This article is from Jon Zens and discusses how the early church survived and thrived without the New Testament. If you’ve been involved in house church, you’ve most likely experienced people wanting, almost demanding to be taught the Word. I call it the “need to feed” syndrome. Some people even refer to house church as Bible study; they clearly don’t understand the purpose of the gathering. Perhaps this article will help.
If people think of a group of believers gathered together, they picture folks sitting in chairs or pews with Bibles in their laps. We need to remember, however, that when the earliest Christ-followers assembled they had no Bibles. In AD 30-50 no one can deny the amazing and unprecedented power of the Lord that was manifested as the Gospel advanced from Jerusalem into the Gentile world. Yet all of this took place without any printed Bibles. In light of this, when we consider “disciplines” we must remember that the earliest church was driven by Life– divine life that led them to abide in/rest in Jesus, to pursue Him in daily life, and to express Him to unbelievers and in fellowship with other believers. “Those who believe in Me will have rivers of living water flowing out of their innermost being” (John 7:38).
The writings the populace saw in the First Century were persons: “You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on your hearts, to be known and read by everyone; and you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Cor. 3:2-3).
Without question, many of the points I will make have been stated well by others. But it might be that the Lord has enabled me – especially in the past several years – to put some pieces together in a way that will be striking and gripping to your hearts. I pray that you will be impressed by the fact that when we speak of “renewal” in the Body of Christ, it is clearly not a question of uncovering something that has been missing, but rather a matter of unleashing Christ in us, who is already there!
I have a request to make of you. I know it is impossible for us to do this in actuality, but please try to use your imagination and transport yourself into a First Century gathering of saints. There you are, most likely in the home of a more well-to-do family or brother/sister. You are surrounded by people who have come out of the town synagogue and the pagan culture – Jews and Gentiles, now part of the New Humanity Jesus created by his death and resurrection. Back then there were no churchy accoutrements, and most notably for our purposes today – no Bible.
Let’s step back for a moment and think about what led up to Christ expressing himself in unbelievable ways through ekklesias all over the known-world during the period of AD 30-70. How did the Body of Christ function in this admittedly glorious blossoming of His presence on earth?
In John 14-16 Jesus revealed to his disciples that he would be exiting the earth and returning to the Father. But he promised that he would not leave them as orphans. After his leaving he would send the Holy Spirit to dwell in them. Jesus specifically noted that the sending of the Spirit would be a coming of himself – “I am coming to you” (John 14:18). This was fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost – “[Jesus] has poured out this which you see and hear” (Acts 2:33). Thus, the coming of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost was in fact the coming of Christ to dwell in his Bride.
What was the social make-up of those coming into Messiah’s community? The gap between the few wealthy and many poor was very wide. Most people in the First Century would be considered “lower class.” For sure, there was a 94% illiteracy rate in Jesus’ day – even in Judaism. As James D.G. Dunn points out, “the probability is that the great majority of Galileans, including the great majority of those who followed Jesus, were technically illiterate” (Jesus, Paul & the Gospels, p. 9; cf. p.22). When Peter and John were hauled before the Jewish officials, isn’t it remarkable that these leaders were astonished because “these two are unlettered and without expertise,” and “they recognized that Peter and John had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13).
Thus the society surrounding the early church was an oral culture. It is imperative for us to fully realize that the first believers carried out their new lives in Christ with no Bible. The brothers and sisters did not have American Bible Society New Testaments tucked in the pockets of their attire! “For five centuries,” Dunn notes, “we have been accustomed to the benefits of printing. Our minds are print-dominated. We have a literary mind-set. We think in terms of information typically conveyed in writing and by reading. We think more naturally of the reader reading as an individual than of the audience learning only by what it hears” (Jesus, Paul & the Gospels, p. 9).
How, then, did the earliest brothers and sisters function without any written documents? Exactly as Christ did – by hearing from Father and following his leading. Listen to Jesus’ own words about how he lived each day:
There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him on the last day. For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say (John 12:47-50)…Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father living in me who is doing his work…If you love me, you will do what I command (14:10,15)…Jesus replied, If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me (14:23-24)…I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them (17:6-8).
We can see a basic pattern from these words as to how Christ lived out his short life on earth: listening to Father, hearing Father, seeing (perceiving) what Father is saying, speaking as he gives utterance, and doing his bidding. As the Father was to Christ, so Christ is now to us. We listen to and hear from Christ which results in revelation (seeing), and then we speak and do his pleasure.
The early believers had no Bible, but they had that which was most important – Christ in them by the Holy Spirit. Can you contemplate living your daily life in Christ without a Bible? Yet that was the reality in the First Century when it cannot be denied that the most unprecedented growth and expression in the ekklesias occurred. The early church was not text-driven, but Life-driven – believers were living letters expressing the Christ in them by the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 3).
Without any Bibles, what would a group of believers in the First Century share and talk about with each other? The answer is simple – Christ! Recall John’s amazing summary remarks about what our Lord did on while on earth: “And many other signs indeed did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book…And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if every one of them was written down, I would imagine that even the world itself could not contain the books that would need to be written” (John 20:30; 21:25).
James Dunn comments on the development of how Jesus came to be the “talk of the town,” so to speak:
Jesus’ teaching was given orally; it began orally…We can safely assume that the news about Jesus was initially passed around orally. The stories about Jesus would no doubt have been the subject of many a conversation in bazaars and around campfires. The disciples of Jesus no doubt spoke about what they had seen Jesus do, and about his teaching. This would have been the beginning of the Jesus tradition. It would be celebrated and meditated on in groups of his followers in oral terms (Jesus, Paul & the Gospels, p. 23).
In light of the vast, infinite person of Christ unveiled in Colossians 1:13-20, and the inexhaustible life that he fulfilled on earth, how could the saints ever run out of praise, adoration – and any other type of content – concerning their dear Savior, Redeemer and Husband? Also, of course, there were believers who came from synagogue backgrounds who could talk about Jesus from what they had heard every Sabbath from Moses and the prophets.
Here is an important fact that few have pondered: The first letter from Paul to an ekklesia occurred around AD 50 – the book of Galatians. That’s about twenty years after the Day of Pentecost. Look at all the wondrous work the Lord did in building his ekklesias for about twenty years without any New Covenant writings! Of course, problems surfaced as time elapsed and letters were written to respond to the needs. These were read to an assembly, and perhaps passed on to other ekklesias.
Have you ever thought about the fact that there were very likely ekklesias that never received a letter from an apostle, and may have never, or rarely, heard epistles to other groups read to them?
How much of what we call the “New Testament” did believers living in AD 65 ever hear read aloud in a gathering, or hear about from other saints? Is it not highly probable that a majority of Christ-followers between the years AD 50 to AD 70 had never heard of or knew about many of the twenty-seven writings we designate as the “New Testament”?
Let’s consider one huge implication that flows out of the previous paragraph. 1 Timothy was written around AD 62-63. This letter was written to a specific person, not an assembly. Obviously, Timothy would then process Paul’s concerns with reference to the ekklesia in Ephesus. Now how many believers between AD 62 to AD 100 would have even known about the existence of 1 Timothy 2:11-12 – verses that in subsequent post-apostolic times were used to marginalize women? We perhaps assume that the entire early church was somewhat familiar with the “New Testament” writings, but that simply was not the case.
Where Were the Written Documents?
Until AD 50 the only written scriptures were the scrolls of the “Old Testament.” These scrolls were kept in the synagogues and controlled by the Jewish hierarchy. The Jewish rank-and-file knew of Moses, the Psalms and the Prophets orally. “Their knowledge of the Torah did not come from personal copies which each had, as would be the case today…For the great majority, Torah knowledge came from hearing it read to them by the minority who could read, Sabbath by Sabbath in the synagogue” (Dunn, Jesus, Paul & the Gospels, p. 23).
A rare exception can be seen in Acts 8:26-35. The Ethiopian eunuch was returning home from Jerusalem, and was reading out loud from some scrolls from Isaiah. He, as the treasurer for Kandake, was a wealthy man and was somehow able to purchase all or part of Isaiah. But such a luxury was far out of reach for the average person.
It is very possible that all of the New Testament was written before the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 (cf. John A.T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament, Wipf & Stock, 2001, 384 pp.).
From roughly AD 250 onwards copies of the NT documents were in the hands of the bishops and the developing church hierarchy that became the Roman Catholic Church. Just as in First Century Judaism when the OT scrolls were controlled by the synagogue leaders, so in post-apostolic times the NT documents were controlled by the clergy. In both contexts the “laypeople” had virtually no access to the written documents.
Jerome translated the Bible into Latin in the late Fourth Century. This translation was “the Bible” until the 1500’s. Illiteracy was still very high, of course, from AD 400 to AD 1500, so the scriptures still were in the possession of the church hierarchy.
With the invention of the printing press, however, the Bible began to be translated into other languages. Luther did a German translation. Wycliffe and Tyndale did English translations. Some possibility emerged for the common people to read the Scriptures for themselves, but to “own” a Bible was still a luxury few could enjoy. (Cf., F.F. Bruce, History of the Bible in English).
Concluding Thoughts
One New Testament scholar, Carl Cosaert, makes the claim that “the early church was a ‘text’ driven religion and that fact should be noted” (“The Reliability of the New Testament Scriptures,” Part 2, Ministry, November, 2011, p. 23). In light of our survey of certain First Century realities in the early church period of AD 30-70, I do not understand how he can make that claim. As far as I can tell, the early church was Christ-driven. It was the indwelling life of Christ in believers that accounts for the vibrancy of the first generation saints. In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul affirms that believers are the living letters that are “known and read by all people…having been inscribed not with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God; not in stone tablets, but in fleshy tablets of beating hearts” (vv. 2-3).
It has long been the case that outward Christianity was identified as a “religion of the Book.” But that was certainly not the case in the First Century. Can we begin to grasp the fact that during the period of AD 30-70 when Christ’s ekklesias burst into life all over the Roman Empire, the only explanation for their unparalleled vitality was that Christ’s life-giving ministry was continuing through his Body on earth, not that they were glued to “the Bible” – which simply did not exist at that time. Lloyd Gardner notes in this regard:
With this explosive beginning to the church, one hears no mention of several things. There was no church building, no pastor, no organized meetings, no worship team, no sermons and no statements of doctrine, no evangelism programs, bulletins or order of worship…They were walking together in the glorious light of the resurrected Christ who was alive in them and in their midst (The Heresy of Diotrephes, Eleizer Call Ministries, 2007, pp. 168-169).
In the providence of God, Bibles are now plentiful for many people in the world. We are free to ask the Lord to reveal Jesus to us as we read and meditate in all the Scriptures. But we need to soberly remember that the vast majority of believers since the Day of Pentecost have been without personal Bibles. How did they make it through life? The only answer is that Christ was in them and the Holy Spirit took the things of Christ and disclosed them to His people all over the earth.
I would encourage us to consciously focus on Christ in our use of the Bible and that our seeking of the Lord would result in relationships with unbelievers and fellow believers. One central thing our study of Scripture should reveal to us is that we need community – “exhort one another daily lest you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb. 3:13). For example, when we reflect on Jesus’ teachings in Matthew 5-7, we all feel our inability to measure up. But the “difficulty” of His teachings are intended to show us that we need others in our lives. Stanley Hauerwas astutely pointed out:
To live in the manner described in [Matt. 5-7] requires learning to trust in others to help me so live. In other words, the object of [Matt. 5-7] is to create dependence; it is to force us to need one another. All the so-called hard sayings…are designed to remind us that we cannot live without depending on the support and trust of others…All of these [hard sayings] are surely impossible for isolated individuals (Unleashing the Scripture, Abington Press, 1993, pp. 64, 69, 70).
The Scriptures are meant to be contemplated and acted upon in the context of discipleship in the believing community.
Is it possible that we lean too much on methods and programs in hopes of seeing the Spirit’s power, when the early church experienced such power without all the religious resources at our disposal? Philip Yancey asked in 2004, “Why, with no apparent resources, do Chinese churches thrive?” He went on to say, “In the 1970’s an underground house church movement sprang up as if by spontaneous generation . . . . Before going to China I met with one of the missionaries who had been expelled in 1950. He said, ‘We felt so sorry for the church we left behind…They had no one to teach them, no printing presses, no seminaries, no one to run their clinics and orphanages. No resources, really, except the Holy Spirit.’ It appears the Holy Spirit is doing just fine” (“Discreet and Dynamic,” Christianity Today, July, 2004, 48:7, p. 72).
Jesus assured the precious lady at the well that it was not about special places, temples, days and times, but about genuine worship of the Lord in Spirit and Truth (John 4:20-24). Or, as Paul put it, “You have the Spirit, now walk in the Spirit…I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 5:25; 2:20).
