In the course of this book we have seen that in the earliest days of the Church, in about the first twenty years following the Resurrection, the great emphasis was on the spoken preaching of the Gospel, so that the believers would be ready for the end of the present evil age and God's Judgement, which was expected at any time. The Gospel was spread quickly from Jerusalem into Judaea, Samaria and Syria as a paradoxical result of the Jerusalem persecution recorded in Acts 8:2. Because of what is recorded in Acts 2 :5-11 about many Jews of the Dispersion being in Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost, it is likely that the Gospel was first taken by Hellenistic Jewish converts at this very early stage to different areas of the Mediterranean lands. As we have said earlier, we do not know how the Christian community began in Rome but when Paul wrote to the Roman Christians in about A.D. 57-58, the Church was already established there although Paul had not yet met with them. Paul was received by believers in Damascus in Syria after his conversion which we may put between A.D.34-36 (Acts 9: 19). The earliest converts were Jews or Gentile 'God-fearers' but the Gospel was taken to the pagan Gentiles through the apostolic ministry of Paul and his colleagues. We know from Paul's letters and Acts that by A.D. 60 the Gospel had been taken to many places in Asia Minor and southern Europe.

We do not know who took the' Gospel into Egypt, North Africa and Mesopotamia although we can guess that converted Hellenistic Jews and Gentile 'God-fearers' were the carriers. There is an ancient tradition that the apostle Thomas went to the eastern lands with the Gospel. From the third to fifth centuries A.D. the North African churches, including the Egyptian Christians, had considerable influence; the Church in Alexandria was to be particularly important and was certainly established at a very early date.

The account of the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:26-40) casts a little light on how the Gospel may have reached north-eastern Africa.

The overall picture of the period A.D.30-64 is of an 'explosion' of the Gospel away from Palestine and into the areas of the Roman empire around the Mediterranean Sea. The Scriptures of the early Christians continued to be the Jewish Scriptures in the Greek translation, the Septuagint.

We have said that it was likely that written material relating to matters such as baptismal instruction, the moral teaching of converts, the fulfillment of Scripture in what Jesus had done and said, sayings of Jesus and the example set by Jesus, began to be available to support preaching and worship in the new Christian groups of the period ten or twenty years after the Resurrection. Such material would have been intended to meet needs within the new Christian communities and would not have had any co-ordinated circulation but could have been shared on a local basis by Church leaders.

The first major New Testament writings were the letters of Paul, written between about A.D. 50 and 64. The approximate dating of these is suggested as follows:

The first and second letters to the Thessalonians were written probably in A.D.50-51, to the new Christian community in Thessalonica, the capital city of the Roman province of Macedonia in northern Greece. Having established a church in Thessalonica, Paul was forced to leave because of opposition from supporters of Judaism: He went to Corinth, where he received news of the Thessalonian Christians from Timothy, and wrote back to them to encourage them and to answer questions which they had about the return of Christ.

The letter to the Galatians was written probably between A.D. 53-55 to deal with the problem of the Judaizers.

The first and second letters to the Corinthians were written probably between A.D.55-57 and dealt with the many difficulties arising in a community where most of the converts had previously been pagans in a very notorious city. We have seen that Paul wrote several letters to the Christians of Corinth, who also wrote back to him in Ephesus.

The letter to the Romans was written probably in A.D.57-58 to a church which Paul had not yet visited but with whom he had contact through individual Christians whom he knew. Paul was apparently writing from Corinth and had plans to come and visit Rome; to prepare for this expected visit, he wrote this letter in which he set out his understanding of how mankind had been put right with God. In the Church in Rome there were both Jews and Gentiles, and Paul showed how both were equally in need of God's salvation. Teaching already set out in the letter to the Galatians was developed further.

The letter to the Philippians may have been written at about the same time as the letter to the Romans, at a time when he was imprisoned. The Philippian church was the first one that Paul had established in Greece and Paul enjoyed a happy relationship with the Christians there who had continued to send him gifts of money to help him in his work.

The remaining letters of Paul, to Philemon, to Titus and two letters to Timothy-all personal letters to individuals-and the letters to the Ephesians and Colossian churches of Asia Minor, were probably written between A.D.58-65.

The letter to Philemon is a brief, very personal letter from Paul to a Christian whose slave had also become a Christian after he had run away from his master. Paul hoped that Philemon would welcome his converted slave as 'a brother in the Lord.' This was a revolutionary and daring suggestion for that time.

The letter to Titus and the two letters to Timothy are called the 'Pastoral' letters as they contained Paul's advice and teaching to two of his Christian colleagues about guiding the churches in which they were working; they were not tied to anyone church but were moving around assisting whichever church they were called to visit. The responsibilities of church leaders and advice about dealing with different members of the church were the main subjects of these letters.

The letter to the Ephesians, written to the church in Ephesus where Paul spent a considerable time, was mainly concerned about the unity of believers in Christ.

The letter to the Colossians, written to the church at Colossae east of Ephesus, dealt with false teaching there about salvation. Paul had not established the church at Colossae himself but was very concerned that the new Christians should not be confused with false teaching about Jesus Christ. This letter was to be sent on to another church in that area, after the Colossians had read it.

Although Biblical commentaries often present arguments for precise dating of Paul's letters, it is quite adequate to assign them all to the general period which we have indicated which ended, of course, with Paul's death. The importance and significance of these first-hand documents from the very early period of the Church cannot be over-estimated.

The letter of James was probably written before A.D.64, as has been suggested in the study of this letter.

From our evidence we can see that fourteen of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament were written within thirty-five years of the Resurrection, bringing the reader very close in thought to the earliest life of the Church.

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