Who Wrote the Bible?

The Bible is the most investigated document in all of history—for good reason! It claims to be God’s Word and to tell us how we can be reconciled to him through the sacrificial death of Jesus, God in the flesh.

However, analysis has also revealed how the Bible was influenced by its human authors and their cultures. This has raised questions about whether this influence extends to errors believed in the culture.

Penned by Men, Authored by God

When we say that the Bible is God’s Word, that doesn’t mean we deny that there are human authors like Moses, David, Isaiah, and Paul. The 66 books of the Bible were written in human languages (Hebrew, Greek, and a little Aramaic). They speak about events that took place within human cultures, and they conform to known genres of ancient literature.

However, they are more than human books because God the Holy Spirit inspired Scripture. As Paul says:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. (2 Timothy 3:16)

While all Scripture is inspired, a cursory look at the Bible will suggest inspiration can’t look the same for every verse of the Bible. Some of the Bible is the recorded direct words of God, described as “thus says the LORD.” Luke details how he carefully recorded the testimony of eyewitnesses (Luke 1:1–4). Paul dictated at least some of his letters to a scribe, who had at least some discretion regarding exact wording (Romans 16:22). David’s psalms were outpourings of worship and lament from his heart. Our doctrine of inspiration needs to encompass all of these examples of Scripture and more.

God used the totality of the human author’s personality while superimposing over the process so that the final product was completely accurate and without error.

So when we say Scripture is inspired, we don’t mean that the human authors were empty vessels through which God transmitted Scripture—if God had wanted to simply convey the Bible in his own speech transcribed by scribes, he could have done that. Rather, God used the totality of the human author’s personality—including his culture, experiences, language choices, and education—while superimposing over the process so that the final product was completely accurate and without error.

Attributed to Valentin de Boulogne, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Does the Bible Contain Errors?

The Bible is often claimed to contain errors and contradictions. This matters because if God inspired the Bible, then it shouldn’t contain errors or contradictions. Searching for “Bible errors” or “Bible contradictions” brings up long lists of claimed problems, often promoted by atheists or other opponents of Christianity. However, there is a long tradition of Scripture interpretation to explain and harmonize these verses. It’s extremely unlikely that a random atheist on social media will come up with something that has never been contemplated by the billions of people over thousands of years who have dedicated their lives to studying God’s Word.

There are several types of claimed errors that are worth knowing about and knowing how to respond to them.

1. Phenomenological language and figures of speech. There are certain turns of phrase like “sunrise” and “sunset” that are sometimes used to say that the Bible has an inaccurate cosmology (e.g., Ecclesiastes 1:5). However, those just describe how the earth’s rotation appears from the standpoint of someone on earth, and we use those same terms today.
2. Parallel accounts with different details. In this category are the creation account in Genesis 1:1–2:3 and the more detailed account in chapter 2, or the same event told slightly differently in different Gospels. In most cases, the differing details are clearly complementary, not contradictory. In more complicated cases, like Matthew and Luke’s genealogies of Jesus, there are still good solutions, even though it takes a little more thought. In the case of Jesus’ genealogies, it is likely that Matthew is tracing the right to the Davidic throne through David’s son Solomon, and Luke is tracing Jesus’ physical genealogy through Mary from David’s son Nathan.
3. Seemingly contradictory commands. Exodus 20:13 says, “You shall not murder,” yet God commands the Israelites to conquer Gentile nations, not even leaving women and children alive. In this case, the “contradiction” only exists in translations that translate the word as “kill” in Exodus 20:13, which the ESV more accurately translates as “murder .” That wouldn’t include killings for judicial reasons or in war, and God had commanded the Israelites to conquer the Canaanites as an act of divine judgment against them, much like God had Gentile nations conquer Israel when they rebelled against him.
4. Context that clarifies that a contradiction actually doesn’t exist. For instance, Leviticus 18 has a list of close relationships where marriage is prohibited, but Adam and Eve’s children would have had no choice but to marry siblings, and Noah’s grandchildren would have had to marry cousins at least. Abraham and Sarah were half-siblings, and Moses’ parents were aunt and nephew. These relationships, however, took place before the marriage prohibitions in Leviticus 18.
5. Errors Arising from Copyist and Translation Errors. Sometimes, a genuine contradiction is introduced by a copyist error or a translation error. This isn’t a problem for Christians because the doctrine of inerrancy applies to the original copies God inspired. We have more copies of the biblical documents than any other ancient works, and we’re able to reconstruct what the originals said with a high degree of confidence. No copyist or translator error affects doctrine, and most copyist errors are spelling mistakes.

A comprehensive list and refutation of supposed Bible errors or contradictions is beyond the scope of this article . However, the examples above illustrate that most alleged contradictions have fairly simple explanations.

Is It Bibliolatry to Believe in the Inspiration of Scripture?

Some people say that we are making the Bible an object of idolatry when we insist on inerrancy.1 However, people who believe inerrancy are not saying that the Bible is God, which would be precisely what bibliolatry would entail. Rather, we are saying that God really has given us his Word, and he has done so in such a way that we can absolutely trust it.

This accusation is leveled against inerrantists because it is frankly easier to call names than to deal with the serious theological problems that arise when one denies the reliability of God’s Word. God’s Word simultaneously condemns idolatry and exhorts us to trust in God’s Word and to view it as an authoritative source in all that it speaks about.

Why It Matters

Our faith rests on the fact of Jesus’ sinless life, substitutionary death, and victorious resurrection in our place. If this did not happen, Paul says that we are without hope. Yet where do we learn about this event? In Scripture, which God ensured was written perfectly and preserved for us.

Photo by Meredith Spencer on Unsplash

We can be confident that God inspired the Bible and that it is a trustworthy source about everything it teaches, especially how to be saved and live a godly life.

Even more fundamentally, where do we learn about why we need to be saved in the first place? Where do we learn about who God is, what he is like, what he requires of us, and how to have a relationship with him? If Scripture has errors, then it falls to us to find the errors. And if we can dismiss whatever we want as errors or just the human part of Scripture, then instead of Scripture being the authority over us, we become the authority over Scripture. This, over time, leads to things like “pastors” claiming that one can continue in sexual sin and be a faithful Christian.

We can be confident that God inspired the Bible and that it is a trustworthy source about everything it teaches, especially how to be saved and live a godly life.