Who Wrote the Bible?
00:00:00.000 | Very often the best questions we get are very simple ones, like this one today from Maxine,
00:00:10.080 | a longtime listener to APJ.
00:00:12.320 | "Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast.
00:00:16.120 | Can you explain to me who wrote the Bible?"
00:00:21.280 | Well, let's start at the top and work our way down to who held the very quill that moved
00:00:30.600 | across the parchments.
00:00:32.480 | At the top is God.
00:00:35.240 | When Christians refer to the Bible as the Word of God, they mean that—and I would
00:00:42.880 | say I mean, I'm one of those people who believe this, I stake my whole life on it—I
00:00:49.040 | mean that the Creator of the universe, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
00:00:55.960 | upholds the universe by the Word of His power, was guiding and is guiding all things according
00:01:05.520 | to a great purpose.
00:01:07.200 | That God has chosen to reveal Himself to human beings in human language.
00:01:14.960 | He has chosen to speak.
00:01:17.560 | Amazing.
00:01:18.760 | Hebrews 1, verses 1 and 2 say, "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke
00:01:30.000 | to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son,
00:01:40.760 | Jesus Christ."
00:01:42.000 | That's simply staggering.
00:01:44.360 | God has spoken.
00:01:46.600 | The phrase "Thus says the Lord" occurs over 400 times in the Old Testament as the
00:01:55.240 | writers put forward in their writings that God has spoken.
00:01:59.920 | The phrase "God said" occurs over 600 times in the Old Testament.
00:02:08.320 | So there's this pervasive claim of the human writers that they are delivering what
00:02:16.160 | God once said.
00:02:19.320 | The way the New Testament writers express this claim is to say that the human writers
00:02:25.940 | of the Bible were "inspired."
00:02:30.600 | These writings are God-breathed, or the people who wrote them were carried along by the Spirit
00:02:38.280 | Spirit.
00:02:39.280 | For example, the Apostle Paul says in 2 Timothy 3.16, "All Scripture"—that is, for him
00:02:45.760 | at that time, that was all the Old Testament books of the Bible—"is breathed out by
00:02:52.560 | God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction."
00:02:58.520 | And Peter, the Apostle Peter, says in 2 Peter 1, verse 20, "No prophecy was ever produced
00:03:06.920 | by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."
00:03:18.720 | So the question, "Who wrote the Bible?" always has a double answer in the Bible.
00:03:24.960 | Human authors wrote the Bible, and God wrote the Bible through the human authors.
00:03:30.780 | They actually held the quill that moved across the parchment, but what they wrote was ultimately
00:03:39.380 | what God wanted written.
00:03:42.280 | Jesus—I love this way he did this—but he gave us an amazing indication that he believed
00:03:51.560 | the Old Testament scriptures were in fact God's Word, God's writing.
00:03:59.020 | What makes this indication that Jesus gave so powerful is because it's so inadvertent.
00:04:04.340 | He's talking about divorce, and he answers the Pharisees' question by saying in Matthew
00:04:09.540 | 19.3-5, "Have you not read"—you know, he's talking about writings—"Have you
00:04:16.140 | not read that he who created them"—that is, male and female—"he who created them
00:04:23.880 | from the beginning made them male and female, and said"—no, the subject of that verb
00:04:32.360 | is "he who created them," that's God—"and he said"—and then he quotes Genesis 2.24,
00:04:40.660 | "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, and hold fast to his wife, and
00:04:45.140 | the two shall become one flesh."
00:04:46.780 | But that verse was not a quotation of God in the Old Testament.
00:04:50.860 | It was written by Moses, the human author.
00:04:53.660 | But when Jesus quotes it, because it's from the scriptures, the inspired scriptures,
00:04:59.540 | Jesus says God said those words.
00:05:02.940 | That's amazing.
00:05:03.940 | That's a really powerful indication of how our Lord himself viewed the Old Testament
00:05:11.380 | scriptures, which is why he said in Matthew 5.17, "Do not think that I have come to
00:05:18.340 | abolish the law or the prophets."
00:05:21.140 | In other words, the whole Old Testament.
00:05:22.620 | "Don't think that I've come to abolish them.
00:05:25.100 | I haven't come to abolish them.
00:05:26.900 | They're God's Word.
00:05:28.020 | I have come to fulfill them.
00:05:30.720 | For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, not the
00:05:38.420 | smallest part of the scriptures will pass from the law until all is accomplished."
00:05:45.980 | And he said in John 10.35, "The scriptures cannot be broken."
00:05:51.860 | This is also how the New Testament apostles saw their own writings, not just the Old Testament,
00:05:58.880 | but the New Testament writings.
00:06:00.580 | Jesus had promised them that he would guide them into all truth, John 16.13.
00:06:08.220 | And Paul said, "Therefore, we impart this," that is, what he's revealing in his letters,
00:06:15.460 | "We impart this in words taught not by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit," 1 Corinthians
00:06:25.060 | 2.13.
00:06:26.660 | So there are always two answers to the question, "Who wrote the Bible?"
00:06:31.700 | God and man.
00:06:33.180 | Ultimately, God saw to it that what he wanted written was written.
00:06:42.260 | And in that sense, you could say God wrote the Bible.
00:06:46.940 | But we would not mean that he carved it in stone, although he did carve the Ten Commandments
00:06:54.100 | in stone on Mount Sinai and gave them to Moses.
00:06:58.140 | And we would not mean that God held the hand of the human writers and wrote in his heavenly
00:07:05.860 | style, not their human style.
00:07:09.100 | That's not the case.
00:07:10.100 | The human authors have their own style, and God guides it.
00:07:14.080 | He doesn't impose on it his singular style.
00:07:18.560 | We would simply mean that God superintended the human writing so that the authors wrote
00:07:26.440 | what he wanted written.
00:07:29.400 | So who were the human writers of the Bible?
00:07:34.600 | That's the most direct meaning or the most direct way this question was posed.
00:07:39.600 | Let me try to answer it as directly.
00:07:42.200 | At least ten of the books of the Bible are unsigned.
00:07:47.200 | The authors did not see fit to include their names in the books they wrote.
00:07:53.120 | For example, Job and Esther in the Old Testament.
00:07:57.200 | We don't know who wrote them.
00:07:59.280 | In the New Testament, Hebrews.
00:08:01.620 | We don't know who wrote Hebrews.
00:08:03.800 | But the traditional list of authors would go like this.
00:08:08.600 | Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible and at least one of the Psalms.
00:08:14.400 | Ezra, the scribe, wrote the books of Ezra in 1 and 2 Chronicles.
00:08:20.760 | Nehemiah wrote the book of Nehemiah.
00:08:25.200 | Psalm writers include David, Asaph, Sons of Korah, Ethan, Heman.
00:08:30.640 | Solomon wrote some of the Psalms, most of the Proverbs.
00:08:35.280 | Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon.
00:08:37.840 | Agur and Lemuel wrote some of the Proverbs.
00:08:42.840 | Then all the prophets wrote the books by their own name.
00:08:47.640 | Isaiah, Jeremiah, who also wrote Lamentations.
00:08:50.640 | Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah,
00:08:58.840 | Haggai, Zechariah.
00:09:01.680 | Then the writers of the Gospels in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, who also wrote
00:09:08.000 | Acts.
00:09:09.000 | In fact, it's interesting, if you were to ask most people who wrote most of the New
00:09:12.600 | Testament, they'd probably say Paul because he wrote 13 letters.
00:09:16.080 | But actually Luke wrote most of the New Testament because the book of Luke and Acts together
00:09:21.740 | comprise more of the New Testament than any other author, which is, in passing, I'll tell
00:09:26.200 | you why we named our first son Luke.
00:09:28.960 | But nobody calls him Luke anymore.
00:09:30.280 | They call him Carsten.
00:09:31.600 | Okay, you didn't ask for that little piece of information.
00:09:34.440 | But Paul wrote those 13 letters, and James, the Lord's brother, wrote a letter, and finally
00:09:41.280 | Peter and Jude.
00:09:42.740 | Those are the human authors who wrote the Bible.
00:09:47.200 | But here's one of the most important things, and I'll end with this, that needs to be said.
00:09:53.440 | Just as the heavens are telling the glory of God, so that we should be able to look
00:10:00.120 | at nature and discern in it the hand of God.
00:10:04.880 | And just as John said of Jesus Christ, "We beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son
00:10:13.280 | from the Father," so that those who saw Jesus should have discerned that this is the Son
00:10:20.520 | of God, in the same way, the glory of God shines forth from his handiwork in the very
00:10:31.320 | Word of God that he inspired the Bible through the human authors, so that we can say in a
00:10:39.880 | similar way that we have seen here, the hand of God, the truth of God, this is his Word.
00:10:48.400 | We surveyed the Bible and how we got it, and how it self-authenticates itself as well.
00:10:52.840 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening.
00:10:54.840 | You can send us your own question.
00:10:56.240 | You can search or browse all 1,600 of our past episodes, or subscribe to the podcast.
00:11:01.240 | Do all that online at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:11:07.060 | We return on Wednesday to look at one of the key doctrines that will immunize each of us
00:11:13.140 | against man-centered false teaching.
00:11:17.320 | See you then.
00:11:24.400 | [END]
00:11:25.400 | 1
00:11:25.400 | Desiring God.org Page 1 of 2