When was the new Testament Founded?What Year?

Question

Im doing some studies and i would like to know the theological time period when the fathers of the church create or decided which books would make up the new Testament.

Answer 1

It wasn't exactly "founded". The books were written first, then selected some time later.

Actually, the "New Testament" was never supposed to be written. Christian "scripture" was the Septuagint version of the Jewish scriptures. But as Christ delayed his return, and as the apostles began dying off, Christians were concerned that their memory of Christ and his teachings would get scrambled.

So they looked at what had already been written, some letters from Paul to various Christian communities. The earliest of these was written anywhere from perhaps 43 to 54 C.E. But these said nothing about Jesus the man, his life and his ministry. So some people decided to write down biographies of Jesus based on the memory of the community. Mark's gospel was probably written in the mid to late 60s. Matthew and Luke wrote theirs in the 70s, and John's is dated anywhere from 90 to 120 C.E.

Several other works gained popular support, letters from James, Barnabas and Peter, mystical / apocryphal books like Revelation and the Shepherd of Hermas. Some leaders and intellectuals had favorites and started making lists. But with the Church under persecution, it wasn't practical to set an official list.

So, when Constantine legalized Christianity in 312, things began to change. The Council of Nicea (325) debated and settled the essential nature of Christ and other contentious issues. Other councils refined these faith definitons. It wasn't until the Councils of Hippo (393 AD) and Carthage (397 AD) that they were able to set the "canon" of the New Testament, rejecting some popular but insufficiently attested books and accepting others. The motive for this was not because of the near-misses, the books that might have made it but didn't have the "right" author, but several books that claimed to be Christian but had radically different ideas about the nature of Christ, God and "salvation".

At the same time, the councils endorsed the Septuagint as the official version of the "Old" Testament, unaware that Jewish rabbis had rejected several of its books 300 years before because they couldn't find Hebrew versions of the books. Christians would not become aware of this until Jerome began to translate the scriptures into Latin, nearly a Century later.

Answer 2

You could count the Council of Nicea (Nice in France) under Emperor Constantine in 325ad.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament
Contrary to popular misconception, the New Testament canon was not summarily decided in large, bureaucratic Church council meetings, but rather developed very slowly over many centuries. This is not to say that formal councils and declarations were not involved, however. Some of these include the Council of Trent of 1546 for Roman Catholicism (by vote: 24 yea, 15 nay, 16 abstain), the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563 for the Church of England, the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647 for Calvinism, and the Synod of Jerusalem of 1672 for Greek Orthodoxy.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia article on the Canon of the New Testament: "The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council [Council of Trent]."

In the first three centuries of the Christian Church, Early Christianity, there seems to have been no New Testament canon that was universally recognized.

Answer 3

The popular Christian Bibles known today stem from a canon that was generated around 325 CE, which included a list of "Old Testament" and "New Testament" documents. There are many different versions of the the Bible, each with different books and translations of the same documents. Catholic Bibles, for example, look different from Protestant Bibles, which are different from Ethiopian Orthodox Bibles.

To be clear, the "New Testament" is not a specifc document or even clearly defined set of documents: each faith has it's own set of documents it uses. The defining of each faith's set of documents can probably be traced back to different times.

"We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity." -- Eusebius

Answer 4

Well, it was officially decided in the Council of Nicea, in 325 AD.

However, the books that were considered canonical were accepted way before that. The oldest canonical book in the New Testament was written in about 55 AD. The "newest" was written in about 95 AD. So for two hundred years before the Council of Nicea, most people knew which books were considered inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Answer 5

Wow ... so would I. I can't answer your exact question, obviously, but I can add that the decisions about which of the various writings were to be included in the Bible did not happen all at once, if for no other reason than that they weren't found all at once and all in one place. I can also add that the only writings that would have been considered New Testament are those which were written during or after Jesus' lifetime, not before.

Answer 6

As I understand it, the cannonization (approval) of the writings that made up the new testament occurred during the 3rd century after Christ as a result of a meeting of church leaders at Nicea.

Answer 7

100 AD The canon was ready but not assembled.

John, the last surviving original apostle insured that no spurious or fraudulent books were given validity. His understudy, Polycarp continued the work. Polycarp's understudy, Polycrates also continued the work.

Answer 8

Who cares. Jesus is Lord. Go after His business.