Were the books in the bible written by the authors whose names they bear?

Question

How can we ever know?

Answer 1

Mostly
Moses wrote the law 1st five books
Paul wrote the epistles to the Churches.

Many other authors. there is a lot of info about this in the Library.

Diamonds Answer is best. Good Link Diamond.

Answer 2

Yes and no.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written by the people whom the book is named after.

First, Second and Third John were written by John the Apostle, same guy who wrote the Gospel of John.

First and Second Peter were written by Peter, although some liberal scholars have their doubts, but then again liberal scholars doubt everything in the Bible even the resurrection of Jesus.

Jude, Jesus' younger brother, wrote Jude.

James, the eldest of Jesus' siblings, wrote James.

The Apostle Paul wrote something like 12 or 13 books in the New Testament and those books are not named after Paul, but rather they are named after the person or the name of the city the church was in that Paul addressed the book to.

Paul tells us that he wrote those books becasue he tells us inside the text of each book he wrote.

For example Titus was written by Paul and sent to Titus.

First and Second Timothy were written by Paul to a young Pastor named, Timothy.

Most of the books, but not all, tell us who the author is.

In some cases another book of the Bible tells us who wrote it.

For example, Jesus told us that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. Although it is quite likely that Joshua wrote the last chapter describing how Mosus died and was buried.

Joshua wrote Joshua.

Ruth is about Ruth but we don't know who wrote it. Jewish tradition tells us that Samuel wrote it, but it might have been Ruth who wrote it. Or even Boaz or their son.

Samual wrote 1st and 2nd Samuel and perhaps some others.

Starting with the book, Song of Solomon, through the end of the Old Testament, if the book is named after a person, that person was the author.

If you want to know about a particular book, go to your favoriate internet search engine and type into the question box:

"Who wrote the Book of XXXXX" without the quotes and you'll get several links suggesting the answer.

Pastor Art

Answer 3

Some of the books of the Bible were written at least in part by the people whose names they bear. For instance the book of Luke was almost certainly written by Luke the physician as well as the book of Acts. However, other books like the book of Deuteronomy, while most of it was probably written by Moses have some parts that were obviously added by a redactor, perhaps Joshua or Ezra.

Deuteronomy 34:7 Moses was 120 years old when he died. His eye was undimmed, and his vigor unabated. 8 And the people of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days. Then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses were ended. 9 And Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him. So the people of Israel obeyed him and did as the LORD had commanded Moses.

But the important thing to realize is that the supervising author of the Scriptures is the Holy Spirit of God.

2 Peter 1:19 And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, 20 knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

Answer 4

Many biblical authors are unknown. Where an author has been named, that name has sometimes been selected by pious believers rather than given by the author himself. The four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are examples of books which did not carry the names of their actual authors. The present names were assigned long after these four books were written. In spite of what the Gospel authors say, biblical scholars are now almost unanimously agreed that none of the Gospel authors was either a disciple of Jesus or an eyewitness to his ministry.

Although some books of the Bible are traditionally attributed to a single author, many are actually the work of multiple authors. Genesis and John are two examples of multiple authorship.

Answer 5

Some were written by the person and some were verbally memorized for 1-2 generations and then written down by someone else. To find out about the authors of the Bible, I suggest that you read "Our Early Fathers". The entire Bible was written in 160+ years.

Also know that it was Jesus that gave the apostles the ability to be infallible in teaching others His teachings when the Holy Spirit descended onto them at Pentecost. St. Peter was appointed by Jesus to head His church and when the pope spoke of the scriptures, the Holy Spirit guided him without error. The Holy Spirit is our Advocate and makes sure that oral and written doctrine of the Church and translation of the Hebrew language was and is without error.

Answer 6

The Holy Bible Douay-Rheims Version

With Challoner Revisions 1749-52
1899 Edition of the John Murphy Company

IMPRIMATUR:
James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, September 1, 1899.

Pope Damasus assembled the first list of books of the Bible at the Roman Council in 382 A.D. He commissioned St. Jerome to translate the original Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin, which became known as the Latin Vulgate Bible and was declared by the Church to be the only authentic and official version, in 1546.

The DR New Testament was first published by the English College at Rheims in 1582 A.D. The DR Old Testament was first published by the English College at Douay in 1609 A.D. The first King James Version was not published until 1611. This online DRV contains all 73 books, including the seven Deutero-Canonical books (erroneously called Apocrypha by Protestants). These seven books were included in the 1611 KJV, but not in later KJV Bibles.

The whole Douay-Rheims Bible was revised and diligently compared with the Latin Vulgate by Bishop Richard Challoner in 1749-1752 A.D. The notes included in the text were written by Dr. Challoner.

The DR Bible was photographically reproduced from the 1899 edition of the John Murphy Company, Baltimore, Maryland, by Tan Books in 1971. Eventually, this edition was optically scanned to produce a large text file which this publisher used for creating this website, with the aid of text-processing software.

One important goal of this project was to preserve the original text "as is", without making any changes in the wording, because the original text had the Imprimatur of James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, dated Sept 1st 1899.

The text file was checked quite thoroughly by software written by the publisher for punctuation errors and verses out of order. The index was humanly checked for misspelled words and the corrections were made to the text. However, some spelling errors may still be present in the text. Many verses were out of order in the original file. These have been corrected.

Every effort was made to ensure that this online version is an exact match to the original printed version. No words were added or ommitted from the text, except for correcting errors caused by the scanning process. No words were rearranged. No verse numbers were changed, except in the case of Psalm 9.

Psalm 9 originally contained 21 verses and there were 2 versions of Psalm 10, numbering 1-18 and 1-8. This obviously caused a conflict, so it was decided to make the first Psalm 10 as the last part of Psalm 9 and renumber the verses 22-39. This retains the same numbering as all the Douay Rheims. Note, in the Protestant Bibles the numbering of Psalms 10 through 146 differs by one.

Answer 7

A few were but most were not written by the titled person.

A good study bible will detail the history of the book and wheather the author is the Titled person or if there is a question about authorship.

Answer 8

The answer is some were and some were not. Timothy is not written by Timothy. Matthew is written by Matthew. So you need to do some research. Most bibles have a short intro to each book which informs you who the writer is thought to be.

Answer 9

Just to add my 2 cents.

The gospel of Mark was penned by John Mark but it was actually, like dictated by Peter.

Acts was written by Luke.
Then you have a bunch of epistles (letters) written by Paul.

Revelation was written by John, the same John as the gospel writer and the epistles I, II and III that bear his name.

Answer 10

Whoever said "mostly" hasn't taken a close look at this issue. We're not even sure who wrote the Gospels, let alone the older stuff. A lot, maybe most, of the stuff attributed to Paul is probably his. But remember, even the New Testament was the work of a committee convened by folks with their own agenda, accepting and rejecting accordingly, and using copies of copies of copies - at best.