Who Wrote The Original Bible

Whats The Verdict On Authorship

Many modern scholars like to attack the authorship of Genesis. They may point out the faultiness of oral tradition or try to assert that multiple authors compiled the manuscript over centuries, borrowing from mythology of other religions.

But because we have extra-biblical support for the authorship of Genesis and because various authors throughout the Bible do attribute the Pentateuch to Moses, we can assume Moses wrote Genesis.

Genesis has sparked a great deal of debate among scientists and scholars, ranging from the literal vs. figurative days of creation to the genealogical lines.

Nevertheless, we can know that the book is God-breathed, and like many concepts in Scripture, although we may not fully understand all of it, we know enough about the book to see how it fits into Gods greater plan for humanity and salvation.

Moses Did Not Write The Pentateuch

Jews and Christians widely believe that Moses wrote the first five books in the Bible. Beginning with some medieval rabbis, however, doubts about this claim have been raised. As an obvious starting point, Moses could not have written Deuteronomy 34:510, which speaks about his death. But this glaring inconsistency is just the beginning.

The books contain anachronisms that Moses could not have written. Genesis 36, for example, lists Edomite kings who lived long after Moses died. The Philistines are mentioned in Genesis, yet they did not arrive in Canaan until 1200 B.C., after the time of Moses.

Genesis 12:6 implies that the author was writing after the Canaanites had been driven out of the region, something that didnt happen until the time of Mosess successor Joshua. Similarly, a clue in Genesis 36:31 suggests that the text was written when Israel was already a monarchy. Genesis 24 mentions domesticated camels, but camels were not domesticated until much later. The caravan trade in Genesis 37:25 only flourished in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.

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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Who Wrote The Bible

Over centuries, billions of people have read the Bible. Scholars have spent their lives studying it, while rabbis, ministers and priests have focused on interpreting, teaching and preaching from its pages.

As the sacred text for two of the worlds leading religions, Judaism and Christianity, as well as other faiths, the Bible has also had an unmatched influence on literatureparticularly in the Western world. It has been translated into nearly 700 languages, and while exact sales figures are hard to come by, its widely considered to be the worlds best-selling book.

But despite the Bibles undeniable influence, mysteries continue to linger over its origins. Even after nearly 2,000 years of its existence, and centuries of investigation by biblical scholars, we still dont know with certainty who wrote its various texts, when they were written or under what circumstances.

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Table Iii: Deuterocanonical Old Testament

The deuterocanonical books are works included in Catholic and Orthodox but not in Jewish and Protestant Bibles.

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The Gospels Are Not Eyewitness Accounts

The four canonical gospels in the New Testament are anonymous. The names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were not attached to them until the second century.

Whoever the original evangelists were, they never claimed they were reporting actual events they themselves saw. The gospels function more like than biographies of Jesus in that they are theologically motivated. Each presents a particular interpretation of Jesus in which Jesus serves as a spokesperson for an evangelists theological position.

In Matthew, the most Jewish of the Gospels, we hear Jesus proclaim the continuing validity of the Torah. In the gentile-oriented John, Jesus Himself breaks the Sabbath. Mark presents a Jesus who is in agony and distress before His death the Johannine Jesus, by contrast, is calm and in total control.

Some scholars have proposed that the Gospels were written as midrash, a Jewish interpretative technique that reworks old scriptural narratives into new formsa remake, as Hollywood would style it. Thus, Jesuss 40-day sojourn in the desert parallels Mosess 40 years of exile in Midian. When Jesus comes out of the desert announcing the Kingdom of God, that was taken from Moses returning from exile and proclaiming Israels coming liberation from slavery. The call of the Twelve Disciples was inspired by Elijahs call of Elisha. And so on it goesthe gospels were constructed from bits and pieces of old stories but with new cast members and a new stage.

Timeline Of Bible Translation History

1,400 BC: The first written Word of God: The Ten Commandments delivered to Moses.

500 BC: Completion of All Original Hebrew Manuscripts which make up The 39 Books of the Old Testament.

200 BC: Completion of the Septuagint Greek Manuscripts which contain The 39 Old Testament Books AND 14 Apocrypha Books.

1st Century AD: Completion of All Original Greek Manuscripts which make up The 27 Books of the New Testament.

315 AD: Athenasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, identifies the 27 books of the New Testament which are today recognized as the canon of scripture.

382 AD: Jerome’s Latin Vulgate Manuscripts Produced which contain All 80 Books .

500 AD: Scriptures have been Translated into Over 500 Languages.

600 AD: LATIN was the Only Language Allowed for Scripture.

995 AD: Anglo-Saxon Translations of The New Testament Produced.

1384 AD: Wycliffe is the First Person to Produce a manuscript Copy of the Complete Bible All 80 Books.

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What Are Bible Commentaries

A Bible commentary is a written, systematic series of explanations and interpretations of Scripture. Commentaries often analyze or expound on individual books of the Bible, chapter by chapter and verse by verse. Some commentary works provide analysis of the whole of Scripture.

Did Jesus Have A Child

The book that claims Jesus had a wife and kids and the embattled author behind it. The authors want to talk about Christ. They want you to know that, buried beneath centuries of misinformation and conspiracy, Jesus had a secret wife, named Mary Magdalene, and he fathered two children with her.

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What Was The First Bible Commentary

The earliest known commentary on Christian scriptures was by a Gnostic named Heracleon in the 170s CE. Most of the patristic commentaries are in the form of homilies, or discourses to the faithful, and range over the whole of Scripture. There are two schools of interpretation, that of Alexandria and that of Antioch.

Matthew And Luke Plagiarized Mark

The majority of New Testament scholars agree that out of all four gospels. It is short, was written in poor Greek, and contains geographical and other errors.

Rather than being independent accounts of the life of Jesus, the gospels of Matthew and Luke can be shown to have borrowed heavily from Mark, in some instances even copying him almost verbatim. Matthew uses about 607 of Marks 661 verses Luke incorporates 360.

To their credit, Matthew and Luke improved on Marks original text. They corrected grammar, style, accuracy, and theology.

For example, Mark 5:1 erroneously calls the eastern edge of the Sea of Galilee the country of the Gerasenes, which is actually more than 50 kilometers away. Matthew 8:28 substitutes the more plausible Gadara, a spa only 12 kilometers from the lake. In Mark 7:19, Jesus declares all foods clean, something the Torah-observant Matthew apparently disagreed with, since he didnt copy the statement in his parallel account.

Mark wrongly attributes a quote from Malachi to Isaiah Matthew 3:3 corrects this mistake. Marks more primitive Christology allows Jesus to be , and not by a Jew. In the more developed Christology of Matthew, Lord is used 19 times, and in Luke, its used 16 times.

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Alphabetical List Of Old Testament Authors

• Amos: The book of Amos
• Daniel: The book of Daniel
• David: Psalms
• Ezekiel: The book of Ezekiel
• Ezra: The book of Ezra
• Habakkuk: The book of Habakkuk
• Haggai: The book of Haggai
• Hosea: The book of Hosea
• Isaiah: The book of Isaiah
• Jeremiah: 1st and 2nd Kings, Lamentations, the book of Jeremiah
• Joel: The book of Joel
• Jonah: The book of Jonah
• Joshua: The book of Joshua
• Malachi: The book of Malachi
• Micah: The book of Micah
• Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy
• Nahum: The book of Nahum
• Nehemiah: The book of Nehemiah
• Obadiah: The book of Obadiah
• Samuel:
• Solomon: Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Song of Solomon
• Zechariah: The book of Zechariah
• Zephaniah: The book of Zephaniah

Read More About The Dead Sea Scrolls In The Bas Library

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Hershels Crusade, No. 1: He Who Freed the Dead Sea Scrolls So, of course, the question: What would have happened if Hershel had not carried out his campaign to free the scrolls and had instead granted the new editor-in-chief the opportunity to turn matters about? I have actually debated this question on several occasions with Emanuel himself and have concludedgiven Tovs obvious talent for managing such a minor miraclethat the publications in the fall of 1991 that have been credited with freeing the Dead Sea Scrolls actually played a very different, and arguably more important, role.

Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? Most scholars believe the Dead Sea Scrolls were either written or collected by a sect of Jews called Essenes, who are described by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus and the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo. However, the scrolls themselves make no explicit reference to the Essenes. Scholars infer the connection because of the congruence of Essene philosophy and doctrine as reflected in the scrolls and as described in Josephus and Philo.

Searching for the Original Bible When ancient Biblical texts differ from one another, which one should we believe? More specifically, in answering this question: How helpful are those ancient scrolls of the Hebrew Bible found among the Dead Sea Scrolls?

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Did Moses Write Genesis

As stated before, most scholars attribute the authorship of Genesis and the other first four books of the Old Testament known as the Pentateuch to Moses. But how do we know this? How do we know that Moses, and not a series of authors as proposed in the JEDP theory linked above, wrote this book?

First, as this Answers in Genesis article explains, we have documentary witnesses. This means we have verses in the Bible that attribute the authorship to him such as Numbers 33:1-2.

Second, as mentioned in the Answers in Genesis article, not only does the Pentateuch confirm Moses authorship, but the rest of the Bible, including the New Testament does as well. This means thousands of years of Jewish tradition would have upheld this position.

For a group that revered Scriptures so much and paid meticulous attention to the text when copying it, if Moses had not written the books, the Jewish people likely would not have held to such a strong tradition by saying he did. Furthermore, we have testimony from Jesus himself that Moses wrote these books.

But this does bring forth the question: how would Moses know all of these things? How would he know about the events of Genesis and other events that happened hundreds of years before his time?

First, we cannot discount supernatural revelation. Scripture was divinely inspired.

Development Of The Christian Canons

Development of the Old Testament canonDevelopment of the New Testament canonSt. Jerome in his StudyJeromeLatinVulgate

The Old Testament canon entered into Christian use in the Greek Septuagint translations and original books, and their differing lists of texts. In addition to the Septuagint, Christianity subsequently added various writings that would become the New Testament. Somewhat different lists of accepted works continued to develop in antiquity. In the 4th century a series of synods produced a list of texts equal to the 39, 46, 51, or 54-book canon of the Old Testament and to the 27-book canon of the New Testament that would be subsequently used to today, most notably the Synod of Hippo in 393 CE. Also c. 400, Jerome produced a definitive Latin edition of the Bible , the canon of which, at the insistence of the Pope, was in accord with the earlier Synods. With the benefit of hindsight, it can be said that this process effectively set the New Testament canon, although there are examples of other canonical lists in use after this time.

The New Testament writers assumed the inspiration of the Old Testament, probably earliest stated in 2 Timothy 3:16, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God”.

Some denominations have additional canonical holy scriptures beyond the Bible, including the standard works of the Latter Day Saints movement and Divine Principle in the Unification Church.

Ethiopian Orthodox canon

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Hidden away nearly 2,000 years ago in desert caves adjacent to the ruins of Qumran along the shores of the Dead Sea, the Dead Sea Scrolls, first discovered by local Bedouin in 1947, include biblical manuscripts like the Great Isaiah Scroll, but also previously unknown sectarian writings likely associated with the early Jewish community who lived at Qumran. The scrolls revolutionized scholarly understandings of early Judaism during the Second Temple period and provided new information about the varieties of Jewish thought that flourished at the time.

Old Testament: The Single Author Theory

The Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, narrates the history of the people of Israel over about a millennium, beginning with Gods creation of the world and humankind, and contains the stories, laws and moral lessons that form the basis of religious life for both Jews and Christians. For at least 1,000 years, both Jewish and Christian tradition held that a single author wrote the first five books of the BibleGenesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomywhich together are known as the Torah and the Pentateuch . That single author was believed to be Moses, the Hebrew prophet who led the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt and guided them across the Red Sea toward the Promised Land.

Yet nearly from the beginning, readers of the Bible observed that there were things in the so-called Five Books of Moses that Moses himself could not possibly have witnessed: His own death, for example, occurs near the end of Deuteronomy. A volume of the Talmud, the collection of Jewish laws recorded between the 3rd and 5th centuries A.D., dealt with this inconsistency by explaining that Joshua likely wrote the verses about Moses death.

Rembrandt van Rijn, painting of Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law, 1659.

That’s one opinion among many, says Joel Baden, a professor at Yale Divinity School and author of The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis. But they’re already asking the questionwas it possible or not possible for to have written them?

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