The Timeline

A prophet of the northern kingdom in the eighth century BC. Chapter 11 remembers God calling Israel, his son, out of Egypt, a line Matthew applies to the return of the child Jesus.

A prophet of Judah in the late eighth century BC. Chapter 5 looks for a ruler of Israel from Bethlehem, David’s town, whose origins are from of old.

Eight of Israel’s psalms that the New Testament reads as speaking of Jesus: royal songs of the king God enthrones, and laments of a righteous sufferer, including Psalm 22, whose opening words Jesus cried from the cross.

The longest of the prophets, from Jerusalem in the eighth century BC. These chapters, from the sign of Immanuel to the suffering servant of chapter 53, are the ones the New Testament draws on most to explain who Jesus was.

The story of David’s reign, c. 1000 BC. In chapter 7 God promises David, through the prophet Nathan, a son and a throne established forever, the root of Israel’s hope for a messiah from David’s line.

The prophet of Jerusalem’s last years before the Babylonian conquest. Chapter 31 holds Rachel weeping for her children and the promise of a new covenant written on the heart.

The story of a prophet who flees God’s call and is swallowed by a great fish for three days and three nights, the sign Jesus gave of his own death and rising.

Visions of the empires and of God’s coming kingdom. In chapter 7 one like a son of man comes with the clouds to receive an everlasting dominion, the figure Jesus named himself by.

The first book of the Torah. In chapter 12 God calls Abraham and promises that through him all the families of the earth will be blessed, a promise Paul read as the gospel announced in advance.

The second book of the Torah. Chapter 12 institutes the Passover, with its unblemished lamb whose blood marks the doors and whose bones are not to be broken, a pattern the New Testament sees in the death of Jesus.

The fourth book of the Torah, following Israel through the wilderness. Chapter 21 tells of the bronze serpent lifted on a pole, and chapter 24 of Balaam’s oracle of a star rising out of Jacob.

A prophet of the day of Yahweh. Chapter 2 promises that God will pour out his Spirit on all flesh, the passage Peter quoted at Pentecost.

A prophet of the return from exile. These chapters, of the king riding on a donkey, the thirty pieces of silver, the one who was pierced and the shepherd struck, shape the Gospels’ account of Jesus’s last days.

The only complete biblical book among the Dead Sea Scrolls, copied in the second century BC. It shows that Isaiah, a book Christians read as foretelling Jesus, existed in substantially its known form well before Christianity.

A large stepped pool at the southern end of ancient Jerusalem, discovered by chance in 2004. Built in the first century BC and used until the Roman destruction of AD 70, it is the pool of Siloam where, in John’s Gospel, Jesus sent a man born blind to wash.

A Greek imperial edict on marble forbidding the disturbance of tombs, once linked to Jesus’s empty tomb because it was “sent from Nazareth” in 1878. Isotope analysis (2020) points to marble from Kos; it remains a vivid witness to Roman law on tomb robbery.

A carved stone block found in 2009 at the centre of a first-century synagogue at Magdala, on the Sea of Galilee. Its seven-branched menorah, carved while the Temple still stood, makes it one of the earliest Jewish images of the Temple lampstand, in a synagogue from the town of Mary Magdalene.

Two large rock-cut basins north of the Temple Mount, in the grounds of the Church of St Anne in Jerusalem. Their layout, with a dividing wall between them, matches John’s description of a pool “having five porches”, where Jesus healed a man who had been ill for thirty-eight years.

A limestone block from Caesarea Maritima with a Latin dedication naming “Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea”. It is the only contemporary inscription naming the governor under whom Jesus was crucified.

An ornate limestone bone box from a first-century Jerusalem family tomb, inscribed “Joseph son of Caiaphas”. Many scholars hold that it belonged to the family of the high priest Caiaphas who, in the Gospels, questioned Jesus.

Probably the oldest surviving Christian writing, c. AD 50–51, sent by Paul to the young church at Thessalonica about twenty years after the crucifixion. He takes it as known that Jesus died and rose again, and looks for his return.

The right heel bone of a young Jewish man named Yehohanan, still pierced by the iron nail that fixed him to a cross. Found in a family tomb in Jerusalem in 1968, it is the only skeletal evidence of crucifixion from Roman Judea.

Paul’s forceful letter to the churches of Galatia, from the late 40s or 50s AD. In it he tells, in the first person, how he stayed with Peter in Jerusalem and met “James, the Lord’s brother”, among the earliest references to Jesus’s family.

Fragments of a letter from the emperor Claudius, carved on stone at Delphi in Greece, naming Gallio as proconsul of Achaia. Dated by Claudius’s titles to AD 52, it fixes Paul’s stay in Corinth, and with it the framework of Paul’s life, to within a year or two.

Paul’s letter to the church he founded in Corinth, c. AD 53–55. It preserves the earliest written account of the Lord’s Supper and, in 15:3–8, an older summary of Jesus’s death, burial, resurrection and appearances that Paul says he had “received”.

Paul’s second surviving letter to Corinth, c. AD 55–56, written in a season of strain. It defends his apostleship and recalls his escape from Damascus under King Aretas, an episode that helps anchor Paul’s early chronology.

Paul’s shortest letter: a personal appeal from prison on behalf of Onesimus, an enslaved man who had become a believer, to be received as “a beloved brother”. It is first-hand evidence of an early house church.

Q is a hypothetical sayings source that, on the two-source theory, Matthew and Luke used alongside Mark. No manuscript exists; this is a modern reconstruction of the shared non-Markan material, translated from the Critical Edition of Q.

Paul’s longest letter, written c. AD 55–58 to a church he had not yet visited. Its opening preserves what may be an older confession: Jesus born of David’s line “according to the flesh” and declared Son of God by the resurrection.

Paul’s warm letter from prison to his first church in Europe. Its hymn to Christ (2:6–11), possibly older than Paul, shows that within about twenty-five years of the crucifixion Jesus was being confessed as Lord.

A limestone bone box inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”, announced in 2002 without an excavation record. Experts still debate whether the whole inscription is ancient; its owner’s 2012 acquittal left that question to the evidence.

A letter of Paul and Timothy to the church at Colossae, received as Paul’s by Irenaeus and the early church. Its hymn-like passage (1:15–20) calls Christ “the image of the invisible God”, through whom God made peace “through the blood of his cross”.

The shortest Gospel, which the earliest tradition traces to Mark, the interpreter of Peter. Its fast-moving account of the ministry in Galilee and the passion in Jerusalem, c. AD 65–75, gave Matthew and Luke their framework.

Paul’s second letter to Thessalonica, received as his by Irenaeus and the early church. It answers a claim that “the day of Christ has already come”, evidence of early debate over the timing of Jesus’s return.

A Syriac letter of consolation from a prisoner to his son. It compares the killing of Socrates, Pythagoras and the Jews’ ‘wise king’. He is not named and the letter’s date is debated, but many readers identify him with Jesus.

An anonymous sermon in letter form, c. AD 60–90, which some early churches ascribed to Paul and Origen said only God knows who wrote. It presents Jesus as the Son and heavenly high priest, who prayed “with strong crying and tears”.

A letter of moral teaching from “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ”, traditionally the brother of Jesus and leader of the Jerusalem church. Many of its sayings echo the Sermon on the Mount.

A letter of Paul from prison on the unity of Jews and gentiles in Christ, received as his throughout the early church. It presents Christ as the one who reconciles both “in one body to God through the cross”, with the church built on him.

The Gospel most read in the early church, attributed from the second century to Matthew the tax collector, one of the Twelve. It presents Jesus as Israel’s Messiah and teacher, with the infancy narrative, the Sermon on the Mount and scripture fulfilled.

The first volume of Luke–Acts, attributed from the second century to Luke, the physician and companion of Paul. Its prologue describes its own method, drawing on eyewitness tradition, and it adds the infancy narratives, many parables and the Emmaus appearance.

The second volume of Luke–Acts, attributed from the second century to Luke, companion of Paul: the earliest narrative of the first Christian communities, from Jerusalem under Peter and James to Paul’s arrival in Rome.

A letter from “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ” to Christians in Asia Minor facing hostility, used by Polycarp and accepted throughout the early church. Its writer calls himself a witness of Christ’s sufferings and reads the cross through Isaiah 53.

A short, urgent letter from “Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James”, traditionally one of the brothers of Jesus. Accepted in the Muratorian fragment, it quotes 1 Enoch and was reused in 2 Peter.

The Jewish historian Josephus’s passage on Jesus (Ant. 18.63–64), widely judged to be an authentic notice later expanded by Christian copyists, with his account of John the Baptist and Pilate’s governorship as context.

Josephus reports that the high priest Ananus had ‘the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, whose name was James’ stoned in AD 62. Most scholars accept the passage as authentic, making it a key non-Christian reference to Jesus.

The Fourth Gospel, which Irenaeus and the early church attributed to John the apostle, the “disciple whom Jesus loved”. Largely independent of the other three, it opens with the Word who became flesh and sets the ministry across several Passovers.

A prophetic vision written by John on Patmos to seven churches in Asia, dated by Irenaeus to the end of Domitian’s reign, c. AD 95. It presents Jesus as “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead” and the Lamb who was slain.

A letter from the church at Rome to the church at Corinth, traditionally dated c. 96. It recalls the deaths of Peter and Paul, quotes sayings of Jesus, and says the apostles were sent by Christ and appointed leaders after them.

One of the Pastoral Letters, addressed in Paul’s name to his co-worker Timothy and quoted as Paul’s by Irenaeus. It contains a short hymn about Christ and refers to Christ Jesus “who before Pontius Pilate testified the good confession”.

Presented as Paul’s last letter, written from prison as he faced death. Its summary of the gospel, “Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of the offspring of David”, echoes Romans 1:3–4 and shows what was handed on as essential.

The third Pastoral Letter, addressed in Paul’s name to Titus, left in Crete to appoint elders. Mostly about church leadership, it looks for the appearing of “our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ”, a verse much discussed as evidence of belief.

A treatise from the circle of the beloved disciple, attributed from the second century to John the apostle. Written to a divided community, it proclaims what “our hands touched” of “the Word of life” and insists that Jesus Christ came in the flesh.

A brief letter from “the elder” to a congregation, which Irenaeus quotes as the work of John, the Lord’s disciple. It warns against deceivers who do not confess that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, making his real humanity a test of belief.

A private letter from “the elder” to Gaius about hospitality to travelling missionaries who went out “for the sake of the Name”. It does not name Jesus, but it opens a window on the life of the early congregations.

A short early church manual: the ‘Two Ways’ of life and death, then instructions on baptism, fasting, the Lord’s Prayer, eucharistic prayers, travelling prophets, Sunday worship and the Lord’s coming. A window on how early communities lived their devotion to Jesus.

A testament in the name of Simon Peter, appealing to his presence at the transfiguration: “we were eyewitnesses of his majesty”. Slow to win acceptance and listed by Eusebius among the disputed books, it is usually dated c. AD 100–130.

Written by the bishop of Antioch on his way to execution in Rome. He insists that Jesus was truly born, truly nailed to the cross under Pontius Pilate and Herod, and rose in the flesh. The first text to speak of ‘the Catholic Church.’

A Roman governor’s report to the emperor on the Christians of Bithynia-Pontus: their dawn meetings, a hymn ‘to Christ, as though he were a god’, their oath and shared meal, and Trajan’s rule that they are not to be hunted out.

The Roman historian’s account of the fire of AD 64, after which Nero blamed and cruelly executed the Christians. Tacitus explains that their founder Christus was executed under Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate.

In a list of Claudius’s measures, Suetonius says he expelled from Rome the Jews who were constantly rioting ‘at the instigation of Chrestus’. Many historians see a garbled reference to Christ; others think of an unknown agitator, a question left to your discernment.

Quotations from a lost early-2nd-century work by the bishop of Hierapolis, who sought out what followers of the apostles remembered. They include the earliest statements about how the Gospels of Mark and Matthew were written.

An imperial ruling to the proconsul of Asia: Christians may be prosecuted only by formal accusation in court and convicted of acting against the laws, and false accusers are to be punished. Many historians accept it as genuine; its exact meaning is weighed here.

A collection of 114 sayings of “the living Jesus”, complete in Coptic from Nag Hammadi with earlier Greek fragments from Oxyrhynchus. Many parallel the Synoptics; its date and independence are among the most debated questions in Gospel study.

Fragments of an unknown second-century gospel on papyrus: Jesus tells the rulers to search the scriptures, escapes arrest, heals a leper and answers a question about paying kings. Among the oldest surviving non-canonical Gospel texts.

Legends of Jesus between five and twelve: clay sparrows that fly, curses and healings, and lessons that confound his teachers. A second-century story cycle that fills the canonical Gospels’ silence, not a record of his childhood.

A second-century Passion and resurrection narrative told in Peter’s name, known from an Egyptian manuscript found in 1886–87. It retells the canonical story with new scenes, including giant figures and a speaking cross at the tomb.

A fragmentary second-century dialogue in which the risen Savior teaches and departs, Mary relates a vision of the soul’s ascent, and Peter and Andrew dispute her authority. Evidence for early debates about revelation and leadership.

A second-century revelation dialogue, known to Irenaeus and recovered in Coptic in Codex Tchacos, in which Jesus mocks the disciples’ worship and gives Judas secret teaching before the betrayal. A witness to later debates, not to the events.

A second-century letter in James’s name relating secret teaching of the risen Savior to James and Peter before his ascension: be “filled”, seek suffering, believe in the cross. Preserved only at Nag Hammadi.

A Christian philosopher’s defence addressed to Antoninus Pius. It says Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate, argues from the Hebrew prophets, and gives the earliest full description of baptism, the Eucharist and Sunday worship, where ‘the memoirs of the apostles’ were read.

A second-century Valentinian meditation on how Jesus, “nailed to a tree”, made known the unknown Father and dispelled ignorance. Probably the work Irenaeus called the Gospel of Truth; preserved at Nag Hammadi.

A Greek satirist’s account of the Cynic Peregrinus, who burned himself at Olympia in 165. In passing it describes Christians who worship ‘the crucified sage’ of Palestine, live by his laws and care for their imprisoned members.

A second-century legend of Mary’s birth, childhood and virginity, ending with Jesus’s birth in a cave near Bethlehem. Not a historical source, but enormously influential: it gave the Church the names Joachim and Anne.

Tatian’s single harmony of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, made about 170 and long the gospel of the Syriac churches. It shows the four Gospels already treated as a set; this page gives its opening and its Passion and resurrection.

A small second-century papyrus, published in 2023, preserving sayings of Jesus close to Matthew 6, Luke 12 and the Gospel of Thomas: on anxiety, the birds and the lilies, fasting from the world, and seeking the kingdom.

Irenaeus sets out the ‘Rule of Faith’ the churches had received from the apostles and describes the Gnostic teachers he opposed, from Valentinus to Basilides, Cerinthus and Marcion, and the sect that produced a Gospel of Judas.

The classic second-century defence of the four Gospels: how Matthew, Mark, Luke and John came to be written, why there are four and only four, and the succession of bishops from the apostles in Rome and Smyrna.

A crude drawing scratched into plaster on the Palatine Hill in Rome: a man raises his hand to a crucified figure with a donkey’s head, above the Greek words “Alexamenos worships his god”. It is a pagan mockery of a Christian, and one of the earliest surviving pictures of the crucifixion.

A letter ascribed to Clement of Alexandria, reported by Morton Smith in 1958, that quotes a “more spiritual” expanded Gospel of Mark. The manuscript cannot now be examined, and whether it is ancient or a modern forgery is an open question for your discernment.

A fragment of Julius Africanus’s lost Chronography. He says Thallus explained the darkness at the crucifixion as an eclipse, objects that no eclipse is possible at Passover full moon, and cites Phlegon’s report of an eclipse under Tiberius.

A damaged Sethian text from Codex Tchacos whose hero, “Stranger”, is tempted by Satan, transfigured in a bright cloud on Mount Tabor and taught to ascend past hostile powers. It reuses Gospel scenes without naming Jesus.

A Valentinian anthology of sayings and reflections on baptism, anointing, the Eucharist and the bridal chamber, preserved at Nag Hammadi. Often sensationalised for its lines on Mary Magdalene, it is evidence for early Christian ritual thought.

A Roman presbyter attacks teachers of his own day who said the Father and the Son were one and the same, including Bishop Callistus, and the Elchasaites. It shows how sharply Christians in Rome were arguing about who Christ is in the early 3rd century.

A third-century mosaic floor from a Christian prayer hall near Megiddo, found in 2005, with a Greek dedication “to God Jesus Christ”. It is among the earliest archaeological witnesses to Christian worship of Jesus as God.

A private house on the Euphrates remodelled for Christian worship, with a baptistery painted with scenes of Christ healing and the women at the tomb. Sealed by the city’s fall around 256, it is a fixed anchor for early Christian art.

Origen replies to Celsus, a 2nd-century critic who called Jesus the son of a soldier named Panthera and a magician trained in Egypt. Along the way he cites Josephus on ‘James the Just, the brother of Jesus (called Christ).’

A rolled silver amulet from a third-century grave at Roman Nida (Frankfurt), read by CT scanning in 2024. Its text invokes Jesus, making it among the earliest Christian objects found north of the Alps.

A Coptic Gnostic work in which the risen Jesus, eleven years after the resurrection, ascends in light, returns and teaches the disciples, Mary above all, about the heavens and the saving mysteries. Narrated revelation, not history.

A 1918 English version of the Untitled Text of the Bruce Codex, a Sethian Gnostic hymn of the Pleroma and its emanations, in which Jesus and Christ appear only as heavenly beings. Lamplugh’s framing is an early-20th-century mystical reading.

The opening book of the first history of the Church. It sets Jesus in the time of Augustus, Herod, Pilate and Caiaphas, quotes Josephus on John the Baptist and Jesus, and gives the Edessa story of King Abgar’s letter to Jesus.

Eusebius on the generation after the apostles: the origins of the four Gospels, his list of accepted and disputed books, Papias on Mark and Matthew, Jesus’s relatives, the martyrdom of Symeon, and Ignatius and Polycarp.

The second century, from Trajan to Marcus Aurelius: Quadratus’s claim that people healed by Jesus lived into his own day, Hadrian’s rescript, Justin Martyr, Hegesippus, Tatian, and the eyewitness letter on the martyrdom of Polycarp.

The late second century: the martyrs of Lyon and Vienne, Irenaeus on how the four Gospels were written, his memory of Polycarp and John, the Easter controversy, and a protest that earlier writers had always called Christ God.

The Easter letter of 367 in which the bishop of Alexandria lists the books of Scripture. It is the earliest surviving list of exactly the 27 books of today’s New Testament, and it names other books, including the Didache, as useful but outside the canon.

Late-antique Christian legends of Jesus’s trial before Pilate, his descent into Hades, and letters in Pilate’s name, from the Ante-Nicene Fathers. Not Roman records, but hugely influential on medieval art and devotion.

A Talmudic tradition that Yeshu (rendered ‘Jesus the Nazarene’) was hanged on Passover eve for sorcery and leading Israel astray after a herald sought defenders for forty days. Whether it preserves an independent memory of Jesus is an open question for your discernment.

From William Hone’s 1820 Apocryphal New Testament: the Arabic Infancy Gospel, with its legends of the Holy Family in Egypt, and the letters of Jesus and King Abgar of Edessa that Eusebius reported. Legends, not history.

The chapter named after Mary: Zachariah and John, the annunciation, the birth of Jesus beneath a palm tree, and the infant Jesus speaking from the cradle as ‘a servant of God’ and prophet. A 7th-century text, not an independent source for the nativity.

The Qur’an’s longest account of Mary’s birth, Zachariah and John, and the annunciation of ‘the Messiah Jesus the son of Mary’, with his miracles ‘by God’s permission’. A 7th-century witness to the Islamic portrait of Jesus, not an independent source for his life.

Contains the Qur’an’s only explicit statement on the crucifixion (4:157–158): ‘they did not kill him, and they did not crucify him’, but God raised him. Also 4:171, calling Jesus ‘the apostle of God and His Word’ and rejecting ‘Three’.

Late Medinan surah named for the table Jesus’s disciples ask him to call down from heaven. It calls Jesus a prophet who brought the Gospel, rejects ‘God is the third of three’, and ends with Jesus denying that he told people to worship him and his mother.

A linen cloth bearing the image of a crucified man, venerated as Jesus’s burial shroud. Three laboratories dated it to about AD 1260–1390 in 1988. Later challenges, including a 2022 X-ray study, have not displaced that result, though the debate continues.

Vatican II’s declaration on other religions. It notes that Muslims revere Jesus as a prophet and honour Mary, and states that Christ’s passion cannot be charged against all Jews then living or Jews today. A modern reception, not historical evidence.

The Catholic Catechism’s short statement that Jesus Christ is one divine person, ‘true God and true man’, in two natures, as defined by the councils from Nicaea to Chalcedon. A statement of faith, not historical evidence.

A joint statement in which the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East confess together that Christ is truly God and truly man, united in one person, ending a dispute over wording that went back to the Council of Ephesus in 431.

Pope Francis’s 2024 encyclical on the human and divine love of the Heart of Jesus (the Sacred Heart), drawing on scripture, the Fathers and the visions of Margaret Mary Alacoque. Evidence of present-day teaching, not of first-century events.

The Vatican’s 2024 procedure for judging reported apparitions, visions and similar claims, many concerning Jesus or Mary. It sets graded conclusions instead of a yes-or-no verdict, and does not rule on any particular event.