The Old Testament: Various Schools Of Authors
To explain the Bibles contradictions, repetitions and general idiosyncrasies, most scholars today agree that the stories and laws it contains were communicated orally, through prose and poetry, over centuries. Starting around the 7th century B.C., different groups, or schools, of authors wrote them down at different times, before they were at some point combined into the single, multi-layered work we know today.
Of the three major blocks of source material that scholars agree comprise the Bibles first five books, the first was believed to have been written by a group of priests, or priestly authors, whose work scholars designate as P. A second block of source material is known as Dfor Deuteronomist, meaning the author of the vast majority of the book of Deuteronomy. The two of them are not really related to each other in any significant way, Baden explains, except that they’re both giving laws and telling a story of Israel’s early history.
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Who Was Jesus Did He Really Exist
Most scholars agree that Jesus, a first-century religious leader and preacher, existed historically. He was born in c4 BC and died reportedly crucified on the orders of the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate in cAD 3033. Then, for around 40 years, news of his teachings was spread by word of mouth until, from around AD 70, four written accounts of his life emerged that changed everything.
The gospels, or good news, of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are critically important to the Christian faith. It is their descriptions of the life of Jesus Christ that have made him arguably the most influential figure in human history.
We cant be sure when the gospels were written, says Barton, and we know little about the authors. But the guess is that Mark came first, in the 70s, followed by Matthew and Luke in the 80s and 90s, and John in the 90s or early in the second century.
In general, Matthew, Mark and Luke tell the same story with variations, and hence are called the synoptic gospels, whereas John has a very different style, as well as telling a markedly different version of the story of Jesus. Matthew and Luke seem to be attempts to improve on Mark, by adding more stories and sayings from sources now lost. John is a different conceptualisation of the story of Jesus, portraying a more obviously divine figure.
When Was The New Testament Written And Who Wrote It
The Old Testament and the New Testament are the two portions that make up the Christian Bible. When it comes to Jewish religious texts, the Old Testament is the original Hebrew Bible, or sacred writings, which was authored at various periods between about 1200 and 165 BC. New Testament writings were authored by Christians in the first century AD and are known as the canonical books.
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Which Book Of The Old Testament Was Written First
Genesis is the first book of the Bible, written in the Hebrew language and entitled Bereshit . Its title is derived from the first lines of the story: In the beginning Gen. 111 tells the tale of the origins and development of the universe, whereas Gen. 1250 chronicles the story of the patriarchal history of the Israelite people.
Who Really Wrote The Biblical Books Of Kings And The Prophets
The paean to King Josiah and exalted descriptions of the ancient Israelite empires beg the thought that he and his scribes lie behind the Deuteronomistic History.
The only historic source we have about Judah and Israel during the First Temple period is the Bible, particularly the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. This is where we learn of the exploits of the famous prophets, kings and judges who played such a prominent role in shaping Western civilization as we know it.
But who actually wrote these books?
The traditional view is laid out in the Talmud : Joshua wrote the Book of Joshua, until his death, at which point the high priests Eleazar and Phinehas picked up the narrative. Samuel, the Talmud says, wrote the Book of Judges and the Book of Samuel, until his death, at which point the prophets Nathan and Gad picked up the story. And the Book of Kings, according to tradition, was written by the prophet Jeremiah.
The omnipresent narrator
Scholars have long rejected the idea that the Deuteronomistic History was written by the characters depicted in the story. Firstly, none were written in the first person, which is how witness accounts are generally written. If anything, they are written from the perspective of an all-knowing narrator writing from a vantage point well into the future.
Yet the bulk of these books are written in a uniform manner. That indicates they were written at about the same time, if not by the same person.
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Why Did Luke Write Acts
As in his Gospel, Luke slants the book of Acts toward Gentiles, especially those with open-minded interest in the historical origins of Christianity. In so doing, he continues to emphasize the religious piety, moral purity, and political innocence of believers in Jesus, and to portray Christianity as universal, a traditional religion rooted in Judaism but open to all.
In Luke the narrative progressed to Jerusalem, the center of Judaism. In Acts the narrative progresses to Rome, center of the world. The power of the Holy Spirit makes this progress possible.
Luke doesnt write about the spread of Christianity to Egypt or to the East, but we do read recurring statements that summarize the success of the gospel wherever Christians proclaimed it: And the word of God kept growing, and the number of the disciples in Jerusalem kept multiplying greatly .
Special attention goes to showing that Christianity deserves continued freedom because it derives from Judaism, which has legal standing, and because it does not pose any threat to the Roman government.
Repeatedly, Luke describes Christianity as a kind of fulfilled Judaism, and cites favorable judgments concerning Christianity and its proponents by various kinds of local and provincial officials. Such an apology was needed, because Christianity had started with the handicap that its founder had died by crucifixion, the Roman means of executing criminals, and because disturbance arose wherever Christianity spread.
Thank you!
Who Wrote The Bible: God Or Man
The Scripture says in 2 Peter 1:20-21, Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit revealed to the prophets the messages of Scripture. The writers of the Bible wrote not according to their own will or whim, but only as they were moved, or controlled, by the Spirit of God. The Bible is Gods own book!
2 Timothy 3:16-17 says, All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. The Holy Bible affects human beings so profoundly, because all the Bible is God-breathed. Its more than a nice collection of moral principles its more than a great book its an inspired document, Gods book. The prophets who wrote the Bible related what they saw and heard in human language, but their message came directly from God.
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The Authorship Of The Remainder Of The New Testament
Outside of the Gospel and the Pauline Epistles are three sections of the New Testament: History, General Epistles, and Prophecy.
“History” here refers to the book of Acts, which describes the activities of Jesus’ disciples to include much of the narrative about Paul in the decades immediately after his death. According to Christian publisher Zondervan, the author claims to be Luke, the same man as the purported author of the Gospel bearing his name. It was likely written by the same man.
The term General Epistles, put simply, refers to epistles not written by Paul. According to Religious Tolerance, those books, purportedly written by Jesus’ disciples, such as Peter and James, were almost certainly compiled or written by others, in some cases decades or even centuries after their named writers’ deaths.
The New Testament’s one book of prophecy is Revelation. Tradition holds that it was written by Jesus’ disciple, John, the author of a Gospel and other New Testament books bearing his name, according to Cross Examined. However, according to PBS, it was likely written by a Christian who lived much later, quite possibly the 1st-century equivalent of a circuit preacher, who went by the name of John.
Who Wrote The Pentateuch
The tradition among believers has always been that Moses personally wrote the five books of the Pentateuch. In fact, the Pentateuch has in the past been referred to as the Biography of Moses .
Nowhere in the Pentateuch, however, does any text ever claim that Moses is the author of the entire work. There is a single verse where Moses is described as having written down this “Torah,” but that most likely refers only to the laws being presented at that particular point.
Modern scholarship has concluded that the Pentateuch was produced by multiple authors working at different times and then edited together. This line of research is known as the Documentary Hypothesis.
This research began in the 19th century and dominated biblical scholarship through most of the 20th century. Although details have come under criticism in recent decades, the broader idea that the Pentateuch is the work of multiple authors continues to be widely accepted.
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How Did Christianity Spread Around The World
The Epistles, or letters, written by Paul the Apostle to churches dotted across the Mediterranean world which are our best source for the initial spread of Christianity confirm that Christianity started in Jerusalem, but spread rapidly to Syria and then to the rest of the Mediterranean world, and was mostly accepted by non-Jews, says John Barton, former professor of the interpretation of holy scriptures at the University of Oxford.
The epistles are our earliest evidence for Christianity, says Barton. The first date from the AD 50s, just two decades after the death of Jesus.
As Pauls letters to churches such as the one in the Greek city of Thessalonica reveal, the first Christian communities were often persecuted for their beliefs.
And its such persecution, particularly at the hands of the Romans, that may have inspired the last book of the New Testament, Revelations. With its dark descriptions of a seven-headed beast and allusions to an imminent apocalypse, Revelations is now widely believed to be a foretelling of the grisly fate that the author believed awaited the Roman oppressors of Christianity.
Versions of the Bible
Different editions of the Bible have appeared over the centuries, aiming to further popularise the stories and teachings within. Here are three of the most notable versions
King James Bible
When Were The Books Of The Bible Finalized
The Muratorian Canon, which is thought to have been composed about the year 200 A.D., is the first known collection of canonical passages that are comparable to the New Testament. In fact, it wasnt until the 5th century that all of the diverse Christian denominations came to a general consensus on the Biblical canon.
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Who Wrote The Bible And When
Jewish and Christian dogma hold that Moses wrote the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy around 1,300 years before the present. Although this is true, there are certain problems with it, such as the absence of evidence that Moses actually existed.
Archaeological And Historical Research
Biblical archaeology is the archaeology that relates to and sheds light upon the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Greek Scriptures . It is used to help determine the lifestyle and practices of people living in biblical times. There are a wide range of interpretations in the field of biblical archaeology. One broad division includes biblical maximalism which generally takes the view that most of the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible is based on history although it is presented through the religious viewpoint of its time. It is considered to be the opposite of biblical minimalism which considers the Bible to be a purely post-exilic composition. Even among those scholars who adhere to biblical minimalism, the Bible is a historical document containing first-hand information on the Hellenistic and Roman eras, and there is universal scholarly consensus that the events of the 6th century BCE Babylonian captivity have a basis in history.
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Stories You Didn’t Learn In Sunday School
Many of the New Testament texts familiar to Christians today were being used authoritatively already in the second century, but different congregations preferred some texts over others and included some texts that don’t appear in the New Testament. Here are a few:
The Gospel of Peter: Only a fragment of this text was recovered in 1886 in Egypt, but it includes the only narrative account of the resurrected Jesus leaving his tomb. According to Peter’s version, two giant angels descended to the tomb and escorted the resurrected Jesus out, who was also suddenly gigantic. But the oddest note was that the three figures were followed by a floating cross that could talk.
“And they heard a voice from the heavens, saying, ‘Thou hast preached to them that sleep.’ And a response was heard from the cross, ‘Yea.'”
The Gospel of Mary: Combs says that some apocryphal texts reflected theological and doctrinal debates going on within the early church, such as the role of women. In the Gospel of Mary , is not only referred to as one of Jesus’s disciples, but perhaps his favorite one. In this text, after Jesus is resurrected, he relays esoteric teachings to Mary, who then tells the other disciples. Peter asks why they should listen to a woman, to which another disciple Levi responds:
“If the Savior made her worthy, who are you then, for your part, to cast her aside? Surely the Savior knows her full well. That is why he has loved her more than us.”
What Happens In Genesis
Its, of course, difficult to summarize all the events that happen in Genesis. After all, the book takes up 50 whole chapters in the Bible, so well briefly summarize some of the major events that take place in the book.
Genesis follows humanity through creation and humanitys descent into sin . From there, we have the well-known story of the Great Flood, and the birth of the Israelite nation through Abraham.
We follow Abrahams generations through Joseph and how Israel ended up in Egypt due to a massive famine.
From there, and after hundreds of years of slavery, we pick up the story in Exodus.
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Who Were The Human Writers
So, who were the human writers of the Bible? Thats the most direct way this question was posed. Let me try to answer it as directly.
At least ten of the books of the Bible are unsigned. The authors did not see fit to include their names in the books they wrote. For example, Job and Esther in the Old Testament we dont know who wrote them. In the New Testament, Hebrews we dont know who wrote Hebrews. But the traditional list of authors would go like this:
- Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible and at least one of the Psalms .
- Ezra the scribe wrote the books of Ezra and 12 Chronicles.
- Nehemiah wrote the book of Nehemiah.
- Psalm writers include David, Asaph, the sons of Korah, Ethan, Heman.
- Solomon wrote some of the Psalms, most of the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon.
- Agur and Lemuel wrote some of the Proverbs.
Then all the prophets wrote the books by their own name:
- Isaiah
- Jeremiah, who also wrote Lamentations
- Ezekiel
Then the writers of the Gospels in the New Testament:
- Matthew
- Luke, who also wrote Acts
- John
In fact, its interesting: If youd ask most people, Who wrote most of the New Testament? theyd probably say Paul, because he wrote thirteen letters. But actually, Luke wrote most of the New Testament because the books of Luke and Acts together comprise more of the New Testament than any other author which is why we named our first son Luke, but nobody calls him Luke anymore he goes by Karsten.
Did Moses Wrote The First 5 Books Of The Bible
Even if youve never heard of the Five Books of Moses , youve probably heard of the Torah and the Pentateuch, which are the Hebrew and Greek names for the first five books of the Hebrew Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. If youve never heard of the Five Books of Moses (which were not actually composed by Moses those who believe in divine
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Popular Bible Verses From The Book Of James
Below are some of the most well-known Bible verses and Scripture passages from the book of James.
- James 5:16 – “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”
- James 1:2-3 – “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance..”
- James 4:7 – “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
- James 1:13 – “When tempted, no one should say, God is tempting me. For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone”
- James 1:5 – “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”