Year 2 begins with the gospel of Luke. He is not identified by name in the gospel, but was well known by early believers. Acts 27:1- 28:15 places the author in Rome along with the apostle Paul. Luke was not an apostle nor did he witness to the gospel events; however, being a companion of Paul, who was an apostle of Jesus, gave him direct access to source material. Both his gospel and the book of Acts were written in letter form to Theophilus.

Year 1 begins with the gospel of John. Wait- we don’t start with Genesis? Don’t worry...Genesis is the next book. John is an excellent starting place because it is an evangelistic book- John wrote this book to persuade people to come to a saving belief in Jesus. I have personally done in-depth Bible studies of John several times and have seen and learned something new every time.

Romans is Paul’s longest letter, written around AD 57. There is no question of authorship, as Paul identifies himself as the writer in his greeting (Romans. 1:1-7). Paul had a secretary named Tertius who did the actually writing (Rom. 16:22 I Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord.), which was customary in a time when writing was done with scarce resources. We think nothing of writing something and re-writing it as we edit, because we don’t have to write on papyrus!