Who wrote the bible?

Question

I'm after concrete answers here- facts, names, dates. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John etc won't do for me I'm afraid- I want provable fact.

I'm trying to work out why so many Christians have such absolute faith that the book they subscribe to is to be trusted (I mean, I can write a book and say 'you just have to believe this', but it's not going to be the word of god).

Other than being TOLD by believers that this book is the genuine article, what makes people think they can trust that this book is the genuine article? The teachings within it are not enough to justify the validity of the text- we need to know where it's from.

And as a sub question, if the bible IS the word of God, then who's word is in other religions' texts like the Koran? Is that God, too? Who's got the facts right and why are there different versions?

Anyone?

Ok, so if the KORAN is right, then who wrote that? 'Men' isn't enough for me. If a book teaches me the word of god I like to check where it comes from before I change my life.

When I say 'Matthew, Mark, Luke and John' is not good enough for me I mean that just their names won't do. Do we know they existed? When? Where did they live? When did they die? Did they witness the events of the New Testament? That sort of thing is proof to me- just listing 4 names ('Graham, Martin, Frank and George' for example), is not.

Answer 1

Biblical scholars tell us that the books of the Christian bible were not literally written by guys named Matthew Mark Luke and John.

In the 4th century, Constantine, the Roman emperor, who was the first Christian emperor, was trying to unite the Roman empire and so wanted to come up with a commonly agreed-upon literature for Christianity. He called a convention of religious scholars where they had votes to decide which of the existing Christian writings would be considered the core set of religious documents. This was done at the Council of Nicaea, later ratified by the Council of Trent. Some stuff was voted in (M, M L and J) and others voted out.

These "books" of the bible were written at different times and were written from the perspective of different cultural groups whose understanding of Christ's life were seen thru the prism of their own cultures. None of them were written even within 100 years of Christ's earthly existance, and they were based on stories transmitted over many generations through an oral tradition.

There are a number of contradictions between the four books of the bible, for example, the birth stories of Jesus are certainly not consistent.

A group of biblical scholars wrote an interesting book several years ago you might be interested in, where they took "votes" on the evidence of how different quotes attributed to Jesus match up with the historical record of who Jesus was. The book was written by scholars who put on the Jesus Seminars, which are gatherings of scholars of the historical Jesus. The book is called The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus.

It seems pretty hard to maintain that the gospels are the 100% word of God when the gospels contradict each other, instruct that it's a sin to wear clothing consisting of different kinds of cloth, and gave instruction of the right way to treat your slaves (and "freeing then" was not the instruction). The Jesus Seminar people are especially doubtful as to the accuracy of the gospel of John.

Least anyone think this is far-out stuff, I've several friends who are former priests, and when they were in seminary, they reviewed a lot of this material. Turns out that although priests know about this stuff, they haven't been especially encouraged to share this with their congregations.

For me, the historical Jesus doesn't diminish who Jesus was in my eyes. In many respects I find him more impressive and compelling as a historical figure that I did before when I was "blind believer" in everything my religion taught me.

Answer 2

Since nobody knows their real names, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John will have to do:

Mark written between 60-65AD
Luke 85-95AD
Matthew circa 95AD
John 95-105AD

Since there are 66 books in the Bible, some of them with more than one author, and some compiled over a period of time, that will have to do for now.


ADAM (below)
"conmen wrote it, about 1500 years ago to make a quick buck"

That doubtless explains why people can be found quoting from it in the second century. In the first century, and before, so far as the OT is concerned.

Quite a clever trick if it had yet to be written.

Answer 3

The only concrete answer I can give you is that God wrote the bible...or more accurately, the Holy Spirit wrote the bible (I can already feel the thumbs down coming...but allow me to explain)...

The bible isn't a book, it is a collection of books written by dozens of people from many different backgrounds over the course of 1,500 years or so. The dead sea scrolls contain the full text of every book in the Old Testament (except Esther) and date well before the birth of Christ...and the New Testament derives from over 20,000 manuscripts, the oldest of which dates only shortly after the death of Christ. The survival of all these manuscripts is a miracle of epic proportions in itself...the consistency of the message across all these books written by different people at different points in time is another.

Ask and it will be given to you seek and you will find...little tip...it works both ways. If you seek out inconsistencies and ask yourself (or other people) what they mean, you will find an answer in the bible...but not the right answer! It comes back to faith...if you seek out the consistency in all these 66 stories (or more if you want to read a Catholic bible) and ask God to explain when you can't find them, he will give you the answer you seek...and it really is amazing once you start finding the true messages in the bible and realize that all these different people writing from all different walks of life understood something quite simple about God...I pray you choose to hear it some day.

Answer 4

Luke the Physician who accompanied the apostle Paul on his early travels around Asia Minor etc wrote the gospel that bears his name and the book of Acts. Luke started writing his gospel around 40 AD and completed Acts about 10 years later. Not surprisingly, Paul uses Luke's gospel several times in his earliest letters including 1 Corinthians.
John the apostle, son of Zebedee, (mentioned Mark3v17) wrote the gospel of John. This gospel is a primary source as that term is defined by David above. There is a tradition that John wrote down his gospel later than the others, but Paul quotes John's gospel several times. This stronger quotation evidence suggests John must have completed his gospel no later than c. AD 50
Mark and Matthew are harder to date but due to certain quotations of Mark in Matthew, Mark is the older of these two gospels. Both are probably much older than AD 100. It is difficult to be more precise.

Answer 5

For the Old Testament, a lot of interesting research has been done and we can identify fairly closely the people who did write it. In fact there are at least four separate authors writing at separate times, who were all edited together - probably by Ezra the Scribe. I recommend the book Who Wrote The Bible by RE Friedman if you're interested in this topic.

As regards the New Testament, it's interesting that so many answers here assert they were written by contemporaries of Jesus who knew him. In fact there is no evidence of this at all, and plenty of evidence that they were in fact written no earlier than 70CE - at least 35 years after Jesus' death. There are plenty of contradictions between the different gospels, which would seem to indicate that factual accuracy wasn't one of the main interests of the writers - they just wanted to get theological points across. Look up Synoptic problem in Wikipedia for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_problem

Answer 6

Just to start off on a clear footing, the Bible is not from the same source as the Koran. The God of the Bible is radically different in many ways (though similar in some) from the god of the Koran.

Much of the validity of the Bible comes from the ability to trace the events in the Bible with those through history...to follow prophecies, and to support the Scriptures with external written sources in many cases. There is a ton of evidence pointing to the Bible as true that often time gets ignored or minimized.

Answer 7

Almost the entire Bible was written in Oriental countries. The men who wrote it down were all Orientals. One thousand years before Buddha, in 1513 B.C.E., Moses, who lived in the Middle East, was inspired by God to write the first book of the Bible, called Genesis. From this beginning, the Bible follows one harmonious theme right through to its final book of Revelation. The Bible was completed in 98 C.E., about 600 years after Buddha. Did you know that the Bible is made up of 66 different books? Yes, the Bible is a library in itself!

Thus, over a period of 1,600 years from Moses' time on, some 40 men shared in writing the harmonious record of the Bible. They testify that their writings were inspired by a power far higher than mortal man. The Christian apostle Paul wrote: "All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness."* (2 Timothy 3:16) And the apostle Peter explained: "No prophecy of Scripture springs from any private interpretation. For prophecy was at no time brought by man's will, but men spoke from God as they were borne along by holy spirit."—2 Peter 1:20, 21; 2 Samuel 23:2; Luke 1:70.

Most remarkable, too, is the way the Bible has come down to this day. For thousands of years, until the invention of printing about 500 years ago, copies of the Bible had to be made by hand. No other literary work of ancient times was so diligently copied and recopied. It was copied over and over again, but always with great care. The copyists made only a few minor errors, and a comparison of these has established the original text inspired by God. A leading authority on Bible manuscripts, Sir Frederic Kenyon, says: "The last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed." Today, there are still in existence about 16,000 handwritten copies of the Bible or parts of it, some even surviving from the second century before Christ. Moreover, accurate translations have been made from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek languages in which the Bible was originally written into nearly all the languages of the earth.

Answer 8

The New Testiment is easier to pin down than the Old, but in a general sense it was written by over 30 different people over the course of about 4000 years, then codified the 4th or 5th century AD.

I'm sorry that Mathew, Mark, Luke etc. is not good enough for you because that's who wrote those books. All were close followers of Jesus and eye witnesses to his ministry. Matthew, I believe was a tax collector who converted, Luke was a Doctor. John is thought to be the disciple John Brother of Jesus. The Apostle Paul wrote Acts and most of the Letters named after cities. The Disciple Peter wrote the Books baring his name as did the disciples Timothy, James etc.

Most responsible historians recognize the authors of the bible as real people who actually lived, followed Jesus, and wrote down their experiences and ideas that were ultimately codeified into the Bible. Some think they are authoritative and others don't but there is no question that the New Testiment was written by the followers of Jesus and early members of the 1st century church in the Roman Provinces of Palestine and Judea.

Answer 9

Thousands and thousands of people have spent their lives trying to figure that out. I'm afraid you'll never get a definitive answer. I read obsessively but one of the things I've figured out is that for life's big questions, the answer isn't in books. The other thing I figured out is that life is not a question so it's pointless to go looking for the answer. Not very helpful perhaps, but my 2 cents.

Answer 10

I I recommend the documentary by ‘Robert Beckford ‘ called ‘ Who Wrote the Bible ‘ . Other than that you can look at the previous answers on YA ... about 1 person a month asks the SAME question .