History of New Testament

First let us read the History of New Testament and get familiar with few terminologies associated with Bible history.

Period: 45- 95 A.D. The New Testament was written in Greek. The Pauline Epistles, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke, and the book of Acts are all dated from 45-63 A.D. The Gospel of John and the Revelation may have been written as late as 95 A.D.

There are over 5,600 early Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament that are still in existence. The oldest manuscripts were written on papyrus and the later manuscripts were written on leather called parchment.

125 A.D. The New Testament manuscript which dates most closely to the original autograph was copied around 125 A.D, within 35 years of the original. It is designated "p 52" and contains a small portion of John 18. (The "p" stands for papyrus.)

200 A.D. Bodmer p 66 a papyrus manuscript which contains a large part of the Gospel of John.

200 A.D. Chester Beatty Biblical papyrus p 46 contains the Pauline Epistles and Hebrews.

225 A.D. Bodmer Papyrus p 75 contains the Gospels of Luke and John.

250-300 A.D. Chester Beatty Biblical papyrus p 45 contains portions of the four Gospels and Acts.

350 A.D. Codex Sinaiticus contains the entire New Testament and almost the entire Old Testament in Greek.

For 1,500 years, the Codex Sinaiticus lay undisturbed in a Sinai monastery, until it was found – or stolen, as the monks say – in 1844 and split between Egypt, Russia, Germany and Britain.

It was discovered by a German scholar Tisendorf in 1856 at an Orthodox monastery at Mt. Sinai.

Current scholarship considers the Codex Sinaiticus to be one of the best Greek texts of the New Testament, along with that of the Codex Vaticanus. Until the discovery by Tischendorf of the Sinaiticus text, the Codex Vaticanus was unrivaled.

Although parts of the Codex are scattered across four libraries around the world, most of the manuscript today resides within the British Library.Since its discovery, study of the Codex Sinaiticus has proven to be extremely useful to scholars for the purposes of biblical translation.

350 A.D. Codex Vaticanus:is an almost complete New Testament. The Codex is named for the residence in the Vatican Library, where it has been stored since at least the 15th century. The manuscript became known to Western scholars as a result of correspondence between Erasmus and the prefects of the Vatican Library.It was cataloged as being in the Vatican Library since 1475.

180 A.D. Early translations of the New Testament from Greek into Latin, Syriac, and Coptic versions began about 180 A.D.

195 A.D. The name of the first translation of the Old and New Testaments into Latin was termed Old Latin, both Testaments having been translated from the Greek. Parts of the Old Latin were found in quotes by the church father Tertullian, who lived around 160-220 A.D. in north Africa and wrote treatises on theology.

300 A.D. The Old Syriac was a translation of the New Testament from the Greek into Syriac.

300 A.D. The Coptic Versions: Coptic was spoken in four dialects in Egypt. The Bible was translated into each of these four dialects.

380 A.D. The Latin Vulgate was translated by St. Jerome. He translated into Latin the Old Testament from the Hebrew and the New Testament from Greek. The Latin Vulgate became the Bible of the Western Church until the Protestant Reformation in the 1500's. It continues to be the authoritative translation of the Roman Catholic Church to this day. The Protestant Reformation saw an increase in translations of the Bible into the common languages of the people.

Other early translations of the Bible were in Armenian, Georgian, and Ethiopic, Slavic, and Gothic.

1380 A.D. The first English translation of the Bible was by John Wycliffe. He translated the Bible into English from the Latin Vulgate. This was a translation from a translation and not a translation from the original Hebrew and Greek. Wycliffe was forced to translate from the Latin Vulgate because he did not know Hebrew or Greek.