The Book of Colossians (KJV)

The Epistle of Paul to the Colossians, usually referred to simply as Colossians, is the twelfth book of the New Testament. It was written, according to the text, by Paul the Apostle and Timothy to the Church in Colossae, a small Phrygian city near Laodicea and approximately 100 miles from Ephesus in Asia Minor.

Scholars have increasingly questioned Paul's authorship and attributed the letter to an early follower instead. The authenticity of the letter, however, has been defended with equal strength.

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The Book of Philippians (KJV)

The Epistle of Paul to the Philippians, usually referred to simply as Philippians, is the eleventh book in the New Testament. Paul visited Philippi for the first time on his second missionary journey (49–51 AD). It was the first congregation in Europe.

Biblical scholars are in general agreement that it was written by St. Paul to the church of Philippi, an early center of Christianity in Greece around 62 AD. Other scholars argue for an earlier date, c. 50–60 AD

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The Book of Ephesians (KJV)

The Epistle to the Ephesians, also called the Letter to the Ephesians and often shortened to Ephesians, is the tenth book of the New Testament. Its authorship has traditionally been credited to Paul the Apostle but, starting in 1792, this has been challenged as Deutero-Pauline, that is, written in Paul's name by a later author strongly influenced by Paul's thought

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The Book of Galatians (KJV)

The Epistle to the Galatians, often shortened to Galatians, is the ninth book of the New Testament. It is a letter from Paul the Apostle to a number of Early Christian communities in the Roman province of Galatia in central Anatolia. Paul is principally concerned with the controversy surrounding Gentile Christians and the Mosaic Law during the Apostolic Age.

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The Book of Second Corinthians (KJV)

The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, often referred to as Second Corinthians (and written as 2 Corinthians), is the eighth book of the New Testament of the Bible. Paul the Apostle and "Timothy our brother" wrote this epistle to "the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints which are in all Achaia"

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THE BOOK OF 1 CORINTHIANS (KJV)

The First Epistle to the Corinthians, often referred to as First Corinthians (and written as 1 Corinthians), is the seventh book of the New Testament of the Bible. Paul the Apostle and "Sosthenes our brother" wrote this epistle to "the church of God which is at Corinth", in Greece.[1Cor.1:1–2]

This epistle contains some well-known phrases, including (depending on the translation) "all things to all men" (9:22), "without love, I am nothing" (13:2), "through a glass, darkly" (13:12), and "when I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child" (13:11).

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The Book of Romans (KJV)

The Epistle to the Romans, often shortened to Romans, is the sixth book in the New Testament. Biblical scholars agree that it was composed by the Apostle Paul to explain that salvation is offered through the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the longest of the Pauline epistles and is considered his "most important theological legacy"

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The Book of Acts (KJV)

The Acts of the Apostles. Latin: Āctūs Apostolōrum), often referred to simply as Acts, is the fifth book of the New Testament; it tells of the founding of the Christian church and the spread of its message to the Roman empire.

Acts is the second half of a two-part work by the same anonymous author, Luke-Acts, usually dated to around 80-90 CE. The first part, the gospel of Luke, tells how God fulfilled his plan for the world's salvation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the promised Messiah. Acts tells the story of the Early Christian church. The early chapters, set in Jerusalem, describe the Day of Pentecost (the coming of the Holy Spirit) and the growth of the church in Jerusalem. Initially the Jews are receptive to the Christian message, but soon they turn against the followers of the Messiah. Rejected by the Jews, under the guidance of the Apostle Peter the message is taken to the Gentiles. The later chapters tell of Paul's conversion, his mission in Asia Minor and the Aegean, and finally his imprisonment in Rome, where, as the book ends, he awaits trial.

Luke-Acts is an attempt to answer a theological problem, namely how the Messiah of the Jews came to have an overwhelmingly non-Jewish church; the answer it provides, and its central theme, is that the message of Christ was sent to the Gentiles because the Jews rejected it.

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The Book of John (KJV)

The Gospel of John (also referred to as the Gospel According to John, the Fourth Gospel, or simply John) is one of the four canonical gospels in the Christian Bible. In the New Testament it traditionally appears fourth, after the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. John begins with the witness and affirmation of John the Baptist and concludes with the death, burial, resurrection, and post-resurrection appearances of Jesus.

Chapter 21 states that the book derives from the testimony of the "disciple whom Jesus loved" and early church tradition identified him as John the Apostle, one of Jesus' Twelve Apostles. The gospel is closely related in style and content to the three surviving Epistles of John such that commentators treat the four books, along with the Book of Revelation, as a single body of Johannine literature. According to most modern scholars, however, the apostle John was not the author of any of these books.

Raymond E. Brown has proposed the development of a tradition from which the gospel arose. The discourses seem to be concerned with issues of the church-and-synagogue debate at the time when the Gospel was written. It is notable that, in the gospel, the community appears to define itself primarily in contrast to Judaism, rather than as part of a wider Christian community. Though Christianity started as a movement within Judaism, Christians and Jews gradually became bitterly opposed.

John presents a "higher" Christology than the synoptic gospels, meaning that it describes Jesus as the incarnation of the divine Logos through whom all things were made, as the object of veneration. Only in John does Jesus talk at length about himself and his divine role, often sharing such information with the disciples only. Against the synoptics, John focuses largely on different miracles (including the resurrection of Lazarus), given as signs meant to engender faith. Synoptic elements such as parables and exorcisms are not found in John. It presents a realized eschatology in which salvation is already present for the believer.

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The Book of Luke (KJV)

The Gospel According to Luke, commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four Gospels. It tells of the origins, birth, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.

Luke and Acts make up a two-volume work from the same pen, called Luke-Acts. The cornerstone of Luke-Acts' theology is "salvation history", the author's understanding that God's purpose is seen in the way he has acted, and will continue to act, in history. It divides history into three stages: first the arrival among men of Jesus the Messiah, from his birth to the beginning of his earthly mission in the meeting with John the Baptiser; second the earthly career of Jesus, ending in his passion, death and resurrection (concluding the gospel story per se); and finally the time of the Church from Peter to Paul, from Jerusalem to Rome (the story told in Acts)

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The Book of Mark (KJV)

The Gospel According to Mark, the second book of the New Testament, is one of the four canonical gospels and the three synoptic gospels. It was traditionally thought to be an epitome (summary) of Matthew, which accounts for its place as the second gospel in the Bible, but most contemporary scholars now regard it as the earliest of the gospels. Most modern scholars reject the tradition which ascribes it to Mark the Evangelist, the companion of Peter, and regard it as the work of an unknown author working with various sources including collections of miracle stories, controversy stories, parables, and a passion narrative.

Mark tells of the ministry of Jesus from his baptism by John the Baptist to his death and burial and the discovery of the empty tomb – there is no genealogy or birth narrative, nor, in the original ending at chapter 16, any post-resurrection appearances. It portrays Jesus as a heroic man of action, an exorcist, healer and miracle worker. Jesus is also the son of God, adopted by God at his baptism, but he keeps his identity secret, concealing it in parables so that even the disciples fail to understand. All this is in keeping with prophecy, which foretold the fate of the messiah as Suffering Servant. The gospel ends, in its original version, with the discovery of the empty tomb, a promise to meet again in Galilee, and an unheeded instruction to spread the good news of the resurrection.

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The Book of Matthew (KJV)

The Gospel of Matthew is anonymous: the author is not named within the text, and the superscription "according to Matthew" was added some time in the second century. The tradition that the author was the disciple Matthew begins with the early Christian bishop Papias of Hierapolis (c.100-140 CE), who is cited by the Church historian Eusebius (260-340 CE), as follows: "Matthew collected the oracles (logia: sayings of or about Jesus) in the Hebrew language ( Hebraïdi dialektōi— perhaps "Hebraic style"), and each one interpreted (hērmēneusen - perhaps "translated") them as best he could." On the surface, this implies that Matthew's Gospel was written in Hebrew or Aramaic by the apostle Matthew and later translated into Greek, but nowhere does the author claim to have been an eyewitness to events, and Matthew's Greek "reveals none of the telltale marks of a translation." Scholars have put forward several theories to explain Papias: perhaps Matthew wrote two gospels, one, now lost, in Hebrew, the other our Greek version; or perhaps the logia was a collection of sayings rather than the gospel; or by dialektōi Papias may have meant that Matthew wrote in the Jewish style rather than in the Hebrew language. The consensus is that Papias does not describe the Gospel of Matthew as we know it, and it is generally accepted that Matthew was written in Greek, not Aramaic or Hebrew.
Matthew's sources include the Gospel of Mark, the "shared tradition" called Q, and material unique to Matthew, called "M".

The majority view of modern scholars is that Mark was the first gospel to be composed and that Matthew (who includes some 600 of Mark's 661 verses) and Luke both drew upon it as a major source for their works. The author of Matthew did not, however, simply copy Mark, but edited his source freely, emphasizing Jesus' place in the Jewish tradition and adding large blocks of teaching. An additional 220 (approximately) verses, shared by Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark, form a second source, a hypothetical collection of sayings to which scholars give the name "Quelle", or the Q source. This view, known as the two-source theory (Mark and Q), allows for a further body of tradition known as "Special Matthew", or the M source, meaning material unique to Matthew; this may represent a separate source, or it may come from the author's church, or he may have composed these verses himself.[11] The author also had at his disposal the Jewish scriptures, both as book-scrolls (Greek translations of Isaiah, the Psalms etc.) and in the form of "testimony collections" (collections of excerpts), and, finally, the oral traditions of his community. All these sources were at least mostly in Greek; although a few scholars hold that some of these source documents may have been Greek translations of older Hebrew or Aramaic sources

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