The first battle for the Bible: a century after Christ's death, a literalist and a spiritualizer forced the church to choose how it would read the Scriptures it inherited from the Jews.

By the year 150, the Christian church exhibited many features that would mark it for centuries: Christians baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; they celebrated the Lord's Supper weekly; they were governed by a bishop, presbyters, and deacons. But they still lacked one thing that would become central to Christian identity: a New Testament. Their only Holy Scripture was that collection of sacred writings later called the Old Testament, which they generally read in the "Septuagint" version--a Greek translation pre-dating Jesus by over a century.

Of course, the documents now found in our New Testament had already been written: Paul's letters ...