Jesus did not ask for a New Testament

Jesus did not commission 26 of the New Testament books. At least, there is no record of him doing so. This gives us an opportunity to understand the role of tradition. Let’s do a thought experiment:

What if Jesus didn’t want 26 of the books in the New Testament? Where would that leave us? What would we need to rely upon in order to be saved?

For those who believe in “Bible alone,” they can’t just say, “Well, he must have wanted all of the New Testament.” They have to prove that from the Bible. For example, Luke 1:1-4 says:


There is no mention of being commanded by Jesus to do this.

There is one exception: the book of Revelation. For example, in Revelation 1:10-19 John claims that Jesus commanded him to write what he had seen:




There are a few other places in Revelation where John is specifically commanded to write, and one where he is commanded to not write. This strikes me as evidence that proves the rule. Based on Revelation, we know that Jesus could have explicitly commissioned the other 26 books, yet there is no evidence for it. Here are two searches, one for the word write and the other for the word writing.

New Testament search for the word write

New Testament search for the word writing

Remember, the reason for this post is not to challenge the legitimacy of the New Testament. I only want people to think about it in a new way. We know about Revelation, but what about the other 26 books? What is the method we use to know that Jesus wanted those books? How were those books chosen to be part of the infallible canon, and who did the infallible choosing? If those books did not exist, what would we need to rely upon to be saved?


Author: everybodysdaughter


10 thoughts on “Jesus did not ask for a New Testament”

  1. If this is the best argument you can make against biblical authority over Papism, you are in a really poor position. You really need to give up blogging until you grow up and get some actual education in the Scripture rather than pandering to Papism.


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