Chronology and historical context of biblical events
An encyclopedia‑style overview of biblical history that maps major events from Creation to the early church, explains the historical and literary contexts, and shows how scholars date the biblical narrative.
The New Testament opens with four distinct narratives—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—because early Christians preserved multiple eyewitness traditions, each emphasizing different aspects of Jesus’ life and teachings, and the early church ultimately recognized all four as authoritative for faith and worship.
Christian traditions differ in the books they consider scriptural because the Old Testament canon developed from distinct Jewish traditions and was later shaped by each church’s view of authority, while the New Testament canon reached a common core early on.
This article examines who Jesus of Nazareth was by reviewing the gospel narratives, the first‑century Jewish‑Roman world in which he lived, and the scholarly methods used to reconstruct the historical figure.