Who Wrote the Bible?

Ask who wrote the Bible and you are really asking two questions at once.

Who held the pen, and who is behind it?

The Bible is a library, not a book.

It is not a single work written by one person in one sitting.

It is a collection of sixty-six books, written across roughly fifteen centuries.

Its authors lived in different eras, wrote in different languages, worked in different literary forms, and addressed circumstances that had nothing to do with each other.

History, law, poetry, prophecy, biography, letters, and apocalyptic vision all sit inside the same cover.

Its authors were not a class of professional writers.

Among them were kings, prophets, priests, fishermen, a physician, political officials, and apostles.

David wrote many of the Psalms.

Luke wrote the Gospel that carries his name, and the book of Acts.

Paul wrote a large portion of the New Testament as letters to real congregations with real problems.

Peter and John wrote as men who had been in the room.

Sometimes Scripture records the instruction to write it down.

Thus speaketh the LORD God of Israel, saying, Write thee all the words that I have spoken unto thee in a book…

Some books have authorship questions, and Christianity does not need to hide them.

Hebrews does not name its author.

Several Old Testament books are anonymous, and scholars have argued about them for centuries.

Pretending those debates do not exist would be dishonest, and it is not necessary.

The Bible's claim about itself does not rest on identifying every human hand.

Scripture claims a second Author standing behind the human ones.

Paul states it directly.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness

Peter says the same thing about how prophecy came.

For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

That is the claim that makes the Bible different from every other ancient library.

God did not dictate over the top of the writers.

This is where people picture something Scripture never describes.

The authors were not unconscious typewriters.

Their personalities are still on the page.

John does not write like Paul.

David's poetry does not sound like Luke's history.

Solomon's proverbs do not read like Isaiah's visions.

Luke even tells us how he worked, and it sounds like research.

Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses…

God worked through genuine human beings — their vocabulary, their training, their memories, their circumstances — to say what He intended to say.

So who wrote the Bible?

Moses did. David did. Luke did. Paul did.

Men whose names we know, and a few we do not.

In their own words, in their own styles, out of their own lives.

And Christianity claims that the same book, without any of that being erased, is the Word of God.