This book grew out of a previous version: The Discovery of the New Testament. Because that book is no longer in stock, it is now being reissued, but with a considerable expansion: Christian literature from the 2e century is now also covered. The book has just about doubled in size and has therefore been given a new title: Sacred Words.

The New Testament seems quite accessible. Yet that New Testament was written in a culture profoundly different from our modern world. A book like Revelation perplexes us, what is written in Hebrews is utterly foreign to us, but neither are Paul’s letters particularly clear even on repeated reading. Even the better-known gospels, when read attentively, still turn out to possess their own strangeness and raise the necessary questions. The book you now have in your hands aims to lead you into the world of New Testament writings.

We start immediately with an examination of the books of the New Testament, keeping the traditional order (chapters 1-5). So first up is the gospels. We try to find out when they originated and by whom they were written down – because contrary to what one might think, this is by no means clear. We examine for what purpose the gospels were written, what were the sources of the evangelists, why there are four gospels and not one. We also look for an explanation of the differences between the gospels. Why does Jesus stress the importance of the law in Matthew’s Gospel, while in John’s Gospel he talks about “the law of the Jews”, as if distancing himself from it? Why is it that in Mark’s Gospel Jesus cries out despairingly on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” while in Luke’s Gospel we do not find god forsakenness but rather closeness to God: “Father, into your hands I place my spirit”? And also: why is John’s Gospel so different from the other three? Did John have other sources? These and other questions are addressed in the chapter on ‘The writings of the evangelists’.

There are also a lot of letters in the New Testament. We look at how an epistle was drafted at the time, what diatribe is, what are pseudepigraphs. Researchers question whether all the letters written in Paul’s name are his; we get to know the arguments for and against. We also briefly discuss Paul’s Pharisaic background. We discuss his letters in chronological order (so we deviate briefly from the usual order), and here and there, in an excursion, we elaborate on a theme Paul touches on in his letters. A separate letter by an unknown author is that to the Hebrews. Among other things, its author talks about the impossibility of a second conversion. How was this understood in the early church? A question of entirely different order is that of the Platonic influences at play in this letter. Then there are the Catholic letters or general epistles. These are not addressed to a local congregation or a particular person, as is the case with Paul’s letters, but they are addressed to Christianity in general. We consider who wrote the general epistles – do they include brothers of Jesus? Does James’ emphasis on works reject Paul’s doctrine of grace? Does Judas also take his inspiration from pseudepigraphic books like Enoch and Ascension of Isaiah? What is the antichrist doing in the Church, according to John’s letters?

The New Testament concludes with an enigmatic book: Revelation of John. The book purports to have a view of the future. Does this refer to the near future of the first readers? Does it refer to our future? Does this book actually intend to reveal the secrets of the future, or does it want to communicate something else to its readers? We will examine the characteristics of apocalypticism, which apocalyptic books remain and how the Revelation of John differs from them.

This overview of the New Testament books is followed by two chapters (6 and 7) in which we want to go into some details. In a first chapter of these, we pay attention to the reliability of the New Testament text. Much research has been done on additions, omissions, changes made to the text over time. We look at the results of that research. Indeed copying errors were made when manuscripts were transcribed, corrections were also made, and even – more painfully – changes were made here and there to the text from theological motives. Fortunately, we know which passages were corrupted, usually they were later restored to their original form. But sometimes we cannot quite figure out which was the original text.

In a subsequent chapter, we examine why the New Testament contains the gospels and letters known to us, and not, for example, the Gospel of Tomas, or one of the Jewish gospels such as that of the Ebionites, or the Revelation of Peter. Who determined what ended up in the New Testament? Quite wild stories sometimes circulate about this. Every now and then another book appears in which dark secrets, kept hidden by the Church for centuries, are finally brought to light. The book in your hands is more sober: no dark plots are unravelled here. Nevertheless, the genesis of our New Testament remains a fascinating story. We examine how the canon developed and which elements played a role in it.

In the next four chapters (8-11), we explore post-New Testament writings. We look at how in the 2e century (sometimes extended to early 3e century) the words of Jesus and the apostles were understood, updated and also sometimes supplemented with what were called new revelations, or with secret knowledge that Jesus would have communicated only to insiders. A first of these chapters deals with the Apostolic Fathers. The authors of these books from the first half of the 2e century were believed to have still had contact with the apostles. They knew themselves called to lead the flock of God by practical counsel, admonishing where necessary, and encouraging the faithful to continue in straight doctrine away from the heresies that were rearing their heads everywhere. We see how the early church was organised and sought its own identity in the face of pagans and Jews.

Apologists were Christians who defended their faith to the outside world. That outside world was sometimes interested but was more often hostile to this new strange ‘superstition’, as it was called. A lot of gossip, misunderstandings and suspicions spread and contributed to persecution, sometimes here, sometimes there. What was new was that these apologists, who were philosophically trained, defended the truth and honour of Christianity with philosophical arguments. Some of them also liked to refer to the Old Testament prophecies about Jesus that had come true after all. Still other apologists ignored philosophy altogether and scoffed at paganism: did not pagans, like their gods, commit exactly the shameful acts of which Christians were accused?

This second chapter in the series of four is followed by a third. In it, we should note that the apologists had not achieved much with pagans – they were, by the way, mostly read by Christians. Persecutions did not just stop, martyrs died. We read some excerpts from martyr acts and learn how an interrogation of Christians worked, how the mere confession of being a ‘Christian’ led to condemnation: torture, burning at the stake, wild animals, or beheading for Roman citizens. The modern reader will note with amazement that for these martyrs, death just meant life – in heaven then, and that they fervently longed to acquire the martyr’s crown. Reading these martyr acts, we learn many more interesting things about the faith of these early Christians.

In the fourth chapter on these after-biblical books, we talk about the apocryphal gospels, Acts, epistles and revelations. These are all books that claimed divine authority but were rejected by the Catholic Church, sometimes after some hesitation. A problem that arises here is that there are far too many of these writings to be discussed all here, even if we were to limit them to the 2e century. We will therefore make a choice and try to cover a few works from the different Christian directions within which these apocrypha were written. These are then Judeo-Christian gospels, more or less orthodox writings, folk tales about Jesus and the apostles, books with docetic features and Gnostic literature.

A final chapter deals with the protagonist of the New Testament and the writings that came after, the man about whom it is all about: Jesus of Nazareth, referred to by believers as the Christ. Of course, he is at the very beginning of all the books written about him, but it is only fairly recently, just about in the last two centuries, that people have been searching for who this Jesus really was. It is with this modern search that we conclude this book. Scholars are looking for what Jesus’ motives were, what he wanted to achieve with his actions. Believers will say that surely you can just read that in the gospels, but researchers believe that those gospels are not very reliable historically. They apply the historical critical method to the four gospels to find out who this man from Nazareth really was, and what was attributed to him. In this chapter, we examine to what extent these researchers have been successful in doing so, and whether their research has been illuminating for a better understanding of who Jesus was.

This book is not intended for theologians, who already know what is described here. It is intended for the interested layman, and the beginning student of theology will also benefit from it. But then again, it is not a book that keeps things simple. Difficult things are not avoided, but attempts are made to explain them in a clear way. This book grew out of course material I offered to Religious Studies students. Their questions and feedback helped me to tune in to the questions of the average person interested in the Bible. Their comments also prompted me to explain concepts I assumed to be common knowledge anyway. An index at the back lists difficult and important concepts with reference to the pages where they are explained. So no – or hardly any – prior knowledge is required for this book. With this book, I hope to answer the many questions of curious believers and non-believers alike.