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The New Testament contains twenty-seven books and is the written record of the teaching of Jesus that has been handed down to mankind as inspired by God; it records parts of the life of Jesus on earth, in the four Gospels (four books) and some of the activities of the Apostles in teaching what Jesus had taught them, in the Acts of the Apostles, one book, the New Testament letters, fourteen books, the Catholic Letters, seven books, and, its final book, the Apocalypse or Book of Revelation of Saint John the Apostle.
The Disciples of Jesus would quote verbatim from the Jewish sources, what is now called the Old Testament, as Jesus did; one can see this in one of many such quotations used by Jesus, "Have you not read what David did when ..." from the holy Gospel according to Saint Luke, chapter 6, verse 3.
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The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon (list) of a New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and slowed down by certain obscurities and natural hesitations.
As most Christians know today, the Holy Bible is really composed of two large books called The New Testament and The Old Testament, of which each in turn is composed of several books. The final books of The New Testament were selected and ratified at the end of a Council of Bishops in 397 AD, the Council of Carthage under Pope Siricius. From that day forward, the selection of books remained constant until the Catholics added seven books in the 16th century. The Protestants decided not to adopt the seven additional books.
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The Old Testament is composed of forty-six Books in the Catholic Bible and thirty-nine Books in the Protestant Bible, a part of which are the accepted divinely inspired Books of the Jewish people as handed down from the Jewish Tradition before the advent of Jesus. Jesus would often quote the old Jewish writings during his teaching on earth, and His Apostles and Disciples did likewise while they spread the teaching of Jesus Christ throughout the world. Jesus, the Apostles and Disciples of those days did not call the Jewish Scriptures the Old Testament, because they did not exist as such, and the Apostles and Disciples had not been commissioned by Jesus to compose any compendium of the older teaching which was then available from the texts kept in the synagogues. The original Jewish writings are all in the Old Testament Books, augmented by others found by the Church Fathers to be divinely inspired.
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Holy Bible: What are your favorite verses? - What are your favorite verses from the Holy Bible? Which ones do you think are inspirational, fascinating or revealing? Which provide the best messages about how we should live?
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