The New Testament, which chronicles Jesus’s life, attributes authorship to eyewitnesses, apostles and early church leaders. Many modern scholars, drawing upon historical evidence and textual analysis, propose that multiple authors wrote the Bible over centuries.
The process of compiling and editing the sacred texts was gradual, involving different communities and cultural influences. For example, the texts attributed to figures like King David and Solomon may have been compiled from various sources.
William Schniedewind’s “Who Really Wrote the Bible: The Story of the Scribes” digs into this possibility:
“The Bible was not written by a single author, or by a series of single authors, but by communities of scribes. The Bible does not name its authors because authorship itself was an idea enshrined in a later era by the ancient Greeks. In the pre-Hellenistic world of ancient Near Eastern literature, books were produced, preserved, and passed on by scribal communities.”
— Princeton University Press
