Paul Clark

By Paul Clark

In the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote the gospels. Paul, Peter, John, Jude and James, the brother of Jesus, wrote the epistles, and John rounded everything off with Revelation.[i]

And according to modern academics, almost all of the above is wrong.

In Part 1, I will focus on the academic toolkit, looking at how scholars have investigated the authorship of the Bible.

Part 2 will focus on the early books of the Old Testament and the Documentary Hypothesis that dominated scholarship for much of the 20^th century.

Part 3 will examine the New Testament, looking at the authorship of the gospels.

PROBLEMS WITH THE TEXT

We don’t have an original text of the Bible. For the Old Testament, we have two main families of texts.[ii] The oldest Hebrew versions of the Old Testament are known as the Masoretic Text, created between the 7^th and 10^th centuries CE. The oldest complete copy has the unlikely name the Leningrad Codex and dates from the 11^th century.

The second family of texts is the Septuagint, a Greek translation of Jewish scripture, which was created in the 3^rd and 2^nd centuries BCE. Some fragments have been found that date from as early as the 2^nd and 1^st centuries BCE, but for longer texts, our oldest copies were written more than 500 years later.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

Discovered in the mid-20^th century, the exquisitely-preserved Dead Sea Scrolls date from the 3^rd century BCE to the first century CE. They contain fragments of almost every book of the Old Testament plus a complete copy of Isaiah. Nearly all of these align with the Masoretic Text, but some show correspondences with the Septuagint and a few others don’t fit into either tradition.[iii]

Thus, the Masoretic Text seems to correspond closely to texts used in Palestine around the time of Jesus, and for this reason, it is often treated as authoritative. But it isn’t that simple, since many scholars believe the Hebrew text that lies behind the Septuagint may pre-date the texts on which the Masoretic Text is based.[iv]

THE OLDEST NEW TESTAMENTS

The situation with the New Testament is even messier. Rather than two basic families of text, scholars are confronted with an enormous variety, and they have largely given up on the quest to find “original” texts.[v]

Our oldest fragments have the romantic names like P64, which dates from the late 2^nd century and consists of nothing more than scraps of the Gospel of Matthew.[vi] Another much larger fragment, P46, contains most of Thessalonians and dates from the end of the 2^nd century. Our oldest full or nearly full manuscripts were written in the 4^th century. By this time, the church was richer and its scribes better trained and able to copy with a minimum of errors. But this came after centuries of error-strewn copying by poorly-trained scribes.[vii]

WHY SUCH A MESS?

The answer is technological. Paper wasn’t used in the Middle East or Europe until around the year 900-1,000 CE. Instead, scribes wrote on papyrus or parchment, which under normal circumstances only remains legible for a few decades. This means that documents had to be recopied multiple times every century, creating ample opportunity for error, editing, interpolation and omission.[viii]

ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL SCHOLARSHIP

Both ancient and medieval scholars were keenly aware of these difficulties, but they did what they could with the tools to hand. Much of the focus of their work was theological, trying to understand what God was saying to us. How far should biblical texts be taken literally and how far should they be analysed to uncover a deeper, spiritual meaning?[ix]

The modern reader may be surprised by just how much early scholars rejected biblical literalism. Thus Origen of Alexandria, one of the 3^rd century’s most important theologians, wrote: “For who that has understanding will suppose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, existed without a sun, and moon, and stars? And that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? And who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise in Eden, towards the east, and placed in it a tree of life…?”[x]

HISTORICAL-CRITICAL SCHOLARSHIP

A new approach to the Bible emerged during the 17^th and 18^th centuries.[xi] Rather than concerning themselves with theological understanding, historical-critical scholars looked at the Bible in the same way historians look at any other historical document. They asked who wrote it (a question also important to ancient and medieval scholars), when and where they wrote it, why they wrote it as they did and what we can learn about both the author’s preoccupations and the subject matter of the text.

THE AUTHOR’S INTENT

A major focus of historical-critical scholarship is the author’s intent at the time of writing, not what the text has meant to its readers in the centuries since it was produced.[xii]

THE ACADEMIC TOOLKIT

One of the most important elements in the academic toolkit is philology, which in this case means the study of the language of the text. Philologists have built up an understanding of how the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek languages evolved over time, and they can use this to help determine where and when a text was written, or whether any two texts have the same author.

Such philological analysis goes back a long way. In the 3^rd century, for example, Dionysius of Alexandria used it to demonstrate that Revelation could not possibly have been written by the author of the Gospel of John.[xiii] In other cases, the influence of tradition could be so strong that scholars were unable to see differences that were staring them in the face. The first two chapters of Genesis, for example, are so diverse in style and use such dissimilar vocabulary that they clearly have different authors, but a systematic analysis of this had to wait until the middle of the 18^th century.[xiv]

THEOLOGICAL AND OTHER CONCERNS

What is the author trying to say? What are their concerns? This can help to tell us something about where, when and by whom a particular text was written. Leviticus, for example, is very much concerned with specifying, protecting and promoting the role of priests. For this reason, the great majority of scholars agree that its author(s) were priests, and they have been given the title Priestly Writer(s).[xv]

HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY

In some places, it is possible to compare biblical texts with what external sources say about the same events, drawing on the work of archaeologists and historians. In the case of the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in 605 BCE, for example, the three biblical accounts can be read against the Assyrian account in Sennacherib’s Prism, which was discovered in 1830. Though there is substantial agreement between them, it would be fair to say that the Bible and Sennacherib’s Prism put a very different spin on events.[xvi]

Over the last 200 years, Egyptologists have built up a year-on-year account of Egyptian history. Though there are records of Semitic peoples coming and going,[xvii] there is nothing on anything like the scale of the exodus as described in the Bible. And archaeologists can find no evidence of either the wanderings of the Israelites or their invasion of the Promised Land.[xviii] For this and other reasons, we can be sure that the biblical accounts are a much later retelling of what had become an Israelite national myth.[xix]

ANACHRONISMS

Anachronisms can betray the date of a text. Genesis 24:10 describes Abraham’s servant using camels as beasts of burden. But archaeological evidence shows that camels weren’t used for this purpose until well after 1000 BCE, hundreds of years later than Moses lived (if he existed at all). This indicates that he could not possibly have written the text in question.[xx]

LITERATE CULTURES

Historians and archaeologists have long been aware of the tell-tale signs of a civilisation that is ready to put its myths, legends and history into writing. For this you need economic specialisation that will generate the wealth needed for big cities, monumental buildings and a ruling elite with a taste for luxury.[xxi]

The archaeological evidence shows that David and Solomon couldn’t have been rulers of a powerful and wealthy kingdom. They were mountain chieftains in a rural backwater of small settlements too primitive to produce complex written texts. They wouldn’t have been capable of writing the works ascribed to them, and their subjects wouldn’t have wanted or been able to preserve them.[xxii]

BRONZE-AGE GOAT HERDERS

A favourite atheist meme dismisses the Bible as the product of a bunch of Bronze Age goat herders. As an atheist myself, my heart sinks every time I see it. Even if it is just a joke or a term of abuse, its use is deeply unserious and displays a profound ignorance of history. The earliest bible texts were produced well into the Iron Age by the educated elite of a highly sophisticated civilisation.[xxiii]

WHAT DID THEY KNOW?

Another way of dating a document that helps you understand who wrote it is to look at what the authors knew. The classic case is the Book of Daniel, which purports to have been written during the 6^th century BCE. But the first half of Daniel has a description of that era which is historically inaccurate, indicating a much later composition.

The second half contains a number of prophecies. Those which concern the history of the region from the 6^th to the 2^nd centuries BCE all come true. Another prophecy indicates that the crisis confronting Judea in 167-164 BCE, after the Seleucids desecrated the Jerusalem Temple, heralded the end of days. Obviously, this prophecy didn’t come true. For this reason, we can be fairly sure that this part of the book was composed during the crisis in question.[xxiv]

HISTORICAL-CRITICAL ANALYSIS

This post has concentrated on the toolkit used by historical-critical scholars to establish when, where and by whom biblical texts were written and what the authors intended to say, which is often very different from the ways in which their work has subsequently been interpreted.

In Part 2, I will look at the authorship of the early books of the Old Testament, from Genesis to 2 Kings.

Part 3 will focus on the authorship of the New Testament gospels.

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[i] See, for example https://overviewbible.com/authors-who-wrote-bible/ (accessed 06/05/2025).

[ii] Barton, John: A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths, Penguin Random House, London 2020, pp. 300-4, 438-9.

[iii] Barton: op cit, pp. 300-4.

[iv] Barton: op cit, p. 438.

[v] Barton: op cit, pp. 285-6.

[vi] See https://www.magd.ox.ac.uk/blog/the-magdalen-papyrus-p64-possibly-the-earliest-known-fragments-of-the-new-testament-or-of-a-book/ (accessed 06/05/2025).

[vii] See https://ehrmanblog.org/how-useful-are-our-earliest-new-testament-manuscripts/ (accessed 06/05/2025).

[viii] Römer, Thomas: The Invention of God, Harvard University Press, 2015, p. 8; Barton: A History of the Bible, p. 285ff.

[ix] Barton: A History of the Bible, pp. 350-7. Martin, Dale B: New Testament History and Literature (Kindle Edition), Yale University Press, 2012, pp. 328-338.

[x] For a full discussion of Origen and allegorical interpretations of the Bible, see Barton: A History of the Bible, pp. 339-357.

[xi] Barton: op cit, pp. 418-422. For a brief overview of the emergence of the historical-critical approach, see Hayes, Christine, Introduction to the Bible (Kindle Edition), Yale University Press 2012, pp. 58-63.

[xii] Martin: New Testament History and Literature, pp. 322-327.

[xiii] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAg0_mB5CiQ&t=2456s (accessed 06/05/2025).

[xiv] Friedman, Richard Elliott: Who Wrote the Bible? Jonathan Cape, London 1988, p. 52.

[xv] Friedman: op cit, pp. 188-9, 206.

[xvi] Friedman: Who Wrote the Bible? pp. 93-96.

[xvii] Finkelstein, Israel and Silberman, Neil Asher: The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts. Touchstone, New York 2002, pp. 55-56.

[xviii] Finkelstein and Silberman: op cit, pp 58-64.

[xix] Finkelstein and Silberman: op cit, pp. 65-71.

[xx] Finkelstein and Silberman: op cit, p. 37.

[xxi] Finkelstein and Silberman: op cit, pp. 22-23.

[xxii] Finkelstein and Silberman: op cit, pp. 128-145, 190, 235-8.

[xxiii] https://thewrongmonkey.blogspot.com/2013/10/its-time-to-drop-phrase-bronze-age-goat.html?lr=1746624781016 (accessed 07/05/2025).

[xxiv] Hayes, Christine, Introduction to the Bible, pp. 384-388.