Is it true the Bible was written some 300 years after Jesus' lifetime?

Question

I'm made to understand that translation of the present Bible was made from the Greek version of the Bible which claimed to have been derived from a translation of the original Aramaic language (used during Jesus' time).

Answer 1

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John!

“Gospel of the Kingdom of God”

MARK 1:14 Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Gospel of The Kingdom of God

From the above Verse, it is clear that Christ, Jesus-The Son of Mary preached the Gospel of The Kingdom of God. This Gospel (The Good News) actually contained the Words of God because of course, it was the Gospel of The Kingdom of God which was preached ONLY by Jesus. There is not even anything as the Gospel of Jesus as noted by Mark 1:1. The words of the Gospel which Jesus (pbuh) preached, were not his words as he says:


JOHN 14:24 He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me.

Matthew and John were actually the disciples of Jesus (pbuh). But did they really write these Gospels by themselves. Do we have Gospels “BY” Matthew and John? From an account in the Gospel of Matthew, we can clearly see that this Gospel is not written by Matthew himself:

MATTHEW 9:9 And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed him.

If Matthew would have been the author of this Gospel, he surely would have written that “.. and he saith unto “ME”… and “I” arose and followed him.”

Luke and Mark were not even the disciples of Jesus. Luke was a physician and a companion of St Paul and Mark was an interpreter who probably worked with St Peter in Rome.

The Gospels also differ from each other a lot:

Was Joseph the Son of Jacob (MATTHEW 1:16) or was he the Son of Heli (LUKE 3:23)?

Why isn’t the ascension of Jesus (pbuh) to heaven mentioned in Matthew and John?

These Gospels which were written down 100 Years after Jesus (pbuh) ascension, circulated anonymously, no names were attached to them until almost 200 and the Christian theologians who came up with the idea of having a New Testament was condemned as heretic.

Do we have that True Gospel which Jesus Christ (pbuh) Preached in Hebrew or Aramaic?
Did Jesus (pbuh) asked Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to write these Gospels?
How can Christians rely on the accounts in these Gospels which are the basic Pillars of their Faith?

Answer 2

The new testament was written from as early around half a century after the so death of christ until the end of the second century. There were many gospels claiming to be right, there were the gospels according to the oher apostles even the one according to magdalene. Just recently there has been found the gospel according to Judas were it says that Jesus and Judas were in agreement to the "betrayal". If you could go back two thousand years, you would find many people adoring different books to what now became the new testament. Once the church was established it decided what books would be introduce into the bible, and the other that were incompatible to what they decided was true were sent to be destrtoyed. Much of the new testanent is originally written in greek and there are many traces of this. Even the word bible come from the greek biblios which means book, when god says i am the alpha and the omega, those are greek letters that stands for a and z. So what it should litteraly be saying in english is "i am the a and the z, the beggining and the end". The word christ comes from the greek christos which means saviour, and so forth. There a lot of information out there on the subject in the web, you can also find the other books incluiding the gospel of judas. try wikipedia

Answer 3

No

The initial compilation began in AD104 through six letters of Paul.
The latter formed the beginning of the Christian (Catholic) New Testament.
Within the many years to come books of authentic writings were compiled to form the bible we read today.

The Greek Septuagint was replaced with the better translated Roman Vulgate since the translation from Hebrew/Aramaic to Latin was more precise.
The Vulgate was finally declared the authentic bible of the Catholic Church in 1546 at the Council of Trent.

An actual bible for Christian people to read was not possible until after Christianity became the favored religion of the Roman people which occurred in AD394.

The bible itself was difficult to duplicate on a level where everyone could own.
Furthermore, reading and writing was generally only available to the rich, the tedious duplicating process of acquiring a monk to handwrite each bible was very time consuming etc...

Note:
The Hebrew Torah or Old Testament was written between the 12th and the 2nd century BC.


Today's printing has allowed the duplication process much more versatility!

Answer 4

The old testament was written before his lifetime. Most of the new testaments in the bible were written 100 years after the birth of Jesus. But you are right about the translations. Each time the bible is translated into a new language it takes on a different form and many times the church has changed the bible to reflect values they want to project from the bible.

Around 300A.D. Constantine became the first christian emporer of the roman empire. It was the first time christians were not persuced for their beliefs. Many principles of christianity were "unitized" so they fit under one umbrella of christianity. This is believed to be the first revision of the bible.

The version that is most popular in the English speaking world is the King James version which was translated around the year 1600.

Answer 5

What if the early church tried to fake the gospel stories?

People have made many attempts to show that the Church has corrupted the early texts in order to play up Jesus as the Messiah. There are several problems with this approach.

1. Surely the early church would have made its adherents more heroic. Instead, we have Jesus' followers not understanding Him, doubting Him, even fleeing from Him when He was taken.

2. We have a male-centric community made into a laughing-stock as Christ appears to Mary, and the women believe Jesus more than the apostles.

3. We have the foolish words of Jesus' disciples intact. Peter's denial if Jesus is there. Why would the early church want to preserve his story? We have the disciples words for when they wanted to rain fire down on a city. We have disciples who argued among themselves who would be greatest in the kingdom. Why are these words still there?

4. If Jesus did not indeed die on the cross and rise again, why did the disciples not produce the body? 11 of the disciples died cruel deaths (crucified upside down; limbs ties to separate horses and pulled apart.; beheaded; tied up to the back of a horse and dragged to death on the streets). All of this could have been avoided if they had recanted and told the torturers where they hid the body. But the body was nowhere to be found. Jesus had risen from the dead and will give eternal life and an inheritance untold to those who would persist in faith to the end.

Sorry, books with theories like these you read will come and go. These books also do not consider the more than 100 prophecies that were literally fulfilled by the birth, life, and death of Jesus, nor do they account for the many passages that have come true in the past several decades and even in our times in preparation for Christ's second coming.

Answer 6

The Bible consists of 66 books, 39 of which were written before Christ was born. These 39 books which comprise the Old Testament were written mostly in Hebrew. The remaining 27 books which make up the New Testament, were written in Koine Greek during the first century AD., So, to answer your question, the entire canon of Scripture that makes up our Bible was completed before the end of the 1st century.
Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic, but the autographs of the NT were written in Greek, a language that was much more widely spoken at the time than Aramaic.

Answer 7

According to religious scholars, The old Testament was written between 1400 and 400 BC.
The books of the New Testament were written between 20 and 100 AD.
Compare that with the history of Alexander the Great which was first written 400 years after his death.

Answer 8

Well the bible as we know it today was written 300 years after the death of christ. But it was written based off of oral traditions and a handful of writings then the apostle Paul and probably early followers of Paul and the other apostles. They were codified along a central cannon when the Roman Army became a majority Christian army and the bible was going to be given to every roman soldier as part of their provisions

Answer 9

NO. The last book of the "old testament" was written some 400 years BEFORE Jesus' lifetime. The last book of the "new testament" was written circa 90. There were, and still are, Hebrew manuscripts in existence and the Torah scrolls (first five books of the Bible) have always been written in Hebrew.

The timeline you may have heard (300 years after) may be when the list of books in the "new testament" was set (the "old testament" canon had been established in Judaism, as mentioned, before Jesus' birth). All of the books had been written long before that, however.

Answer 10

Which bits? Logically Paul's letters would have been written before he died in Rome and written while he went on his missions. Luke is supposed to have kept a journal on which Acts is based. Luke also based his work on Matthew and Matthew on Mark. Possibly pointing to an even earlier manuscript. Some trivia in Mark suggests that he was an eye witness. I think this suggests that all of it would have been written by people who could have seen Jesus therefore I would suggest more like within 30 years after Jesus lifetime. Maybe what they are referring to are actual surviving manuscripts.

Answer 11

It is not true. There was doctrine given through the unction of the Holy Spirit to the apostles from the very beginning of the church and it was all written, recorded.

And all the churches were given the same doctrine. They are what is called in one accord. They all believed the same.

Acts 13:49 And the word of the Lord was published throughout all the region.

Acts 10:37 That word, I say, ye know, which was published throughout all Judaea, and began from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached;