The New Testament
Enter the writings, communities and manuscript traditions behind the New Testament, with their Jewish and Roman settings in view.
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Writings from the beginnings of Christianity
The New Testament’s twenty-seven books include Gospels, Acts, letters and Revelation. Written in Greek, they preserve accounts of Jesus, communications to communities and individuals, and visions expressed through scriptural imagery. Their forms guide the kinds of questions readers can investigate.
Texts moved between communities before becoming a collected volume
Early Christian readers copied, read and circulated writings in a Jewish and Roman Mediterranean setting. Surviving manuscripts range from fragments to substantial collections. Studying those copies is a different historical task from investigating when a work was composed or how it came to be recognized as scripture.
Follow the history of biblical collections →Follow another thread
The Bible’s history is a network: manuscripts, languages, communities, scholars, and technologies continually intersect.
See how texts were copied and compared
Explore witnesses, variants, and textual criticism.
Explore →CANONCompare biblical collections
See how communities inherited overlapping collections.
Explore →TRANSLATIONFollow the Bible across languages
Ancient versions, Latin, printing, and English.
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