Determining Biblical Authorship

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Tart
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Determining Biblical Authorship

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Post by Tart »

This topic is to present evidence and/or reasoning to establish if Biblical Authorship is authentic or non-authentic... Although I have seen many post throughout the years claiming that, for example, some of Paul's epistles are fakes and some are real, I'm searching for the actual evidence that would determine someone to be persuaded one way or the other. Ill have to note a disclaimer right now, that I'm not an expert on the subject but I'm very interested in it, as this is important for Christianity... And I'm namely talking about the New testament, but if anyone would like to discuss a book in the Old Testament that would be ok as well.

Here is a website that I just google with a quick search that ill say I might agree as what they say is "The New Testament - A Brief Overview" on authorship, as a quick starting point. (and note, I don't know why they have 1 Peter and 2 Peter, I think that may be a mistake on their part, but lets assume it is all on Peter even though I have heard 2 peter is a fraud)

Are these claims of authorship true or not? Why?

https://www.bible-history.com/new-testa ... thors.html

(and as my computer time is running out at the library, ill put off posting the actual evidence of why I agree with some of these claims in the linked website, but will post it in a future date. Namely supporting the traditionally held authorship of the Gospels)

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Re: Determining Biblical Authorship

Post #2

Post by bluegreenearth »

[Replying to post 1 by Tart]

Your first step should be to research scholarly work on textual criticism written from an academic perspective. Websites and blogs with a biased Christian perspective will be inherently unreliable and polluted with propaganda. I recommend you begin with Bart D. Ehrman. He is a textual critic who is well respected by both Christian and non-Christian New Testament scholars. You will find the information he provides to be very enlightening.

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Post #3

Post by SallyF »

Alphabetical list of Old Testament authors
Amos: The book of Amos
Daniel: The book of Daniel
David: Psalms (Other authors wrote portions of Psalms as well)
Ezekiel: The book of Ezekiel
Ezra: The book of Ezra (Additionally Ezra is thought to have written 1st and 2nd Chronicles and possibly portions of Nehemiah)
Habakkuk: The book of Habakkuk
Haggai: The book of Haggai
Hosea: The book of Hosea
Isaiah: The book of Isaiah
Jeremiah: 1st and 2nd Kings, Lamentations, the book of Jeremiah
Joel: The book of Joel
Jonah: The book of Jonah
Joshua: The book of Joshua
Malachi: The book of Malachi
Micah: The book of Micah
Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (Moses possibly compiled/wrote the book of Job)
Nahum: The book of Nahum
Nehemiah: The book of Nehemiah
Obadiah: The book of Obadiah
Samuel: (Samuel is believed to have written 1st and 2nd Samuel, Ruth, and Judges)
Solomon: Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Song of Solomon (also known as Song of Songs)
Zechariah: The book of Zechariah
Zephaniah: The book of Zephaniah

Alphabetical list of New Testament authors
James: The book of James
John: Gospel of John, 1st John, 2nd John, 3rd John, Revelation
Jude: Book of Jude
Luke: Gospel of Luke, Acts of the Apostles
Mark: Gospel of Mark
Matthew: Gospel of Matthew
Paul: Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, 1st and 2nd Timothy, Titus, Philemon (possibly the book of Hebrews)
Peter: 1st and 2nd Peter

https://www.bibleinfo.com/en/questions/ ... -the-bible

To the best of my knowledge, NOT ONE of these supposed authors has been confirmed as such.

To the best of my knowledge, NOT ONE of the supposed authors has been identified as even existing.

And, to the best of my knowledge again, not a soul EVER demonstrates that any version of "God" had anything whatsoever to do with any of the so-called "scriptures".
"God" … just whatever humans imagine it to be.

"Scripture" … just whatever humans write it to be.

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Re: Determining Biblical Authorship

Post #4

Post by Goose »

Tart wrote:Are these claims of authorship true or not? Why?
Hi Tart. I don't think framing the question in terms of whether the claim to authorship is true is helpful. I don't think we can prove the truth of any statement regarding the authorship of an ancient text. I think it's better to think in terms of building a strong historical case.

You might be interested in a thread I started a while back on this topic:

Authorship: Tacitus vs. the Gospels
Things atheists say:

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Re: Determining Biblical Authorship

Post #5

Post by SallyF »

Goose wrote:
Tart wrote:Are these claims of authorship true or not? Why?
Hi Tart. I don't think framing the question in terms of whether the claim to authorship is true is helpful. I don't think we can prove the truth of any statement regarding the authorship of an ancient text. I think it's better to think in terms of building a strong historical case.

You might be interested in a thread I started a while back on this topic:

Authorship: Tacitus vs. the Gospels
I bolded "I don't think we can prove the truth of any statement regarding the authorship of an ancient text."

A few Christians still claim that these so-called "scriptures" are the "Word of God" …

Image

A claim that may be quite false.
"God" … just whatever humans imagine it to be.

"Scripture" … just whatever humans write it to be.

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Re: Determining Biblical Authorship

Post #6

Post by Tart »

Goose wrote:
Tart wrote:Are these claims of authorship true or not? Why?
Hi Tart. I don't think framing the question in terms of whether the claim to authorship is true is helpful. I don't think we can prove the truth of any statement regarding the authorship of an ancient text. I think it's better to think in terms of building a strong historical case.

You might be interested in a thread I started a while back on this topic:

Authorship: Tacitus vs. the Gospels
Thank you Goose, id actually agree with you, it is about building a case one way or the other. Over the years I have found many posts and articles claiming books to be either authentic, or non-authentic, in terms of authorship. But I have never really seen the actual evidence of it, usually we just get a statement that says "scholars think this" or "the majority of scholars think that", but in reality that is just appealing to authorities and not presenting the actual evidence of why scholars think one way or the other. Id like to discuss the evidence

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Post #7

Post by Tart »

[Replying to post 3 by SallyF]

Yes, Sally this is a question about Biblical authorship, not a question about whether or not the Bible is the Word of God, stay on topic...

As for your first post, when you say
"To the best of my knowledge, NOT ONE of these supposed authors has been confirmed as such."
"To the best of my knowledge, NOT ONE of the supposed authors has been identified as even existing."

I would suggest to you that this is radical skepticism, which you can take but like the vast vast vast majority of scholars would disagree. Even those on your side of the equation, like Dr. Carreer for example, maybe the leading scholar in criticizing a historical Jesus, he admits things like Paul existing and Paul writing much of his epistles. And why? I think it is because it is the best explanation of the evidence.

So let me ask you something... You are claiming these people have not been shown to exist, or to have wirtten anything... And the funny thing is, is that the books themselves exist, and many of them have been signed by an author (like the epistles of Paul)... So what do YOU think the best explanation is of the evidence? I'd suggest to you, the best explanation is that Paul wrote Romans (for example)...

Do you have any valid reasoning to suggest that isnt true? And would you like to present a counter theory of how these books came into existence?

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Post #8

Post by Tcg »

Tart wrote:
I would suggest to you that this is radical skepticism, which you can take but like the vast vast vast majority of scholars would disagree.

<bolding mine>
Tart wrote:
But I have never really seen the actual evidence of it, usually we just get a statement that says "scholars think this" or "the majority of scholars think that", but in reality that is just appealing to authorities and not presenting the actual evidence of why scholars think one way or the other. Id like to discuss the evidence

<bolding mine>
You of course added, "vast vast vast", to your appeal to authorities, I suppose to sound more convincing, but not even a hint of evidence. I thought your goal was to discuss evidence?


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Re: Determining Biblical Authorship

Post #9

Post by Difflugia »

[Replying to post 1 by Tart]
There are a few study Bibles and commentaries that align with modern scholarship and give you a pretty good overview. Unfortunately, they're expensive, but if the library you're in is a good one, it might have some of them. Most of these are also available as ebooks if you have a NOOK or Kindle or something. I've personally almost completely switched over to ebooks.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible is my personal favorite. Each book of the Bible has an introduction that includes an overview of authorship, reasons it was considered canonical, and a brief theological discussion. There are also many study notes that are both theological and text critical. This is always my first stop when I have a question about any biblical text.

The HarperCollins Study Bible is nearly as good. I've found it to be slightly more theologically conservative than the Oxford Annotated Bible, but it's still scholarly rather than apologetic.

The Jewish Study Bible is similar to the other two, but only contains the Old Testament. The translation is the Jewish Publication Society Tanakh, but I'd be hard-pressed to find much of the commentary that was "Jewish" in a way that wouldn't apply to a Christian that was studying the Bible.

The Oxford Bible Commentary is a fantastic, one-volume commentary on the whole Bible. Unfortunately for me, it's only available in its entirety as a paper book (volumes on the Pentateuch, the Apocrypha, the Gospels, and the Paulines are available as separate ebooks, but not the whole thing). It doesn't include the actual Bible text, but includes a much more in-depth commentary on each book than The Oxford Annotated Bible.

If you want to go right to the best, look for volumes of The Anchor Yale Bible Commentary. Each volume (usually one for each book) is written by a top scholar and includes the NRSV text, a new translation by the author, and commentary for each verse in the book. The commentary is both theological and text-critical. Definitely check your library. If you want to buy them, they run $30-$80 per volume, though, and aren't available as ebooks. New volumes are commissioned periodically, so you can occasionally find multiple volumes for the same biblical book by different authors. I have a few volumes that I've scored cheap from used book stores.

A similar set of commentary is the International Critical Commentary series. These are similar to the AYBC series, but tend to lean slightly more toward text criticism, focusing on differing textual traditions and translation issues. They're also more expensive, but some are available as ebooks from Google Books at relatively reasonable prices (~$30 ebook rather than ~$150 hardcover). If you live in a larger city or can hit a university or seminary library, you might get lucky.

If you're willing to read older scholarship, some of the ICC series volumes are old enough to be in the public domain. Like the AYBC, the publisher commissions new volumes periodically, but they've been doing it so long that old versions of most of the Bible are represented. When doing a search, the titles are of the form "A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Book Name." You can find PDF scans at Google Books and Internet Archive. I have downloaded all of the volumes I could find to my computer and refer to them often.

The Old Testament Library and New Testament Library commentary series published by Westminster John Knox Press is also excellent and is similar in form and content to the AYBC and ICC series. They're available as ebooks for $10-$30 each and all the covers look the same, so they're easy to spot at a library (at least if they still have their dust jackets). Here's a search for "Old Testament Library" in NOOK books at Barnes & Noble.

Two books that aren't commentary on specific books of the Bible that I recommend are Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman and Forged by Bart Ehrman (who was mentioned in another post).

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Re: Determining Biblical Authorship

Post #10

Post by Difflugia »

Tart wrote:I'm searching for the actual evidence that would determine someone to be persuaded one way or the other.
I guess I didn't realize until reading your post again that you meant "searching for" to mean that you wanted someone that disagreed with traditional authorship to pick one for debate. I'll bite and pick 1 Timothy. The Pastoral Epistles are pretty much universally considered to be pseudonymous by scholars that aren't inerrantists, to the point that when I'm checking a commentary that I'm not familiar with, I check its opinion of the authorship of the Pastorals as a shibboleth for whether it assumes inerrancy or not. As an example, the ESV Global Study Bible (which is a free ebook download or online commentary) writes this:
The apostle Paul probably wrote this letter to Timothy in the mid-60s A.D., during a mission trip not recorded in Scripture. This trip took place after the events described in Acts, between Paul’s first and final Roman imprisonments.
On the other hand, The New Oxford Annotated Bible has a full-page essay (p. 2123 in the Fifth Edition). I probably shouldn't include the whole thing, but here are the central two paragraphs, which lay out the consensus view and the main challenges to it:
The conclusion that these three epistles were not written by Paul is based upon literary, historical, and theological criteria. First and Second Timothy and Titus share a common Greek vocabulary and style that diverges in many ways from the other Pauline epistles. Historically, the Pastoral Epistles appear to presume an institutionalized leadership in local communities with bishops and deacons, and internal dissent over issues of faith and practice, which better fits a period late in the first or early in the second century ce when Paul was no longer alive. It is possible to see how some passages may have been written to explain or definitively interpret passages in the authentic letters already in circulation (such as 1 Tim 2.9–19; cf. 1 Cor 14.33–36). Theologically these letters minimize or lack characteristic Pauline themes (such as justification by faith, and the church as the body of Christ) in favor of a new emphasis on adherence to tradition and regulation as signs of the Christian piety they seek to inculcate in their readers. Although Timothy and Titus had been Paul's trusted co-workers for decades, the first letter to Timothy and the letter to Titus present the recipients as needing basic instructions for community leadership. They represent a bridge between the apostle and later generations. Second Timothy is less concerned with regulating the life of the Christian communities than Titus and 1 Timothy. It has been described as a “testament,� the last words of the apostle to a close associate. It looks forward to the difficulties facing Timothy and others after Paul's death with foreboding, and bears some similarity to the Paul's genuine letter to the Philippians in this regard.

Recent challenges to the pseudepigraphical nature of all three letters have come from scholars who argue that each should be judged separately, that the letters contain fragments of original Pauline material, or that the very concept of “authorship� of a Pauline letter requires nuance, given that Paul used secretaries and served as a member of a cooperative missionary team. Still, the prevailing view of scholars is that these letters were not written by Paul but are later compositions seeking to “fix� his legacy (in both senses of the term). Even if not composed by Paul, they have historically had a very influential role in Christian thought and practice, and the controversies they sought to “fix�—such as the roles of women in the church—remain alive to the present day.
So, the first paragraph says that the Pastorals are often rejected "based upon literary, historical, and theological criteria," but doesn't elaborate, so it's up to us (or "me," as it were) to find the details. It turns out that the seminal study of the "literary" criterion was written just long enough ago (1921) that it's in the public domain in the US, but is still referenced by modern scholars: The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles by P. N. Harrison. It can be read or downloaded from Google Books or Internet Archive. It's a short read, if you're so inclined.

The argument is based on hapax legomena, which just means words unique to a particular work within a larger corpus. Harrison calculated the number of hapax legomena for each book in the New Testament. He compared the Pauline epistles and each of the Pastoral epistles has a much larger number of hapax legomena than the others. He reasoned that an author writing multiple times on similar topics should exercise roughly the same sort of vocabulary in each work. This is true for the other ten Pauline epistles. Furthermore, when ordered by the number of hapax legomena, the other epistles line up roughly in the order that they were likely written. Harrison sees this as characteristic of an author becoming more experienced and slowly expanding his working vocabulary. The Pastorals, on the other hand, have more than twice as many hapax legomena as would be expected based on this pattern. Here's his graph:

Image

Some of the later points that Harrison makes are that the other ten Paulines (which he considers genuine) regularly use particular words and grammatical structures that are underused in or missing from the Pastorals and that the Pastorals share more vocabulary with Christian literature from the second and third centuries than the other Paulines do. I think I'll stop there for now, though.

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