Nazareth. The author of Luke apparently was not satisfied with Mark’s Gospel. He made significant alterations, downplaying or eliminating elements unsupportive of his message. He corrected, sanitized, recomposed, and eliminated stories, details, or quotes of Mark that are baffling or unflattering portrayals of Jesus, his family, or his disciples. Examples of omitted stories include: Jesus cursing the fig tree; an enraged Jesus driving merchants from the temple while labelling it a “robbers’ den”; Jesus accused of being a magician; Jesus’ family coming to seize him for having “lost his senses” (being “out of his mind” in most translations); the woman at Bethany anointing Jesus’ head with expensive oil and his disciples’ objection; the naked young man fleeing the garden of Gethsemane; Jesus laying his hands upon children; and his disciples’ continual lack of understanding. Luke is also missing Mark’s quote of Jesus saying that he came “to give his life as a ransom for many” and the Mark story of Jesus walking on the sea and calming the wind. Luke added eighteen parables, including the stories of the Rich Man and the Beggar Lazarus, the Good Samaritan, the Lost Sheep, and the Prodigal Son. Luke’s narrative of the crucifixion and post-resurrection appearances of Jesus differs notably from those of the other Gospels. For example, only in Luke does Pontius Pilate send Jesus to Herod Antipas for adjudication, but Herod, finding no guilt, sends Jesus back to Pilate. In consideration of his pro-Roman gentile audience, Luke’s author did not mention the flogging, mocking, and beating of Jesus by the Roman soldiers reported by Mark and Matthew. In Luke, the centurion at the cross proclaimed, “Certainly this man was innocent [or ‘righteous’ in some translations]” (Luke 23:47), not “Truly this was the Son of God,” reported by Mark and Matthew. Also uniquely in Luke, the resurrected Jesus appeared to two disciples on the road to Emmaus, individually to the Apostle Peter, and finally to “the eleven [Apostles] and those gathered with them” in Jerusalem, before leading them to Bethany where “while He was blessing them, He was parted from them and was carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:13-51). Jesus in Luke did not meet the disciples in Galilee as he did in Matthew and John. Gospel of John. The John Gospel, the last of the four Gospels, was written toward the end of the 1st century, with possible additions in the early 2nd century. The earliest known copy of John is a 2.5” x 3.5” papyrus fragment containing only a few words from Chapter 18, produced around AD 125 or later. Of the four Gospels, John was chronologically the farthest removed from the events of Jesus’ life and includes unique material not found in Mark, Matthew, and Luke (the Synoptic Gospels). Compared to the literary styles of the Synoptic Gospels, John’s style is distinctly poetic and mystical, with metaphorical passages brimming with symbolism. In its prologue, John presents Jesus in abstract philosophical terms as the preexisting Word (logos in Greek) which “in the beginning…was with God…and was God.” Jesus in John is the divine Son of God, one with God from all eternity, through whom all things were created, sent by God to dwell among humans, atone for mankind’s sin through his sacrifice so that all who believe in him will have eternal life—a far different portrayal than Mark’s human Son of Man and servant of God acknowledged by God as his Son at the baptism. John focuses less on the kingdom of God and more on eternal life and Jesus’ divinity, illustrated through seven miraculous “signs”—six of which are not mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels. The discourses of Jesus in John are longer and more developed than in the Synoptics, and never in the form of parables. Jesus is quoted fourteen times as saying “I am,” including seven “I am” titles: the bread of life, the light of the world, the door of the sheep, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life, the way and the truth and the life, and the true vine. The phrase “I am” may in some instances be a literary allusion to “I AM,” God’s name given by God to Moses at the burning bush. John is the Gospel that evangelists offer as proof of Jesus’ divinity. It is the most quoted book by evangelists when proselytizing, John 3:16 being a favored verse. In John, there is no mention of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Salvation is by belief in Jesus alone. Uniquely in John, Jesus was crucified on the day of preparation for Passover, not on the day after the first day of Unleavened Bread reported by the other Gospels. This put the crucifixion at the same time sacrificial lambs were being slaughtered at the temple. Jesus’ ministry in John took place almost entirely in Judea and lasted at least three years (based on the three mentioned annual Passover festivals), whereas his mostly Galilean ministry in the other Gospels could have been accomplished in a single year with only one Jerusalem Passover festival visit. John does not include any of the Synoptic Gospel material about Jesus’ birth, temptation by the devil, appointment of Apostles, dispatch of disciples to preach and heal the sick, casting out of demons, Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer, transfiguration, or witnessed departure from earth to heaven (the ascension). John also doesn’t mention the institution of the Eucharist (communion) in his account of the Last Supper, but John does quote Jesus as saying to a group of Jews, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life” (John 6:54). John is considered by many scholars to have an anti-Semitic bent. In John, Jesus disparagingly told the Jews, “You are of your father the devil” (John 8:44) and warned that the Jews would expel Christians from the synagogues and even kill them (John 16:2), statements reflecting the schism between Christians and Jews that was occurring near the end of the 1st century. Affirmation of the New Testament Canon. Ecumenical approval of the twenty-seven-book New Testament canon in the late-4th century was influenced by bishops Athanasius of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, and Augustine of Hippo. Selection criteria included: deemed authorship by one of the Apostles or a close associate of an Apostle, acceptance by church leaders, consistency with church doctrines, and widespread use in Christian communities. The selection reflected a broad consensus among bishops, most of whom favored the gospels and letters attributed to Paul and his associates Mark and Luke, and the Apostles Matthew, John, and Peter. Several early Christian books considered sacred by some groups did not meet all the criteria and were excluded for reasons such as questionable authenticity, doctrinal inconsistency, bizarre content, late or disputed authorship, or lack of acceptance by the mainstream Christian community. These rejected works included:
