Who wrote the Bible?

Scripture & How We Got ItIn theological review

The short answer

People did, and God did, and the Bible insists on both. On the human side it has many authors across many centuries, from Moses to John. On the divine side, Peter says men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, and Paul calls all Scripture God-breathed. Real writers, real styles, one intention behind them.

The fuller answer

The Bible names its human authors all over: Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, and others, writing across centuries, in law, history, poetry, prophecy, letters, and apocalypse. Luke describes his own method at the start of his Gospel: investigating everything carefully from eyewitnesses and writing an orderly account.

The difference between the Bible and an ordinary anthology is the claim it makes about those authors. No prophecy, Peter writes, was ever brought forth by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Paul uses the word God-breathed for all Scripture. The picture is not dictation in most cases. It is God working through real writers, with their own vocabularies and styles, so that what they wrote is what he intended his people to have.

For no such prophecy was ever brought forth by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

2 Peter 1:21 (BSB)

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

2 Timothy 3:16 (BSB)

That is why the Westminster Shorter Catechism answers the question of guidance the way it does: the Word of God, contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy God. The authors were many. The author behind them, Christians confess, is one.

Sources

Berean Standard Bible (BSB)
The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647)

Review status: in-theological-review. Every Contend page passes a human theological review against the Statement of Faith before it is published as approved teaching. This section is in that queue.

Dig deeper

No answer here is a dead end. Follow the question on, test it in practice, or work the method yourself on the Dig deeper page.

How do we know the Bible is God's word?Because the Bible claims it, Jesus treated it that way, and the evidence we can test supports taking the claim seriously. Paul calls all Scripture God-breathed. Jesus said the Scripture cannot be broken, and argued his whole mission out of the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. Christians receive the Bible as God's word on the testimony of the God-man who rose from the dead.Why does the Bible have 66 books?Because those are the books the people of God recognised as carrying his authority: the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms that Jesus himself named, and the writings of his apostles. Thirty nine books of the Old Testament and twenty seven of the New. The number was never a target. It is simply the shape of what was received.Has the Bible been changed over the centuries?The text has been copied by hand for centuries, and copyists' slips exist and are openly catalogued. But the message has not been rewritten. We hold manuscripts far older than the printed texts, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, and they show a text transmitted with remarkable care. Isaiah's promise stands: the word of our God stands forever.Who was Paul?Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles: a Pharisee who persecuted the church, met the risen Jesus on the Damascus road, and spent the rest of his life planting churches around the Roman world and writing the letters that fill much of the New Testament. No other figure explains how a crucified Jewish Messiah came to be worshipped from Jerusalem to Rome within one generation.Bible Character: MosesThe prophet who led Israel out of slavery in Egypt, received the Law on Mount Sinai, and brought the people to the edge of Canaan.Bible Character: PaulThe Pharisee who persecuted the church until the risen Jesus stopped him on the Damascus road, and who became his apostle to the Gentiles, travelling the Roman world and writing many of the New Testament letters.How We Got the Bible: What 'canon' meansA measuring word, before it is a list: what the church did when it recognized the books, and what it did not do.Answer the question20 flashcards on the questions these answers raise.