The Bible is a lyin’, cheatin’ book. And no, that isn’t the title of a long lost country song. The Bible was compiled by men who allowed themselves to be deceived and who were more than willing, perhaps unwittingly (to give them the benefit of the doubt), to dupe others. They included letters claiming to be by Paul and Peter that we know were not. They took the imaginary history of the early church, Acts, at face value, and the invented stories about Jesus – the gospels – as historical. They put them together in a way that made it look as if the gospels were written first, followed by Acts, Paul’s letters and the bulk of the forgeries. Paul’s letters they arranged, not in any sequential or thematic way, but from longest to shortest.
In fact, as far as Paul and the gospels are concerned, this is pretty much the reverse of the order in which they came into being. Of the documentation that made it into the New Testament, Paul’s genuine letters were first, starting with 1 Thessalonians in the late 50s and ending with Philippians in the early 60s. Only after Paul was dead did the first gospel appear (circa 70 CE), the anonymous account later attributed to ‘Mark’. After yet two more attempts to get the Jesus story right, came Acts, the notoriously inaccurate account of the early days of the cult and Paul’s adventures lifted from other sources. The fourth gospel followed much later, between 90 – 100 CE. Written by a sect of the late first century it offered a complete reimagining of the Jesus story. Along the way, numerous forgeries appeared as well as the lunacy that is Revelation, written circa 96 CE.
What would happen if we rearranged the books of the New Testament so they followed the order in which they were written? It would make them less duplicitous for a start and would also give us a more realistic picture of how Christianity arose. We would still be lacking a picture of what the earliest cultists believed prior to Paul but we can make a rough guess of what that might have been from what he says about those who preceded him.
We’ll do this next time and see what the newly ordered New Testament tells us about early Christian beliefs.
rejectingjesus, 
As Marcion is claimed to be the first to “collect” ( find?) these letters (sic) of ‘Paul’ I am growing more inclined to consider he was instrumental in their composition and the Church simply retrofitted/ dated everything.
I realize this still leaves a number of open-ended questions but it also answers a number of them.
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It is certainly interesting that as scholarship marches on, dating for both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament has been pushed ever later. For example, many are now placing gLuke/Acts in the early 2nd century with gJohn following even later.
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Fascinating. If this turns out to be accurate it adds more credence to Marcion’s direct involvement and may explain why his ‘ Gospel’ included only Luke and some of Paul’s epistles.
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Even better than doing it on your blog would be for some industrious person to actually put together a book that definitively showed the order of events. No extra commentary … just a book using the contents of the New Testament, written according to the TRUE order of events.
Perhaps a potential title … “How Things Really Happened 2000 Years Ago”?
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Unlikely we will ever know definitively. Christianity’s first 100-150 years seems to be mostly missing from the record. Which leads to questioning the traditional narrative.
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Oh, I fully agree. The traditional narrative is “questionable.” But what I had in mind was to take what’s there (no commentary) and simply putting it in what is “considered” the order of occurrence.
Of course (!) there will always be the critic, but it just might create new avenues of consideration/discussion.
Anyway …. just a thought.
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I went looking for exactly that type of resource when I was actively deconstructing. Sadly, everything I could find was woefully out of date.
“Currently scholarship” is always a moving target. Add to that apologists, traditionalist, and conservatives actively fighting any new information. gMark, for example, is still generally said to be written “between 65 and 75 CE.” The 65-70 part of that dating is bullshit, but the power of tradition insists it be there.
For many Christians (my old self included), the gospel writers must be eyewitnesses, the gospel accounts must be early, traditions must be true, accounts must be prophetic rather than hindsight, etc.
Ideally, such a resource would be a wiki where scholars could update it and provide references to new studies, papers, etc. But such publicly editable information is already heavily edited by apologists with an agenda rather than scholarly integrity.
I love the idea. Would buy the book, subscribe to the channel, donate to the wiki, etc.
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