What was the method that was used to do decide who wrote each book in the Bible?

Question

Just curious. Any scholars on here that could explain this to me?
For example, how did they know that Matthew the tax collector, who was an apostle of Jesus Christ, was actually the author of Matthew?
I know some of the books make authorship plain. However, some of them don't.
This may seem trivial, but it's not trivial to me.

And as much as I hate to request it, PLEASE be respectful!

Answer 1

The four Gospels (along with Acts) were based on who the church felt they were addressed to and which of the apostles was most likely the one to have fit in with that particular authorship. Acts was likely written by the same author as Luke, and Luke is attributed to Acts as well as his gospel.

Many scholars still debate the authorship of the gospels, but continue to refer to their authors as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, though they may disagree with it.

Hebrews was always referred to as having been written by Paul, but this is highly contested. The Early Church held a council in the Fourth Century, and the debate over authorship of the book nearly kept it out of the canon. Martin Luther in the 16th Century suggested removing it from the New Testament, too.

Scholars also debate if the John of the gospel, the three epistles, and Revelation is even the same John. John is a common name, and it is quite possible that we are talking about three different Johns.

Answer 2

Being as you're Cath, i will have a pass from the Cath perspective. There are seventy 3 books in my Bible, and none of them are apocryphal. 7 of them are apocryphal in accordance to the Prods. various those disputed books are interior the OT. The Bible that Jesus used contained those 7 books, so the CC makes use of them. The Jews did no longer close their canon 'till at last around ninety advert whilst there became into lots friction between Christians and Jews. The Jews desperate those 7 books should not be interior the Bible, and to today the Jewish Bible does no longer incorporate those books. The CC makes use of the previous checklist of the OT; the Prods use the recent checklist. The previous checklist became into used till the Reformation whilst those 7 books have been thrown out. by the way, some Prods say that the time era Protestant is incorrect. This subject count is a lot extra complicated. i've got oversimplified for sake of brevity. seek 'deuterocanon'

Answer 3

The word Bible comes from a Latin form of the Greek word Biblia which means "little books." The Bible refers to the collection of 66 books from different authors compiled to make up what we refer to today as "The Holy Bible". Thirty-nine of the original books kept by ancient Israel in Hebrew are the ones we know today as The Old Testament.

The last section of the Bible known familiarly as The New Testament is comprised of 27 books or letters written in Greek. The Greek used was not formal Greek but the conversational Greek used at the time of the Apostles.

Forty men shared in the writing of the Bible over a span of about 1,600 years from the time of Moses to the last book written by John. The last book of the Old Testament, Malachi, was written about 443 B.C. The first book of the New Testament, Matthew, was written about 40 A.D. leaving a 500 year gap between the Old and New Testament books.
You can find a great table showing when each book was written, where, by whom and the time frame covered... at
http://agards-bible-timeline.com/q1_bible_who_wrote.html


http://everystudent.com/features/bible.html
http://www.new-life.net/sermons/How%20Can%20You%20Believe%20the%20Bible.pdf
These web sites give you reasons why you can believe the Bible... it is historically accurate, archaeology backs up the Biblical accounts, & textual scholarship confirms that the books of the Bible have not changed since they were first written.

Answer 4

The 4 gospels ( Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are accounts of the life of Christ and are attributed to the authors in the same order. Acts (of the apostles) is attributed to Luke, the same author as the gospel of Luke and is an account of the acts of the apostles during the "early church" (notice that there was only one church then, there were no baptists, or catholics, only christians) The "Pauline" Epistles (Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians,Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, Romans,1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Galatians, Philemon.) were written by paul, this is a certainty as they all start with "I, Paul, a bondservant of Christ". Hebrews is of an unknown authorship, although many attribute it to Paul because it's style is reminiscent of Pauls, he may not have addressed it as he did all the other epistles that he wrote because he himself was a hebrew and he was speaking to his people in that particular epistle.The next NT book James, is identified as being written by James a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ. 1 and 2 Peter, were penned by Peter the apostle, as the opening line is Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. 1,2 and 3 John were apparently written by John though I am not sure is it is the same john as revelation. Then theres Jude, it is title so because its opening is Jude a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James. and finally Revelation which was written by John while exiled on the isle of Patmos. These are just the new testament books, i didnt have time to get into the OT right now. I hope that i have helped you in some way, please email me [e-mail] if you have any other questions, i would be happy to discuss them with you.

Answer 5

This is widely discussed by the earliest Church fathers. From them we can confirm the identities of these authors; they also wrote that that Matthew's gospel was originally written in Hebrew.

www.earlychristianwritings.com (disregard the majority of the editor's notes before each document; the web site is hosted by folks who have a decided gnostic view.)

Answer 6

A lot of the books they just determine to be this or that person. These were determined over 1000 years ago. (For instance, the Author of the first 5 books is supposed to be Moses, but he wrote about his own death, which is a handy trick).

For a nice, unbiased approach, try the wiki article. Let me get a link for you. This starts with the OT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible#The_Hebrew_Bible

Answer 7

It is known that the gospels of matthew,mark,luke and john were written by others.A vast majority of the books,letters and gospels included in the bible were written by authors unknown

Answer 8

the people that wrote the buble were people that were inspired by god which were profets and people of god written in there own language and then translated

Answer 9

As far as I can tell, they "guessed." They are still debating who wrote what. There's just no way to know for sure.

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbible1.html