In the history of religious literature, the Bible occupies a central place, deeply influencing the beliefs and traditions of millions of people around the world. But an important question remains: who really wrote this holy book?
The Styler Project explores who the people were who created the Bible and how it spread around the world.
Theory of oral dictation
According to the theory of oral dictation, God himself wrote the Old and New Testaments or transmitted his message to people. This concept assumes that the Holy Spirit helped the prophets and those who recorded the word of God.
The Catholic priest Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco develops the idea of divine inspiration, making an analogy with an author who thanks the pen for the written text. Here God appears as the “main author” and people as the “instruments.”
This analogy suggests that God inspired human authors to create the Bible, but respected the freedom, abilities, and limitations they were given.
Thus, the theory of oral dictation reveals the idea of cooperation between the Divine and the human in the creation of a sacred text.
Moses as possible author
A traditional view holds that the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) was written by Moses. This hypothesis was popular among researchers in the 6th century AD, but lost support in the 17th century.
The main difficulty with this theory is that Moses’ death is described at the end of Deuteronomy, which casts doubt on the possibility of his authorship of later texts. The Jewish Talmud suggests that his successor may have completed the text.
With the development of science, many scientists began to doubt not only that Moses could have written the entire Pentateuch, but also that the text could have been created by a single person. The question of the authorship of the Bible remains open, adding new aspects to the understanding of the Holy Scriptures.
The Bible as a collective project
Scientific research shows that the Bible was written by different people over the centuries. The New Testament, dedicated to the life of Jesus, is associated with direct witnesses of these events – the apostles and the first church leaders. Modern scholars, based on textual analysis and historical data, believe that the creation of the Bible occurred gradually, with the participation of various cultures.
For example, the parts attributed to David or Solomon may have been created from different sources. As researcher William Schniedewind points out in his book Who Really Wrote the Bible: A Scribal History, the Bible was not written by a single author, but was created by communities of scribes, where the idea of authorship only took hold in later times.
So, the Bible is the result of many years of collective work, reflecting the richness and diversity of cultural and religious traditions.
