Authorship and the Bible

Introduction:

A. Who were the human authors of the writings contained in the Bible? This is all we will attempt to cover here. The question of authorship often bears upon the when the book was penned.

B. There has been a tendency amoung some students of the Bible to discount authors named in the text, especially of some NT books. In the case of any other kinds of documents, when an author is stated in the text, the presumption is in favor of that statement unless it can be proven otherwise. Most of the counter-claims are very speculative.

Part One:  Old Testament

I. The Pentateuch (The Law): Moses

A. Internal claims: Exodus 17:14; 24:4-8; 34:27; 33:1,2; Deut. 31:9,22

B. Other O.T. claims: Judges 3:4; II Kings 14:6; Dan. 9:11-13; Malachi 4:4

C. Jesus and N.T. writers: Matt. 19:8; Mark 10:5; Acts 3:22; Rom. 10:5

D. No human author is identified for Genesis. Tradition attributes it to Moses, and since it is one of the "five scrolls" and there is reason to think that Moses was the author of the other four, the tradition seems well-founded.

II. The Prophets

A. Joshua: internal claim for Joshua himself (24:26). Some of the events are after Joshua's death.

B. Judges: the Talmud attributes it to Samuel.

C. Books of Samuel: attributed by Jewish tradition to Samuel, but Samuel dies before the end of I Samuel.

D. Books of Kings: attributed by Jewish tradition to Jeremiah, but it seems to have been written in Babylon, and Jeremiah was taken to Egypt.

E. Isaiah: some hold that there were at least three authors for this book, but Jesus and the N.T. writers attribute statements from all three sections to the prophet Isaiah.

F. Jeremiah: most likely the prophet himself, see chapter 36.

G. Ezekiel: probably the prophet himself, though there is some tradition to the contrary.

H. The Twelve: most likely the prophet's whose names are attached to the respective books.

III. The Writings

A. Psalms: several are attributed by the titles in the book to David, and in this the N.T. concurs. See Acts 4:25; 2:25-28; 13:36; Romans 4:6-8; Acts 1:16-20, Romans 11:9ff; Acts 1:20; Matt. 22:42; Mark 12:36; Luke 20:42-44.

B. Proverbs: much of it is attributed by the titles in the book to Solomon.

C. Job: greatly debated. Some think Job, some contend for Moses, a few for Solomon.

D. Song of Solomon: Solomon is the stated author in vs. 1.

E. Ruth: some Jewish tradition attributes it to Samuel, but this is debatable.

F. Lamentations: strong tradition favors Jeremiah, and there is no good reason to deny this.

G. Ecclesiastes: often assumed to be Solomon because of the introduction, but this is debated.

H. Esther: debated and undetermined

I. Daniel: Jesus attributed it to Daniel the prophet, see Matt. 24:15 and Dan. 9:27 & 12:11.

J. Ezra: tradition attributes to Ezra.

K. Nehemiah: use of first person pronouns points to Nehemiah.

L. Books of Chronicals: Jewish tradition and several modern scholars attribute these to Ezra.

Part Two:  New Testament

I. Matthew: early church writers all attributed this gospel to Matthew the apostle.

II. Mark: early church writers attributed this gospel to the Mark mentioned in the Book of Acts.

III. Luke-Acts: the "we" sections in Acts (16:10-17; 20:5 - 21:18; 27:1 - 28:16) indicate an author for Acts who is one of Paul's companions. The only other possibility from Acts 20:4 is Titus, but there is no evidence at all for Titus. Thus, Luke is the most likely author of Acts, and "Luke" is clearly the first section of this two-part work.

VI. John: much internal and external evidence points to John the apostle.

V. Paul is author stated in the text for these:

I & II Thessalonians Titus
I & II Corinthians
Galatians
Romans
Colossians
Philemon
Ephesians
Philippians
I & II Timothy

VI. James: most likely the James who was the half-brother of Jesus.

VII. I & II Peter are stated in the text to be the work of Peter the apostle

VIII. Jude: by Jude the half-brother of Jesus. See vs 1.

IX. Hebrews: no stated author, many have thought Paul, but great debate. Other candidates have been Priscilla and Aquila, Luke, and Apollos.

X. I John: has affinities to gospel of John.

XI. II & III John are attributed to John the apostle by tradition, but have been more debated.

XII. Revelation: the writer calls himself "John" and all early church writers thought this was John the apostle. But some later writers thought it might be another John.

Part Three: Recent Views of Authorship

I. In the consideration of anything, what you are already thinking (your presuppositions) will have an effect on your conclusion. Around the beginning of the 20th century, the presupposition of anti-supernaturalism (or just naturalism) began to permeate almost every area of study, including the study of the Bible. Naturalism is a general view that rules out any appeal to anything beyond nature in our analysis and explanation of things.

A. When naturalism was applied to the study of the Bible, some very important things happened. To see what happened, we will use the gospels as an example. But be aware that the kind of methodology will will consider has been applied to some extent to most of the Bible.

B. It was often been denied that any person named Matthew, a disciple of Jesus, could have written the gospel of Matthew. Likewise for all the other gospels. But the anti-supernaturalists were still interested in trying to explain where the gospels came from. Their view generally had three related parts:

1. "Source criticism" was a label applied to one of these parts. The practitioners of source criticism thought they could detect from the text of the gospels the existence of now-lost "sources" that came before our gospels. There were many versions of this. Some held that there were many sources, some just one. The most common view was that there was some now-lost collection of sayings about and by Jesus, which was called "Q" (from German Quelle meaning "source"). The gospel of Mark came first. Matthew and Luke came about by combining Mark and "Q" in various ways. John was considered much later, and not thought to have much connection to the life of the real Jesus. Why? Because John in particular emphasizes Jesus as the supernatural Son of God, and these critics, remember, are anti-supernaturalists.

2. The other kind of analysis was called "redaction criticism." A redactor is simply and editor/compiler of a document. According to this view, which fits in well with source criticism, long after the events of the life of Jesus, someone put together the documents we call the gospels. One or more editors may have worked on a gospel over a period of time, and these editors were thought to have very definite axes to grind, which we can discover by seeing what they included and excluded from the sources available to them.

3. Another kind of analysis or criticism of the gospels goes beyond source criticism and redaction criticism. This is "form criticism."

a. This focuses on the kind of literary form used to compose the gospels from the sources by the redactors (editors). Several scholars have done this using different schemes. Generally is goes something like this: there are two general forms -- deeds of Jesus and words of Jesus. Then, in each of these two categories there are various sub-categories. For example, in deeds of Jesus would be "miracle stories." In words of Jesus would be things like "I-words" (where Jesus says things about himself).

b. Why did they go to all this trouble, you ask? The goal was to use these various forms as a clue to the circumstances (often using the German term sitz im leben) where the particular piece of the gospel in question originated. You can't assume, these critics say, that things that look like accounts of events in the gospels are really that at all. Often, they are not. As you can see this view emphasizes the idea that the gospels are all kinds of little fragments, some not very related to the others, which have been stuck together to produce the gospel as we see it today. To illustrate how this is supposed to work, consider Mark 8:27-30. What is going on here? According to many form critics, this has nothing to do with any real exchange between Jesus and Peter. By looking at the "form" of this the critic concludes that because of "Christ talk" here, this is the product of the church long after the death of Jesus. Someone invented this story to justify the later church's confession that Jesus is the Christ.

II. Now, perhaps you are thinking that this approach leaves very little account of real events in the gospels. Exactly, and that is part of the point of the critic. Remember, these critics are usually anti-supernaturalists to some extent. Thus, miracle stories, claims by Jesus to be divine, and all such things ARE NOT MATTERS OF FACT. All these kinds of criticisms are attempts to make sense of the gospels given the assumption of anti-supernaturalism.

A. This whole approach gave rise to the idea of trying to discover "the historical Jesus." In other words, when you strip off all the later additions and confessions, etc., what do we really know about Jesus?

B. One of the more famous of these critics, Rudolph Bultmann, said that what we really know about Jesus is that he lived and he died.  Not all these critics go this far, but they all go in this direction.

III. All this seems to be a hidden question about philosophy more than a question about the Bible. The motive for radical criticism if we do not accept the presupposition of anti-supernaturalism. To rule out the possibility of a document being what it says it is because its contents is unpalatable is to look at the horse from the wrong end!