THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE MAKING

Christianity is unique among the world religions in being born with a Bible in its cradle. The use of the Old Testament continued to play a great part in Christian writing as it had done previously in Christian speech. The existence of an authoritative Bible would have had the negative effect of inhibiting any thought of producing fresh books, and there is more than a suggestion in the early Church of a reluctance to write. With the exception of the Pauline letters the New Testament writings were relatively slow in appearing, and a high proportion of them are anonymous. The Old Testament supplied the basis of early Christian thought, it did not supply the models for its writing, and in the matter of literary forms the New Testament is remarkably independent of the Old. The New Testament was not, like the Old Testament, revealed the limited amount of material available for canonisation.