Who wrote the Bible?
The most asked question about this collection, and the texts answer part of it themselves. Several of them describe being written, edited, burned, rewritten, abridged and read aloud, by people who give their names.
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IIIc. 700-587 BCEDeuteronomy · Chapter 31
24 When Moses had finished writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished,
26 “Take this book of the law, and put it by the side of the ark of Yahweh your God’s covenant, that it may be there for a witness against you.
The collection's own account of its beginning: Moses finishes writing the law in a book and it is laid beside the ark. Deuteronomy is filed here, in the seventh century, because critical scholarship reads it as the book at the centre of Josiah's reform — the next stop.
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IIIc. 700-587 BCE2 Kings · Chapter 22
8 Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe, “I have found the book of the law in Yahweh’s house.” Hilkiah delivered the book to Shaphan, and he read it.
11 When the king had heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes.
The eighteenth year of Josiah, 622 BCE by the usual reckoning, and a book of the law is found in the temple by a high priest who did not know it was there. The king's reaction — he tears his clothes — is the reaction of a man hearing it for the first time. Whether this is a rediscovery or a debut is the oldest live question in the study of these texts.
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IIIc. 700-587 BCEJeremiah · Chapter 36
4 Then Jeremiah called Baruch the son of Neriah; and Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah all Yahweh’s words, which he had spoken to him, on a scroll of a book.
23 When Jehudi had read three or four columns, the king cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire that was in the brazier, until all the scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the brazier.
32 Then Jeremiah took another scroll, and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah, who wrote therein from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the book which Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire; and many similar words were added to them.
A book being made, in three verses. Jeremiah dictates, Baruch writes; the king cuts the scroll up and burns it column by column; Jeremiah dictates it again — and the chapter says the second edition was longer. Whatever Jeremiah is, it is not one dictation.
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VIc. 400-200 BCENehemiah · Chapter 8
1 All the people gathered themselves together as one man into the wide place that was in front of the water gate; and they spoke to Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which Yahweh had commanded to Israel.
2 Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, both men and women, and all who could hear with understanding, on the first day of the seventh month.
8 They read in the book, in the law of God, distinctly; and they gave the sense, so that they understood the reading.
The book read aloud to everyone at once, and note the last clause: they gave the sense, so that the people understood. Interpretation is not something that happened to these texts later. It is in the scene where they are first published.
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VIIc. 200-100 BCESirach (Ecclesiasticus) · Chapter 50
27 I have written in this book the instruction of understanding and knowledge, I Jesus, the son of Sirach Eleazar, of Jerusalem, who out of his heart poured forth wisdom.
A signature, which is rare enough here to be startling. Almost every book in the Hebrew Bible is anonymous or attributed to a figure from its own past; this writer gives his name, his father's name and his city.
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VIIc. 200-100 BCE2 Maccabees · Chapter 2
23 These things which have been declared by Jason of Cyrene in five books, we will attempt to abridge in one book.
26 Although to us, who have taken upon ourselves the painful labor of the abridgement, the task is not easy, but a matter of sweat and sleeplessness,
And an editor, describing his method and how much he disliked doing it. He is condensing five books by Jason of Cyrene, which do not survive, and he says so in the second chapter rather than hiding it.
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IXc. 50-110 CERomans · Chapter 16
22 I, Tertius, who write the letter, greet you in the Lord.
The secretary signs his own name in the middle of Paul's greetings. Paul dictated; Tertius wrote; and for one verse the man holding the pen says hello.
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IXc. 50-110 CELuke · Chapter 1
1 Since many have undertaken to set in order a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us,
3 it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write to you in order, most excellent Theophilus;
The only preface in the New Testament, and it is a historian's: others have written accounts already, he has looked into it himself, and this is his ordered version for a named reader. It states its sources as eyewitnesses at second hand rather than as itself.
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IXc. 50-110 CE2 Peter · Chapter 3
15 Regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote to you,
16 as also in all of his letters, speaking in them of these things. In those, there are some things that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unsettled twist, as they also do to the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
The latest-written book in the New Testament refers to Paul's letters as a body of writing already in circulation, sets them beside 'the other Scriptures', and remarks that they are hard to understand. The collection is here quoting itself, and beginning to close.
None of this settles the authorship of the books that name no author, which is most of them. What it does show is that the collection never presented itself as arriving whole. It contains a scroll being dictated to a secretary, burned by a king and dictated again longer than before; a historian apologising for the labour of abridging somebody else's five volumes; a writer explaining that others had written first and he thought he would do better; and a letter complaining that Paul is hard to understand. A book that shows its own workings is not thereby proved true or false. It is proved to be a book.
The passages above are the text, reproduced exactly and checked against the same files the reader uses; every reference is verified when the site is built. The commentary between them is editorial, written for this volume.