You can even transform and build upon it. In brief, you can copy and redistribute my work in any medium. The History in the Bible podcast and website by Garry Stevens is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. ♺This website is manufactured entirely from recycled electrons that may once have belonged to nuts and crustacea. For more on that, listen to my episode 2.17 Recovering the Bible: A Century of Revelations. In those cases, the earliest manuscript evidence we have is that of great Codex Sinaiticus, the earliestĬomplete New Testament. Almost all the earliest physical evidenceįor books and letters comes from scraps of papyri, for which I give dates. Second, physical evidence we have in the form of papyri.

Hear all about them in my episodeĢ.21 Battle for the New Testament I: Earliest Times. Evidence consists of two forms.įirst, citations of a book or letter by an early church father. Here I give the earliest evidence we have for each book. The West held it to be by the author of the gospel of John. TheĮast held it to be written by a different person, John the Elder.Īnonymous. Traditionally attributed to Jesus' brother Jude. Traditionally attributed to John, Jesus' beloved disciple. Traditionally attributed to Luke, a companion of Paul.Ĭonsensus it was written by the author of Luke.Īnonymous. Traditionally attributed to Jesus' disciple Matthew.Īnonymous. Traditionally attributed to Jesus' brother James. Imprisonment letter written in Rome? Conservative letter.ĭisputed letter of Paul. Widely regarded as by Clement, bishop of Rome.ĭisputed letter of Paul. Traditionally attributed to the author of the gospel and the letters of John.Ĭlaims to have been written by the disciple Peter.Īnonymous. Traditionally attributed to Mark, companion of Peter. Traditionally attributed to Paul, but that is unlikely. Not sure if Paul imprisoned inĪuthentic letter of Paul. Written in Ephesus? Radical letter.Īuthentic letter of Paul. The Table and Timeline DateĪuthentic letter of Paul. Those books that are not letters are shown inīold like this. Most of the documents in the New Testament are letters.

The authenticity of books are according to modern scholarship. The dates cited are the broadest accepted by scholars.

Read this in conjunction with my page on the early church fathers. I have included them in my table below, preceded Many early church fathers regarded someīooks as canon that did not make into the final cut. This is a timeline and table of the New Testament books. Timeline of the Books of the New Testament & Some That Almost Became Canonīack to Show Notes Contents.

Bible paul timeline