Who Wrote the Bible?

The first thing to realize, is that God did not write the Bible. It contains words attributed to God, but it is not words directly from God.

They Said God Said

It’s important to understand the distinction. Is the difference between what I say my mother said, and what my mother actually said. I hear things through a filter.

It is the same with the authors of the Bible. God may have truly spoke to them, but it is filtered through their personality and cultural context. It is just like light through stained glass, the stained glass changes the hue and color of the light.

If we don’t keep this in mind, we can interpret the Bible literally. Which is going to cause all kinds of problems. The Bible constantly counterdicts itself. How can that be if it was written by God.

God Did Not Write It

The truth is that God did not write the Bible. Men wrote the Bible. They wrote it from their perspective, their limited understanding, and they’re biased and prejudiced viewpoints. And these come through in the text.

So he must read the Bible as the words of men about the message of God. The message of God is sometimes blurred, sometimes distorted, and sometimes insightful.

The Bible is Not Univocal

We should take the Bible seriously, but not literally. We have to interpret each author within their own cultural and historical context. The Bible is not univocal. It doesn’t have one author, it has many. Therefore one author should not interpret another.

This is important. Too often a uniformity is forced upon the text. And this uniformity distorts the text, causing it to be misunderstood. Only the author can interpret the author. Only Paul can interpret Paul. So it’s important to know which letters are from Paul, and which ones are not.

I say that because we know that 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus were not written by the apostle Paul. We can call the author pseudo-Paul. Whoever it was, he wrote after Paul was already long dead. His language and style of writing is different. Therefore, these letters should not be used to interpret the other Epistles of Paul.

Rethinking Our Interpretation

This is only the beginning of rethinking our interpretation and understanding the Bible. It’s important to realize that the Bible is not a book, but a library of books written by different men, in different situations, at different times, with different historical and cultural contexts, and woth different agendas.

The Bible was not written by God. It is written by men. Therefore they should be used and interpreted carefully. We should honor the differences and not negate them with a uniformity they never had.

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Jay N. Forrest

Dr. Jay N Forrest is a Spiritual Teacher of the Anglican Middle Way, writing on Prayer, Meditation, and Mysticism. Jay became a Christian in 1983, attended Bible school, and eventually earned his Doctorate in Ministry. Jay served as a Protestant minister for 27 years, took catechism classes with the Orthodox Church of America, and spent about a decade practicing Buddhism. In 2005, Jay was baptized and confirmed into the Catholic Church, but has since joined the Episcopal Church.

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