Which is older, Christianity or the New Testament?

Question

If the Church predates the Bible, then doesn't it make sense that tradition and scripture are equal? If the Church does not predate the Bible, how come the New Testament was compiled much later (by the Church)?

Answer 1

Christianity is older. The first Gospel -- Mark's -- was written around the year 60 A.D. with the last Gospel -- John's -- being written around 90 A.D. Even before Mark's Gospel was written, most of Paul's letters had been written, but not all of them. Therefore Paul taught purely by Oral Tradition. Paul even tells us in the Acts of the Apostles that he had studied at the feet of Gamaliel who was a master in Oral Tradition.

The New Testament as we know it was not fully canonized until sometime in the 4th century by one of the Church councils. But because one of the biggest heresies that came into the Church in the 1500's and challenged which books belonged in the Bible as Divinely Inspired, (and later broke away from the Church), the books of the Bible were definitively listed only at the Council of Trent (which was called in response to that heresy) in the mid1500's. The heresy? Protestantism. Martin Luther himself wanted to remove the Letter to the Hebrews, the Letter of James (which Luther called "an epistle of straw" because it spoke of faith being dead without works) and the book of Revelation. Until Protestantism, the Church had always used the Septuagint (Greek) version of the Bible. It is the one that Jesus and the Apostles had used and it is the one that Catholicism still uses. Incidentally, the Jews stopped using the Septuagint after the council of Jamnia in approx. 90 A.D. because of the so-called "Catholic" books such as Maccabees I and II and the other books that today's Protestants claim we Catholics "added" to the Bible.

Answer 2

Answer: Neither one is older.

In 382 AD, Jerome's Latin Vulgate Manuscripts Produced which contain All 80 Books (39 Old Test. + 14 Apocrypha + 27 New Test). This was translated from earlier sources.

This means your question "If the Church does not predate the Bible, how come the New Testament was compiled much later (by the Church)?" is not correct. It is true that English translation uses Greek Texts dating from the 9th Century, but clearly Jerome used an earlier source.

It was not until the pronouncement of Bishop Irenæus (185 A.D.) that Christians began to accept only the four familiar gospels as authoritative, and to refer to them by their modern titles.

From the section of EARLY HISTORY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, we get from c AD50-100 theBooks of the New Testament (Some scholars date some books of the New Testament to c AD150). In this 50 to 100 year period, the 27 books of the New Testament were written, completed and preserved. More details can be found in the second source.

Whether Christians live up to the teaching of Christianity is another matter. In this brief answer, I have tried to give you a better time line. This time line suggest that Christianity and the New Testament coexisted together at the same time. Moreover, there were other writings not included in the New Testament that show this as well.

Answer 3

Christianity predates the New Testament. Jesus started Christianity and the books of the New Testament were written under inspiration from God by the Apostles. Christianity and the New Testament predate what is commonly referred to as 'the Church', That didn't come along until a couple hundred years after the New Testaments books were all written. It was this 'Church' that started all the 'traditions' that are not taught and sometimes outrightly condemned in the Bible as a whole. Also, the 'Church' didn't compile the Bible. They just twisted it in an attempt to justify the false traditions and doctrine they have been teaching since the apostacy started

Answer 4

Well, that is a good question. The New Testament was being written by the early church, many of the letters of the New Testament were written to address struggles or difficult questions that came up in the churches. Any tradition that contradicts scripture is wrong, and must be changed. The Bible is the Word of God.

The question of tradition vs. scripture is an old one. It is one that the Pharisee's faced (and in reality we all face it every day). They ended up putting their tradition before God's word. In fact, their tradition was so important to them, that they killed the Word so that He wouldn't usurp their authority, and the authority of tradition.

Tradition is not necessarily bad. But it, like anything else, can become an idol, and interfere with what is really the most important, our relationship with our loving Father. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, so that we could be saved out of our dead works, our overbearing tradition, and know the living God through Jesus Christ. That is the Good News.

Answer 5

Most religions start out as oral traditions, and Christianity is no exception. Christianity actually started out as three separate movements. Jewish Christianity which died out quickly, Gnostic Christianity which was exterminated by the heretic hunters (and is experiencing a comeback today thanks to the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library), and Pauline Christianity which was based on the theology of Paul and gave us the New Testament.

Some Gnostic thought made it's way into the New Testament, which isn't surprising since the two sects existed at the same time and oral traditions from both became mixed. In, fact some of the early Churches had Gnostic scriptures in their canon. They were eventually removed by later Church Councils.

Answer 6

Christianity predates the New Testament by about 300 years. The canon of scripture was not set until the Council of Nicea in 325CE. Most christians have no idea how the bible came to be. It would serve them to do some serious study into early church history.

Answer 7

Christianity predates the accounts of Jesus. The Gospels were written 30 to 70 years after Christ’s crucifixion.

Answer 8

No,because tradition had nothing to do with the very earliest Christians.They saw the things described in the Gospels.They were there.They did not need it written down for them.
The New Testament was certainly not written 'much later' by the church.The New Testament books were written very close to the time of Jesus,by eyewitnesses and a few others.Neither was it compiled much later.The canon was made official at the Coucil,but the Christians had been using the books far earlier than that.

Answer 9

It is true that the Christian congregation was born (at Pentecost) before the 27 books of the Christian Greek Scriptures began to be recorded. And tradition has its place - it is neither inherently bad nor inherently good. Sometimes it is fine and sometimes it is to be rejected. To wit: when the Mosaic law was recorded and instructions were written for the Passover, wine was not a part of that Passover. Later, wine became a tradition. Was there anything wrong with it? Obviously not, Jesus himself had wine at the Passovers he attended. And since it did not violate any of God's laws or principles, it was perfectly acceptable. However...

Notice the inspired words of the apostle Paul to the Galatians at Galatians 1:6-9: “I marvel that you are being so quickly removed from the One who called you with Christ’s undeserved kindness over to another sort of good news. But it is not another; only there are certain ones who are causing you trouble and wanting to pervert the good news about the Christ. However, even if we or an angel out of heaven were to declare to you as good news something beyond what we declared to you as good news, let him be accursed. As we have said above, I also now say again, Whoever it is that is declaring to you as good news something beyond what you accepted, let him be accursed.”

Some traditions that now exist are clearly in violation of the written word found in Scripture. These traditions should be to us anathema – accursed!

It is not accurate to say that tradition is equal to scripture. It is permissible to say that tradition does not automatically violate scripture. But to put tradition on a par with the inspired word of God is presumptuous - at the very least of it.

Hannah J Paul

Answer 10

historically, tradition predates scripture as the church's authority and that tradition rests upon the seat of Peter in the West, and the ecumenical councils in the East.