The New Testament is made up of 27 different writings.  Most people refer to them as books.  In reality most of them were written as letters to various people or groups of people, churches.  Only three of the “books” are not specifically written to a person or group.  Some of the “books” are named after who wrote them and some of them are named after who they were written to.  The “books” were not written in the order they are in our New Testament.  The first “book” was probably James, written around 45 AD.  Over the next 25 years 21 more “books” were written with Hebrew, Mark, and Jude being written in the mid to late 60’s.  About 68 AD Paul (author of at least 13 of the New Testament “books”) and Peter (One of the original apostles, or “sent ones”, and author of 1 & 2 Peter and main source for Mark) were executed in Rome.  The other are all believed to have died in various parts of the world telling people about Jesus by about 90 AD.  John was the last of the “twelve apostles” to die.  He was involved in the church in the city of Ephesus where he wrote 1, 2, & 3 John and the Gospel of John all in the early 90’s AD.  About 95 AD he was banished to an island off the coast of Greece called Patmos by then emperor of the Roman Empire, Domitian.  It was while on the island that he wrote the “book” of Revelation about 95 AD.  Apparently he returned to Ephesus after that time and died of natural causes a very old man.

So the twenty-seven “books” in the New Testament were written during the first century by eye-witnesses to the events of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and the beginning of the “Church” (In the Greek language the word is “ekklesia” and it means “called out of”).  Remember I said the books were actually mostly letters.  They were sent to individuals (Philemon, 1&2 Timothy, Titus, Luke, Acts, 3 John), churches in a particular city (Romans, 1&2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1&2 Thessalonians), groups of churches (1&2 Peter, Galatians, 1&2 John, Revelation, James (?), Hebrews (?), Jude(?)).  That leaves Matthew, Mark and John  which do not seem to be specifically “letters”.  Mark was probably written to believers in the church in Rome though he was probably in Rome when he wrote it.  These letters and other writings were copied and shared with other churches and believers in the years after they were written.  There were other writing during the early years of church history by others, but these 27 were almost universally accepted by the early churches as being communication from God.

During the first few centuries after Christ the church faced a lot of opposition from those around it (2 Peter is an example of a letter written to deal with external pressure) and from within (2 Corinthians, Jude, maybe Galatians).  In 397 AD a council was called of church leaders from across the world in Carthage in North Africa.  At that council the twenty-seven “books” of our New Testament were formally recognized as being the New Testament.  This was a formal declaration of what the church had seen in these writings mostly from the beginning (some of the writings were questioned by some and all of them still are questioned by some “so called” Christians).

The “books” are not published in the order they were written and are not even grouped by author.  The order of the books in our New Testament seems to be based mostly on content.  The first four books are usually grouped together and they are called “gospels”.  In Old English, gospel means “good news”.  In Luke 2:10-11 we are told that Jesus’ coming into the world was good news (the word in Greek is evangellizo, we get the word evangelize from it).  The first four books of the New Testament are called gospels because they tell us the history of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, the “Good News” (1 Corinthians 15:1-4) according to Paul.  Some times Matthew, Mark, and Luke are grouped together and called the “Synoptic” Gospels.  Synoptic means “to see together” and theses three Gospels are very similar in the way they tell Jesus’ story.  John’s Gospel is more about who Jesus is, the “promised one, son of God” (John 20:30-31).  Acts is usually called “History” though it is clearly a letter from Luke to his friend Theophilus (as is the gospel of Luke).  Also the the other “Gospels” are also historical and there is history in the other New Testament “books” too.

The next twenty-one books are recognized as letters, scholars call them “epistles” (the Greek word for letter).  The first thirteen (Romans through Philemon) are grouped together because of their author and are called the “Pauline Epistles”  (Letters from Paul).  Also as I mentioned above most of Paul’s letters were written to specific churches, with Galatians written to the churches in a region and 1&2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon written to individuals.  The rest of the “letters” are usually called “General Epistles” since they are not as specifically addressed and seem to be to all churches in general (though interestingly enough 3 John is to a particular individual).  Also notice that the General Epistles are named for their author except for Hebrews. Hebrews is first in the order because some early Christians tohough it might have been written by Paul, otherwise we do not know who the human author was.   Finally the “book” of Revelation is usually classified as prophecy though it was clearly written as a letter to seven particular churches in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey).

One other note, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon were written by Paul from Rome between 60-63 AD while he was a Roman prisoner there.  They are sometimes called the “Prison Epistles” (See Also “Paul:  Sent one to the Gentiles”).