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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 December 2009
Since Christianity is built upon the Bible, it is crucial to understand what the Bible is, who authored it, and where it gets its authority. These topics will be discussed in two sections, “The Authorship of the Bible” and “The Canon of the Bible.” Three additional sections discuss certain mistakes and abuses of Scripture: “The Kingdom of Darkness,” “The Beneficiaries of the Kingdom of Darkness,” and “The Catholic Church and the Kingdom of Fairies.”
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE BIBLE
The Christian church would not exist if it were not for the Bible. The foundation for the belief that Jesus is the Christ is the fact that that is the message of the Bible and that the latter has regulative force. Given its importance, it is worth asking who the authors of the Bible are and what makes some books canonical and others not. The Bible was written over many centuries by many authors. Since the external evidence for who these authors were is rather meager, the best basis for determining authorship must come from internal evidence, that is, from studying features of the texts themselves.
The Pentateuch
The question of who wrote the various books of the Bible has a long history. At various times, several of the books that now are an established part of the canon were considered dubious by distinguished theologians of the patristic and medieval eras. Some theologians thought that the Book of Revelation was not authored by John the Apostle and thus should not be considered canonical, and some thought that the Epistle to the Hebrews was not authored by Saint Paul and thus was not canonical.
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