The New Testament

The New Testament is also a collection of different books written by different people at different times.  The first four books are called Gospels.  Gospel, that is god spel, means Good News; and these books tell us the Good News of Our Lord’s life, death and Resurrection.

The Gospels

The first Gospel is that of St Matthew the Apostle, who wrote it chiefly for Jewish Christians.  St Mark, the nephew of St Barnabas the Apostle, was a friend of St Peter who told him about the life of Jesus, and St Mark wrote it all down for the Christians in the city of Rome.  St Luke was a doctor and a friend of St Paul.  He very likely met Our Lady from whom he learnt the story of the Annunciation and of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem.  St John wrote his Gospel later than the others, when he was a very old man.

Acts of the Apostles

Besides the Gospels, St Luke also wrote another book, The Acts of the Apostles, which is the first history book of the Christian Church, written by one who lived through many of the events it records.

It tells us how the Church spread from an Upper Room in a house in Jerusalem to the city of Rome, the capital of the great Roman Empire.

Epistles

After the Acts of the Apostles you will find several Epistles.  The word ‘Epistle’ means a letter.  We write letters today to people who live some distance away and the Apostles did the same.  As they travelled about, planting the Christian Church in different places, they naturally wanted to keep in touch with its members, and this they did by letter.  So the First Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians means the first letter that St Paul wrote to the Christians in the town of Corinth.  These letters were kept and treasured by the people who received them, and sometimes they were sent on to Christians in other places for them to read.  So when St Paul wrote to the Christians at Colossae he asked them to pass his letter on to those at Laodicea.  “And when this letter has been read among you, have it read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you read also the letter from Laodicea” (NRSV, Colossians 4:16).

St Paul was not the only Apostle to write letters as you will see from the list of New Testament books.  There were also St James, St Jude, St Peter and St John.

Revelation

The last book of the Bible, the Revelation of St John the Divine, is a book describing visions which he saw.