In comparison to the Old Testament, the New is rather short, having just these books:

• Four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
• The Acts of the Apostles
• Letters from Paul and others
• Revelation

I wrote years ago on my xanga that I felt the Pauline letters — which have been very instrumental in shaping Christian thought, particularly in the west — shouldn't be in the Bible. Half of them are spurious and they're always written as a reaction to something: Either people in the churches he founded were confused about the theology or they heard from other Christians not to follow Paul. He was a latecomer to the faith; originally a fervent Jew who persecuted Christians, on the road to Damascus Paul heard a divine voice and was struck blind until a Christian cured him. Since then he came into conflict with Jesus' disciples, who actually knew the man personally and his mission. Paul wanted to open the religion to gentiles; Peter and James did not.

Oftentimes the letters are contradictory or unsure as Paul develops his own idea of Christianity. So why add them at all? Well, first of all they're the most contemporary documents we've got. Mark was written at about 70AD, some forty years after Jesus' death. There could be some witnesses alive who saw the crucifixion and remembered his ministry, but most of the important players were probably already dead by this point. The latest we've got is John, whose dates range between 90 to 120AD. By then scholars believe the gospels were just a selection of oral stories of Jesus, already too far removed from the man. Paul was still alive and knew the ethos of the period.

However the people developing the canon probably didn't know this; our current list of books started to shape in about the 200s and people genuinely did believe a person named Luke wrote the gospel of Luke. There's two important factors about the Pauline letters that the gospels don't provide. One is he actually gives some details about being a Christian. As I was translating John's gospel I noticed after a point that Jesus never really explains how to be a good Christian. It was continuous stories of him going into a town, he gets chased out, and the author smugly says, "And the unbelievers don't understand the true meaning of his words." The entire time I'm thinking it'd be great to actually espouse some of his sermons. It was only at the Last Supper when Jesus said to love each other that we got anything of substance. Paul was able to fill in that gap and talk about the do's and don'ts.

But even more so, Paul was the one who emphasized the crucifixion. Don't get me wrong, the gospels do too, but Paul is the one who created what we now think is the standard Christian belief. Much of the gospels are just a narration of Jesus' ministry and the events around his death, but they don't explain the significance that well. (Except maybe John, but that looks more to the trinity than anything else). Paul is able to say why Jesus needed to die on the cross for us.

Which may elucidate why Christianity is a mess of a religion with splintered sects all over the place. The New Testament wasn't a unified, coherent work. We have four gospels that often contradict each other or barely give us the information we need. (Historians try to use the to figure out a historical biography of Jesus but find it impossible since they're so vague and useless.) Then we have Paul who is just writing opinions he's not even sure about. Then half of his letters are definitely not written by him and often say the opposite of what the others say. Then we have a shit ton of letters by other people that give other opinions. And we end on, God help us, Revelation that looks like some sort of crazy acid trip. Never mind how it came to dominate the world, it's a miracle this religion took over the Roman Empire!