Have you ever held an apostle’s Bible in your hands? I have many, many times. In fact, I have about sixteen of them in my possession at the present time, and read from them daily. Oh, I don’t mean the originals the apostles actually held in their hands and actually read from. I mean copies printed in English and bound up with New Testaments and sold as one single book. That’s right. I am talking about the Old Testament. It seems few ever stop to consider that the ONLY scriptures Jesus’ apostles had were the Hebrew scriptures – what we today call the Old Testament. Years passed after the founding of the church before one of the apostles – those few who wrote lengthy letters to the early church – began writing such letters. And, thus, the New Testament was written in a piece meal fashion. One letter written a dozen or so years after the founding of the church in Jerusalem, another written ten or fifteen years later, until finally near the close of the First Century the apostle John wrote the final book of the New Testament, the Book of Revelation around 96 A.D.
The New Testament, as such, did not come into being until more than two hundred years after the time of Christ! Many modern believers, those who call themselves a “New Testament Church” seem to think the early church had the New Testament and used those scriptures to guide them in what they were to practice and believe. Not so!
Were there such a thing as a time machine that one could step into, twist some dials and set a certain date, as well as a place, to which to return and then go back to let’s say Damascus or Joppa and the year 44 A.D. what a surprising revelation would await them. And, since we are speaking of doing the impossible and doing something miraculous in the process, let’s say when you stepped out of the time machine you found that you were dressed as everyone else of that era and could speak fluently the language of the day and understand said language. You then ask someone where the Christians were then meeting in that city. And let’s keep on musing, and say the first person you asked just happened to be a Christian and said to you, “I am on my way to the house of Zacharias right now. Since this is the fourth sabbath of the month, we have agreed we will meet at his house this sabbath as he has a large enough room to accomodate fifty of us. Come with me.” (I hope you are not surprised that such is the place where the early Christians met. Church buildings would not come into existence for another two hundred years). Would you be surprised that no one had a New Testament? In fact, if you were to ask them about the lack of New Testaments, you would find they would gaze at you in consternation and quite puzzled and ask you, “What do you mean by a New Testament?” They would not know what you were talking about. In fact, they would not know what you were talking about if you asked if anyone had brought an Old Testament with them. You see, the early church only had limited access to various scrolls of the Hebrew scriptures – what we today call the Old Testament. Those scrolls were not called such at that time in history.
When one of the teachers of the assembly stood up to speak, in all probability, he would read to those assembled before him from a copy of the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures written in Koine (coy – ‘NAY) Greek, the common Greek language of the day. For several years there would be not a scrap of apostolic epistles to read from. Some might have been fortunate enough to have heard Jesus or John the Baptist teach at some point. If founded by an apostle, they would have an apostle’s teaching in some matters, but, for the most part, the Hebrew scriptures would be their guide book. (To be continued in Part 2).
Christ’s Faithful Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),
Donald Wiley