Christian Books How the First

¶ … Christian Books

How the First Christian Books Were Written, Preserved and Collected

Paul Barnett (2003) states that from the time that the last the text of what became known as Sacred Scripture was written to the time that Constantine legitimized Christianity in the Roman world, a virtual "avalanche of early Christian books" had already been produced: "Christian intellectuals and leaders had been writing books defending and explaining the faith. Their collected writings comprise the ten large volumes of the Ante-Nicene Fathers library, each volume being several times longer than the whole New Testament" (p. 46). Indeed, the Ante-Nicene Fathers, apart from the authors of New Testament Sacred Scripture, may be said to be the ones to generate the very first Christian books. Thanks to the monasteries of the middle ages, their texts were collected and preserved for one simple reason: they defended the Faith. The Faith, in fact, is what united the writers, the preservers, and the collectors. The writers were inspired to defend the Faith. The preservers were inspired to hold onto the Faith. And the collectors were inspired to pass on the Faith. In this essay, I will show how the first Christian books were written, preserved and collected by defenders of the Faith, whether Apostle, bishop, or monk.

The first writers of the first Christian books were, of course, the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. St. Paul wrote several epistles. Other writers of Sacred Scripture are Peter, James, and Jude. The dates of these writings are contested by scholars. One thing is certain: they were all written in the first and, possibly, second centuries AD. John a.T. Robinson (2000) argues that all the books of the New Testament were composed before 70 AD simply because none of them mention the historical fact of the fall of Jerusalem (p. 24). Regardless of the exact date of their composition, these writings were intended to encourage and solidify the faithful to whom the Apostles had already preached the Word of God. Some of these texts were written as circular letters, some as narratives, and one as a work of prophecy. The early Christian communities gathered and preserved these writings and by the early 3rd century Origen had collected the so-called "inspired" writings, conferring with others like Eusebius and clarifying the sacred texts of apostolic tradition. In the 4th century AD, historians find Athanasius, then bishop of Alexandria, presenting a list of 27 books of the New Testament (Lindberg, 2006, p. 15). Needless to say, as the Church grew the more attention was given to canonizing the sacred texts of the Bible.

However, these were not the only Christian books to appear in the early Church. On the contrary, the early Church was so possessed by the idea of defending and transmitting the Faith that it produced, as Barnett states, an avalanche of books. Because the printing press was not invented until the end of the middle ages, these books had to be preserved in hand-written copies. The early Church was fundamental in preserving these copies, and the rise of the monastic life in the 4th century provided an institution where the books of the New Testament and the works of the early Fathers could be hand-copied and collected. As Barnett observes, "It was in the monasteries that the New Testament manuscripts, the writings of the early church, and the work of such writers as Josephus and Tacitus were preserved until the Renaissance" (p. 46). These monasteries not only preserved the first Christian books but also preserved the way of life that could allow these books to be copied and preserved in peace while the rest of the world was undergoing a dramatic transformation.

Justin Martyr, for example, wrote his account of the Eucharist around 150 AD -- a telling description of the reverence and belief the early Christians possessed regarding the act of transubstantiation. St. Justin was one of the earliest Christian apologists, and his Apology of the second century helps trace the laying of the Christian dogmatic foundation. The faith, as expressed by Justin, contains several of the elements that established the Christian religion as a religion founded by God Himself -- and as Justin composed his Apology as a defense of Christianity against paganism, it takes pains to explain exactly what Christians were expected to believe. Justin is mentioned by Tertullian as being both a philosopher and a Church martyr who, along with a handful of other early Christian martyrs, was slain in Rome for defending the Faith. That Faith was largely recorded in Justin's First Apology, one of the earliest records of Church teaching on the subject of the Eucharist. Justin's writings survive today because they like so many others were preserved and collected along by the early faithful and the monks who dedicated their lives to removing themselves from the world and holding onto a vision of Christian doctrine. Needless to say, Justin's writings were much commented upon by the early Christian fathers because the first Christian books were constantly being spread throughout the Christian communities.

Part of the reason these early Christian books were so well preserved, however, is that there was a long tradition in the Greco-Roman-Judeo world of preserving important texts. Rome was a hybrid of Jewish, Greek and Roman learning. Under Roman rule, after all, Greek and Jew had been assimilated (to a degree) into the Roman culture -- which, under Constantine, became officially Christian. Thus, the Fathers of the Church had Greek, Hebrew, and Roman traditions to draw upon for intellectual grounding. These traditions taught them to gather and collect in an institutional way (ala monastic institution) the first Christian books (Woods, 2008, p. 36). Then there were the councils, at which the early Church fathers and bishops like Augustine gathered to proclaim those writings which were essential to the maintenance of the Christian Faith. Definite affirmations concerning the Person of Christ were made in, for example, the Nicene Creed -- which some 1200 years later would be reaffirmed at the Council of Trent (at a time when the medieval world was beginning to experience the rending of its garments -- the rise of Protestantism and the end of Christendom). In other words, the early Church was so well organized and defensive, that the preservation of the Faith and those books which proclaimed it, taught it, clarified it, and spread it were given top priority by those members of the Church who were inflamed by a spirit of preservation.