Who Wrote the Bible?

66 Books of the Old and New Testament of the Bible

Is God the Author?

The bible is 66 books, written by 40 authors, almost 800,000 English words, 2000 years ago, almost translated into every language. When you study the integrity and design of the Bible, you find a singular message. The design and origin of the message is from outside space-time. The Old Testament include 39 books of the Bible, the first 5 books commonly known as the “Torah” or “The Law”. Next are the “history books” or the “prophets“, including Joshua, Judges, Samuels, and Kings. Then the “Writings” include books of Songs, Proverbs, Lamentations, and Chronicles. The New Testaments include 27 books of the bible that begins with the 4 Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The first 3 gospel of Mathew, Mark, and Luke are called the synoptic gospels because they are very similar in content. The Gospel of John stands apart from these three both on content and style. The Gnostic Gospels refers to Gnostic (means knowledge) Collections of writings about the teachings of Jesus were written around the 2nd century AD. These gospels are not accepted or not included in the canon by the Church as part of the Standard Biblical Canon, but part of what is called the New Testament Apocrypha. Some of them were vigorously suppressed and survive only as fragments. The New Testament Apocrypha (hidden writings) are a number of writings of the early Christian Church that claim to give accounts of Jesus’ teachings and his life, nature of God, and/or the teachings of his apostles and their lives. The books were considered by the church as useful, but not divinely inspired. These writings often have links with those books which are regarded as “Canonical”. Not every Christian Church agree as to which writings are regarded as “Canonical” and which are “Apocryphal“. Following the 4 gospels are the books of “Acts”, “Letters”, and finally “Revelation“. The Apostle Paul writes nearly half of the New Testament. People say the bible are from spectators who saw the account and other say that God is the true author who inspired the authors to write the bible.

Septuagint (Greek) or Canon (Hebrew) Scriptures

Holy Bible, dated 1885, antique gold lettering, leather and board, held together with dental floss

The Catholic Bible contains more books than the Protestant Bible because of events that happen long before Christ. During Babylonian exile the Hebrew scattered in the North and some went to the South with their bible manuscript. They lost their native Hebrew language within a few generations, so in order to keep their faith the Jewish scriptures had to be translated into Greek. A 100 years before Christ was born, we had the Hebrew scriptures and Greek scriptures of the old testament. Greek wrote additional books that were never translated back to Hebrew. The Greek version of the scriptures was called the Septuagint, which contains more books than the Hebrew version. 80% of quotes the Jesus and apostle made are from Septuagint scriptures of the Greek. The Greek version is more clear and prophetic than Hebrew version, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah. It points much more clearer to Christ than the Hebrew. The Hebrew people saw thousands of people converting to Christianity so they canonize their Old Testament and said anything written in Greek was not scripture. They picked this rule because the Greek scripture was so clear and people will convert by simply reading them.

Martin Luther

In the late 300s and early 400s the Pope and councils of the Church had to find scriptures according to the Septuagint. By the 1500s, Martin Luther found that the old testament from the Septuagint did not support his “faith alone” theology, so he used the Hebrew canon scriptures. This is why the protestant bible has fewer books than the Catholic bible. Luther did not entirely remove the books, but put them in the appendix between the Old and New Testament. In 1827, for the first time the protestant bible was written missing the Septuagint books by the English Bible Society. Prior to this, the protestant Kings of England would have beheaded any body who published the bible missing any books.

Is the Bible a Reliable Copy of the Original Writings

Early christian writings

The ancient manuscripts written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek have been copied over the centuries. Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, our earliest Hebrew copy of the Old Testament was the Masoretic text, dating around 800 A.D. The Dead Sea Scrolls date to the time of Jesus and were copied by the Qumran community, a Jewish sect living around the Dead Sea. When comparing the text that had a 800-1000 year gap, we find 95% of the Old Testament text are identical with only minor variations and a few discrepancies. We have tens of thousands of the New Testament in part or whole, dating from the 2nd century A.D. to the late fifteenth century when the printing press was invented.

The recto of Rylands Library Papyrus P52 from the Gospel of John.

Image via Wikipedia

These manuscripts have been found in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Italy; the oldest dated in 125 A.D. called the John Ryland’s manuscript founded in Egypt. Many early Christian papyri were discovered in 1935 dated to 150 A.D. included the four gospel. The bible has more manuscript evidence for ancient writings than any book copied. There are about 24,000 copies of the New testament, 10 copies of Caesar, 7 copies of Plato, and 643 copies of Homer. With all the thousands of manuscript evidence you would think there would be massive discrepancies, but the opposite is true. The New Testament manuscripts agree in 99.5% of the text with discrepancies that include spelling and word order. A few words have been changed or added. Most bible include the options as footnotes when there are discrepancies. How could there be such accuracy about 2,000 years ago. There could only be two options: The scribes that did the copying had meticulous methods for checking their copies for errors or the Holy Spirit made sure we have an accurate copy of God’s word so we can’t be deceived. A sign of God’s power and existence in history that had a great impact on people who copied the text. It is possible to put together the entire New Testament from thousands of early Christian writings who cited verses from the New Testament in their letters to their family and friends. For example, the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians dated 95 A.D. cites verses from the Gospels, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, Titus, Hebrews, and 1 Peter. The Letters of Ignatius dated 115 A.D. were written to several churches in Asia Minor and cited verses from Matthew, John, Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus. These letters indicate that the entire New Testament was write-in the first century A.D. In these writings there was no mention of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. but Matthew, Mark, and Luke record Jesus’ prophecy that the temple and city would be destroyed within that generation. If they had been written after 70 A.D., it is likely that the letters written after 70 A.D. would have mentioned the fulfillment of Jesus’ Prophecy. This amazing number of identical copies shows how God kept his word with great authority throughout history. As Nelson Glueck, former president of the Jewish Theological Seminary in the Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati stated, “In my opinion, every book of the New Testament was written between the forties and eighties of the first century A.D.”

The Dead Sea Scrolls of Qumran

Dead Sea Scroll Replica

The Dead Sea Scrolls founded by an Arab shepherd boy in search for a lost got in the Caves of Qumran in 1947. This became a scroll rush like the gold rush. Between 1947-1956, roughly 900 documents were found in eleven caves, including texts from the Hebrew Bible. These manuscripts are 1000 years older than any Hebrew manuscript found. Written on parchment and papyrus, most of the text are written in Hebrew but there are Greek and Aramaic writings. 127 of documents represent canonized text like our modern Bible today. Some passages are new and unrecognized to scholar. The scrolls included all the books in the bible except Ester. The Essenes (healer) are Jewish sects that occupied Qumran. They broke away from Judaism about a century and a half before the Roman War against the Jewish. They are probably responsible for hiding the scroll for safe keeping away from Roman destruction. Could it be they were not in agreement with the Jerusalem priest on fundamental issues? The scrolls said very little about who wrote and hide them. Clay pots with rolls of leather scrolls inside went to Bethlehem at a shop of a dealer. He took them to the Bishop in Jerusalem and bought 4 of the 7. Sold them in a want ad in the US. and sold them to an Israeli and brought them back to Israel. The scroll (copied) go back to about 200 B.C. but written 100s of years before that.