New Testament Timeline

The earliest witnesses for Luke fall into the Western and the Alexandrian text-types, and the dominant view is that the Western text represents a process of deliberate revision in the second century, as the variations seem to form specific patterns.

Image source: Gospel of Luke

The earliest surviving New Testament manuscripts date from the late second to early third centuries AD, with the possible exception of Papyrus 52. Some fragments have even been thought to date as early as the 2nd century, including Papyrus 90, Papyrus 98, Papyrus 104, and famously Rylands Library Papyrus P52, though the early date of the latter has recently been called into question.

The textual variation among manuscript copies of books in the New Testament prompted attempts to discern the earliest form of text already in antiquity, for example by the 3rd-century Christian author Origen. Eusebius later drew on information passed on by Origen regarding which texts were accepted or disputed.

Image source: Textual criticism

This was the beginning of modern New Testament textual criticism, which over subsequent centuries would increasingly incorporate more and more manuscripts, in more languages, as well as citations of the New Testament by ancient authors and lectionaries, in order to reconstruct the earliest recoverable form of the New Testament text and the history of changes to it.

The first translations (usually called 'versions') of the New Testament were made beginning already at the end of the 2nd century, marking the start of spreading the scriptures beyond their original Greek into other languages.

Image source: Bible translations

The first translation was made by at least the third century into the Sahidic dialect (Coptic), one of the earliest versions of the New Testament in another language.

Image source: Coptic language

A Bohairic translation was made later than the Sahidic version, but existed already in the 4th century, further extending the reach of the New Testament in Egypt.

Image source: Coptic language

Prior to the Vulgate, an early 5th-century Latin version of the Bible, the four Gospels in the Latin West were arranged in the order Matthew, John, Luke, and Mark. The Vulgate became the standard Latin Bible of the medieval West.

Image source: Vulgate

The 16th century saw the rise of Protestantism and an explosion of translations of the New (and Old) Testament into the vernacular. Notable are those of Martin Luther (1522), Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (1523), the Froschau Bible (1525–1529), William Tyndale (1526), the Brest Bible (1563), and the Authorized Version ('King James Version') (1611).

Martin Luther translated the New Testament in 1522. Luther's canon, found in the 16th-century Luther Bible, continues to place Hebrews, James, Jude, and the Apocalypse (Revelation) last, reflecting his reservations about these books.

Image source: Luther Bible

Notable translations of the New Testament based on recent critical editions include the Revised Standard Version (1946), La Bible de Jérusalem (1961), the Einheitsübersetzung (1970), the New American Bible (1970), the New International Version (1973), the Traduction Oecuménique de la Bible (1988), the New Revised Standard Version (1989) and the English Standard Version (2001), most revised multiple times through 2016.

Since the early centuries of the church, there has been debate concerning the authorship of the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews, and contemporary scholars generally reject Pauline authorship.

Image source: Epistle to the Hebrews

From the middle of the 3rd century, patristic authors cited the Epistle as written by James the Just. Many consider the epistle to be written in the late 1st or early 2nd centuries.

Image source: Epistle of James

Church tradition identified the author of Luke–Acts as Luke the Evangelist, the companion of Paul. In the 4th century, Jerome and Augustine of Hippo supported Paul's authorship, reflecting the traditional view held before modern critical scholarship raised questions about it.

Image source: Acts of the Apostles

Unlike the Second Epistle of Peter, the authorship of which was debated in antiquity, there was little debate about Peter's authorship of the First Epistle until the 18th century, when critical scholarship began to question it.

Image source: First Epistle of Peter

Church tradition identified the author as Luke the Evangelist, the companion of Paul, but critical views at the end of the 20th century were evenly divided about whether Luke the physician wrote it due to the many differences between Acts and the authentic Pauline letters, though most scholars still believe the author, whether named Luke or not, met Paul.

Image source: Luke the Evangelist

20th century scholarship viewed John as a communal work written in stages, but recent scholarship tends to view the gospel as the product of a single author and is less interested in theories about hypothetical editions or sources of the gospel. There is also a growing movement of scholars in the 21st century who argue that the Gospel of John knew and used the Synoptics.

Image source: Gospel of John