Talk:Authorship of the Bible/Archive 1

This article is poorly researched and of little value.

This article lacks citations for numerous assertions concerning authorship "according to scholarship". This distinction between tradition and scholarship is dubious and "scholarship" is neither a person nor are scholars unified in their conclusions. This is a very low quality article.

This article is sheer dogma and should be removed as it has not been researched. Is it believed that Moses wrote about his own death in the fifth book of the bible? It is known that the gospels circulated for two centuries without names. Why? Paul it is said by scholars may have written four of the books attributed to him or maybe even none.

I agree that this article is poorly researched. For example citation 5 gives the impression that Carson and Moo support the view that Peter certainly did not write 2 Peter when in fact they argue he did (while acknowledging that most modern scholars do not think this is the case). The assertions regarding John and the Johannine letters are likewise extremely simplistic and don't reflect the current state of play in academia (see for example the discussions in Raymond Brown's commentary on John).

There is almost no book of the Bible where it is possible to assert the author clearly recognized "according to scholarship". There is a great diversity of opinion depending on the presuppositions of the scholar. Each book requires an entire article summarizing the main arguments for and against the main proposals for it's authorship. A simplistic table such as this unfortunately achieves little and the article should be removed.

Hisimon (talk) 03:09, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I must agree that this article is so poorly researched as to be valueless. The only area I know fairly well is the Torah/Pentateuch, and the description of authors "according to scholarship" is simply the very old-fashioned Wellhausian view - over a hundred years old now. Things have moved on since Wellhausen, and Friedman - the source of this information - is one voice among many, and a minority voice at that. Would someone like to start the procedure for deleting this article?PiCo (talk) 08:53, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I believe that this article shouldnt be deleted, but should instead be marked for serious overhaul. This is very useful and interesting information, it just needs some help. --Omnipotence407 (talk) 16:07, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I have to concur that this article is biased and badly misleading, setting up a false contrast between "traditional" and "modern" scholarship and therefore giving a false picture of the state of contemporary debate regarding the authorship of the various books of the Bible. Part of the difficulty is that the chart, while visually attractive, cannot readily be adapted to give sufficient information in cases where contemporary scholarly opinion is very deeply divided. It does the public no service to be given just one side of an open debate. And the problem is exacerbated when the position that gets most press is a marginal one, as when the radical opinions floated by the Jesus Seminar are treated as if they represented a serious scholarly consensus. — NathanielLardner (talk • contribs) 21:47, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Shouldnt the Bible be labelled as a work of fiction? It's mortifying that this isn't the case... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.104.138.32 (talk) 18:36, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Who is Dr. Luke?

Who would Dr. Luke be ... besides a musician?--Omnipotence407 (talk) 16:06, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Good question. I suspect that might be vandalism, in which case the rest of this edit is called into question too. Hopefully someone with more knowledge on the subject comes by... -Elmer Clark (talk) 22:23, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Dr. Luke is the apostle Luke. He was a physician, right? I think adding the "Dr." was just a small way of making it more accurate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.106.115.42 (talk) 15:04, 16 November 2009 (UTC) But the title "Dr." didn't exist until far later, so it's less accurate. EamonnPKeane (talk) 18:34, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Overhaul of article

I have made a complete overhaul of the article - previous comments on this page indicate that the general opinion is that in its previous form it was so poor as to valueless. I would still be inclined to delete it entirely, given that the subject matter is so vast and that the article son the individual books are a better place to find information. But this is at least an attempt to point the article towards a more useful role. PiCo (talk) 16:07, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Name/Move

I think a better name would be Authorship of the Bible. --Eliyak T·C 22:04, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Either that, or this page could also describe (in summary) the reputed and actual authors of the Bible: Moses, King David, Solomon, the Chronicler, the prophets, Paul, Luke, John the Elder, etc. Leadwind (talk) 18:27, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Missing Citations

There should be citations on all of the authors in the table, especially with the nature of this content being so controversial.128.192.147.188 (talk) 14:13, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, in principle. Grinding through those citations is a lot of work. I've already added dozens of citations from Harris's Understanding the Bible in the body. Lots of these could just be ported into the table, where the table duplicates information from the body. Leadwind (talk) 18:30, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Jesus Seminar as Authoritative Source

Steven Harris of the extremely controversial Jesus Seminar is cited over 50 times and used to deem 3 of Paul's letters "false" in terms of authorship. This seminar was extremely one-sided and controversial, and in no way represents "modern" scholarship on the textual criticisms.

There are tons of modern scholars that tremendously disagree with the Jesus Seminars, and there are pre-modern scholars who deny the historicity of the authorship. Additionally, many of the scholars that deny the historicity of the ecumenical authorship are post-modern, not modern.

There is a clear point of view bias that seems to be passive-aggressively promoting an agenda, to portray "traditional" authorship as the backwoods rednecks and "modern" authorship claims as intellectually sound.

Neither are the case.

This article needs to be completely rewritten. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.81.80.19 (talk) 03:52, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Authors of encyclicals

I noticed that similar disputes can found when arguing about who wrote papal encyclicals. For instance, the anti-modernist enyclical Pascendi was written by Joseph Lemius and not Pius X, while Humani generis unitas was prepared by American jesuit LaFarge. The comparison is interesting, since many epistles are structurally similar to the enyclicals, in that both have some sort of magisterial quality. The fact that the Popes did not write all encyclicals does not take away their ecclesiastic validity, and while encyclicals are not themselves infallible, certain acts of the ordinary non-dogmatic magisterium are themselves held to be semi-infallible, such as Apostolicae Curae by Leo XIII. ADM (talk) 05:49, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Semi-infallible? I would have thought infallibility was like pregnancy - either you are or you aren't. PiCo (talk) 08:48, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Maccabees

Do 3 and 4 Maccabees belong in the table, which claims to represent the Roman Catholic canon? 72.75.86.126 (talk) 04:07, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Deuterocanon/ Apocrypha

The Tanakh does not include these. So why are they in a list that "follows the canon of the Hebrew bible"? I understand the need to have them mentioned, but we need to remain consistent. If we do want to use the Catholic order, lets use it all the way. (And probably come up with some way to differentiate the deuterocanon from the rest, for non-Catholics). — trlkly 02:15, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Colors and Traditional vs. Modern Viewpoints

What are the color blocks for? I have a feel for it, i.e. Pentateuch is one color, but it isn't really clear.

Someone above mentioned the issue of splitting authorship views into traditional and modern. I agree that this is a problem as scholarship regarding almost everything never goes from old to new, but evolves over time, albeit unevenly. Given that there are already detailed articles on each of the books of the bible, many of which include history and authorship, perhaps this page should focus on overviewing current views/scholarship, with links to the existing detailed articles for history of scholarship on authorship. (Sorry about too many long words.) There are also several articles discussing the authorship on sections of the bible.

Just my 2 cents. Peacedance (talk) 19:00, 12 January 2010 (UTC) The colour blocks are Pentateuch - Histories - Major Prophets - Minor Prophets -Gospels - Acts - Pauline Epistles - Other epistles - Revelation. EamonnPKeane (talk) 03:11, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Changing this badly neglected article

I am going to make some major changes to this article. It is an important article but is heavily biased (and does a poor job even for its viewpoint). The 'traditional' accounts are mostly accurate, though lacking in context and overly black-and-white. The "modern" accounts are in pretty bad shape, and seem to use people like atheist scholar Bart Ehrman as a major source. Unfortunately my sources only give details for the protestant canon, so some of the minor books I probably won't change.RomanHistorian (talk) 06:59, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not the least bit happy with your changes. If anything, they've lowered the level of scholarship and increased the level of bias. You rely heavily on protestants who swore an oath to "affirm agreement with the theological perspective presented in the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, the core doctrine of many conservative Presbyterian churches". As a result, you removed all of the books that protestants don't accept! At this rate, I'm just going to nominate this page for deletion and be done with it. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 01:43, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

RomanHistorian is quite ignorant of biblical scholarship - I have reverted to the last good version. PiCo (talk) 12:37, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I only just realised that this article relates to the Christian bible - if there's a similar one just on the Bible, then this should be deleted. If there's not such an article, the name of this one should be changed. PiCo (talk) 13:01, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

There were almost no sources cited before, and some of the few prior citations were from atheists like Bart Ehrman or members of the Jesus Seminar. It is now well cited. If you don't like it, find another source and modify it with citations.RomanHistorian (talk) 03:06, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you can convincingly claim to be the champion of neutrality after removing all of the books that protestants do not accept in their canon. Repeating a single, fringe citation over and over again does not increase its weight. If you want to make changes, I recommend making a few small ones at a time. Big changes will likely be rejected. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 07:30, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you can convincingly claim to be a champion of neutrality when your definition of balance is whatever position you agree with. The book I cited is one of the best selling biblical criticism books on Amazon, by respected publishing group Zondervan and is authored by respected scholar D. A. Carson. The "consensus", as you see above, is that the article is poorly researched and one-sided. I retained the original entry but added the conservative view. The conservative view is well cited by a respected book while the liberal view isn't cited at all. I should get rid of the liberal view until someone can create a cited version, although I would rather not start an edit war. Given that my changes are well cited and reflect the consensus above, while leaving in place the original form, I think your issue is you just don't like it. We can go to a moderator if this continues.RomanHistorian (talk) 06:39, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Your changes seem to quote a single book, and that book is very much a fringe position. Also, the whole table needs to be re-approached - the article says Christian bible, which is fine for the NT, but what about the Jewish version of the so-called Old Testament? They were the ones who wrote it, so their bible should have priority. The extra books of the various Christian churches can go in as a supplement (there are 88 books in the biggest of them!) But I agree with you on one thing: a re-think of the table is needed. (I wonder if you actually understand your source - you say, for example, on the Torah, that "few hold to the documentary hypothesis on either these or any other books." Any other books? The documentary hypothesis is ONLY about the Torah! I hope your source didn't actually say anything so silly).PiCo (talk) 10:09, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually my changes are mostly coming from two books, although I have some others in a few places. These books come from a respected and well known publisher (Zondervan books) and are written by well known scholars (Tremper Longman and Raymond Dillard for one, and D. A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo for the other). These are reliable sources by Wikipedia's definition. This is opposed to what was there before: almost no citations. I noticed that one of the few citations, which is used to justify the claim on the documentary hypothesis, comes from a scholar with a fringe view on the topic (Richard Elliot Friedman). Another comes from athiest scholar Bart Ehrman while another comes from Jesus Seminar participant Stephen L. Harris. I'm sorry that you don't like the edits, but the changes DO reflect mainstream scholarship from many scholars. From what I see above, it seems whenever someone makes changes here to a view less skeptical than something Bart Ehrman would say, it is reverted back. I provided a balance, so it seems you would simply prefer the view that is not your own to be relegated to "fringe" even though it is not. If you want to make changes, fine. But if you keep reverting, as though there is only one view (see NPOV) I can follow in kind. It would be better to discuss here (WP:BRD) to arrive at some kind of agreement, or we can go back and forth, or get a moderator involved. I don't mind modifying further what is there now, but the prior state of the article, which presented one view as the "modern" scholarly view, was unacceptable. Oh and by the way, the documentary hypothesis has been applied to Joshua and Judges too.RomanHistorian (talk) 15:20, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't believe anyone said your sources were unreliable, just biased. The Documentary hypothesis is controversial, but not fringe, and while Freidman is known for popularizing it, he actually disagrees with its ordering. As for Ehrman, he is agnostic, not atheistic. If you cannot recognize this distinction, perhaps you are too conservative to edit in a balanced manner. Likewise, the Jesus Seminar is liberal, not fringe. I could go on, but the bottom line is that your changes have been disruptive, have revealed poor scholarship, and largely consist of pushing a POV past any point of neutrality. With all due respect, I strongly recommend that you reconsider your current path, which amounts to edit warring against consensus. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 23:23, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

(Undent.) I agree that those two books are reliable sources, but the point is that they don't represent the scholarly mainstream - that's what I mean by saying they're fringe. We have to give appropriate weight to all notable points of view, and the Tremper/Longman point of view has so little following among scholars as to be non-notable. Second, Friedman is definitely not fringe - he's a reputable scholar, defending (and updating) one particular theory on how the Torah came to be written. Third, the documentary hypothesis has a range of meanings, but the usual use is in relationship to the composition of the Torah - ultra-conservative scholars like Dillard sometimes use it in the sense of source criticism, but that's not standard.

I also have a problem or two with the list as it stands. First, it's headed "Authorship of the Christian Bible" - what about the Jewish Bible? They invented it after all. It should just say Authorship of the Bible. Then it's not actually the Christian bible that's being discussed anyway, just the Protestant one - there's also the Catholic bible, the Greek bible, and you can even talk about the Ethiopian bible. So I think the list should begin with the Hebrew bible (headed Hebrew Bible), then have a section on Christian books not contained in the Hebrew bible (headed Old Testament), then the NT. Your thoughts? PiCo (talk) 00:50, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

A further suggestion: Could we make as our first priority the gathering of some sources? I mean good TERTIARY (wherever possible) sources that focus on the subject of biblical authorship, rather than monographs, which tend to be pushing the author's own theories (quite permissible in scholarly works, but dangerous when you're trying to sum up majority view). PiCo (talk) 01:11, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

You know, I can keep going at this. This seems to be the norm on many of these articles: revert edits from people people because they don't fit into the mold of what others think is mainstream. Where is your evidence that my sources have little following? You think it to be so and so it is? The prior article had almost no sources. Wikipedia policy is prioritize cited changes over uncited ones. I am willing to compromise, although it seems that PiCo and Dylan Flaherty are not. I have the sources, you guys have what "everyone knows" though cannot cite.

Also, there is clearly not a consensus because we are having to go through this. And, as you can see from past comments on this article, I am not the first to raise these issues.RomanHistorian (talk) 03:22, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Do we have to go thropugh the same arguments over and over? You're trying to introduce a major structural change to the table by (a) deleting a number of books entirely, and (b) introducing a column that you call "conservative views" but which are actually very small minority views. Plus your favoured sources, the Longman/Dillard book, is very much on the fringes of scholarly opinion. Please let's begin with the structural proposal: do we need two columns, one for so-called "liberal" (actually mainstream) opnion, another for "conservative" (meaning in fact ultra-conservative) views? I honestly can't see that we do. Discuss that here, and please stop the edit warring. PiCo (talk) 03:29, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I would say atheist/agnostic Bart Ehrman and Jesus Seminar 'scholars' are fringe on many issues. You say my sources are. This is he said/she said. I am deleting none of the original books (I thought I had restored all of the original ones, if not then I will). I think you are wrong, you think I am wrong. I will keep reverting it back until we achieve some kind of compromise. You are totally unwilling, and simply call my changes 'fringe'. Your 'compromise' is to retain the article as it was, which was actually quite biased already. I simply want to show that opinion isn't as rigidly skeptical. What if your view is held by 60% of scholars and mine by 40% (not saying it is, just asking)? We just go with your view and relegate the other 40% to 'fringe'? Its hard for me to say much since you are so totally unwilling to compromise or even accept the legitimacy of my view. And yet you can cite no sources to verify your position that my view is fringe.RomanHistorian (talk) 03:38, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I am escalating this. I have opened a case (Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2010-09-20/Authors of the Bible). I will escalate it further if the other editors keep refusing to compromise at all.RomanHistorian (talk) 04:52, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for a new table

I found this great table lurking around at Books of the Bible. I've simply replaced the column that told what languages the various books are in with one that describes current thinking on their composition. The great thing is that it lists ALL the biblical books, and in a single table. What do you think? (Of course, it still has to be cleaned up and finished off - but I've put a few entries in with references to give you an idea of how it might look) PiCo (talk) 06:09, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Tanakh (Jewish Bible)	Protestant	Catholic	Orthodox	Composition
Torah (Pentateuch)	Pentateuch or Five Books
Genesis	Genesis	Genesis	Genesis	Three main schools of thought: Documentary hypothesis (four complete, parallel, separate documents composed at different times between c.950-550 BCE and combined c. 450 BCE) OR "supplementary" hypothesis (one original document c.550 BCE expanded about 450 BCE) OR "fragmentary" hypothesis (gradual growth and accretion of originally separate documents finishing about 450 BCE)
Exodus	Exodus	Exodus	Exodus
Leviticus	Leviticus	Leviticus	Leviticus
Numbers	Numbers	Numbers	Numbers
Deuteronomy	Deuteronomy	Deuteronomy	Deuteronomy	Core composed c.622 BCE in the court of Josiah (possible earlier edition in the court of Hezekiah), originally part of Deuteronomistic history, later incorporated into Torah.
Nevi'im or Prophets	Historical books
Joshua	Joshua	Joshua	Joshua	Deuteronomistic history (includes Deuteronomy), a single work composed early in the Babylonian exile (586-539 BCE) drawing on earlier annals, legends, and other written and oral material (e.g. the "Rise of David" and the "Court History" within Samuel). Deuteronomy was moved to the Torah at a later stage. The theory has widespread support but many matters remain unsettled.
Judges	Judges	Judges	Judges
see below	Ruth	Ruth	Ruth
Samuel	1 Samuel	1 Samuel	1 Samuel (1 Kingdoms)
	2 Samuel	2 Samuel	2 Samuel (2 Kingdoms)
Kings	1 Kings	1 Kings	1 Kings (3 Kingdoms)
	2 Kings	2 Kings	2 Kings (4 Kingdoms)
Chronicles see below	1 Chronicles	1 Chronicles	1 Chronicles	Composed c.400 BCE drawing on Torah and Deuteronomistic history
	2 Chronicles	2 Chronicles	2 Chronicles
			1 Esdras	Either a secondary work drawing on Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah (probably the majority view) OR an independent variant of Ezra-Nehemiah - translated into Greek late2nd/early 1st century BCE
Ezra (includes Nehemiah) see below	Ezra	Ezra	Ezra (2 Esdras)	Core sources from c.400 BCE, combined into current book by c.300 BCE (some scholars believe combination was as late as 200 BCE).
	Nehemiah	Nehemiah	Nehemiah (2 Esdras)
		Tobit	Tobit
		Judith	Judith
see below	Esther	Esther	Esther
		1 Maccabees	1 Maccabees
		2 Maccabees	2 Maccabees
			3 Maccabees
			4 Maccabees
	Wisdom books
see below	Job	Job	Job
see below	Psalms	Psalms	Psalms	Very difficult to date - some may be pre-Exilic (before 586 BCE), others from later periods
			Odes
see below	Proverbs	Proverbs	Proverbs
see below	Ecclesiastes	Ecclesiastes	Ecclesiastes
see below	Song of Songs	Song of Songs	Song of Songs
		Wisdom	Wisdom
		Sirach	Sirach	Hebrew, then translated into Greek
	Major prophets
Isaiah	Isaiah	Isaiah	Isaiah
Jeremiah	Jeremiah	Jeremiah	Jeremiah
see below	Lamentations	Lamentations	Lamentations
		Baruch	Baruch
			Letter of Jeremiah
Ezekiel	Ezekiel	Ezekiel	Ezekiel
see below	Daniel	Daniel	Daniel
	Minor prophets
Trei Asar or Twelve	Hosea	Hosea	Hosea
	Joel	Joel	Joel
	Amos	Amos	Amos
	Obadiah	Obadiah	Obadiah
	Jonah	Jonah	Jonah
	Micah	Micah	Micah
	Nahum	Nahum	Nahum
	Habakkuk	Habakkuk	Habakkuk
	Zephaniah	Zephaniah	Zephaniah
	Haggai	Haggai	Haggai
	Zechariah	Zacharias	Zechariah
	Malachi	Malachi	Malachi
Ketuvim or Writings
Psalms
Proverbs
Job
Song of Songs
Ruth
Lamentations
Ecclesiastes
Esther
Daniel
Ezra (includes Nehemiah)
Chronicles

Interesting. It's very detailed about canonicity and the way OT books are split/combined in various traditions. Of course, in the cases where there's agreement, the first few columns suffer from duplication. Also, it doesn't do anything to solve the problem of what order to list the books, and I'm not sure how we'll handle the issue of traditional vs modern views. Then again, what we have now is something of a mess, so I think this might be worth trying. You have my support. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 06:28, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

View from outside

Based on the request for a view from the Christianity project, here is my view:

1. You guys need to calm down. The Bible was not written last week and a few weeks more wil make no difference as to who wrote it.

2. The problem is inherent in the article, and there are 2 sources for the problem:

• Too much information in one article. The reason a table was used was to "telegram" a message about each book of the Bible. A terrible idea really. It is like trying to telegram the history of Europe in a table: try that on the Turks and Armenians as to who did what and blood will flow from the keyboards. A table is not a good way to discuss history.

• An inherently ambiguous topic on which every view point has support from some scholar, and the debate then focuses on the relative sanity of scholars: an undecidable question really. Ad mix that with a table and you have a recipe for conflict.

So my view is that a single decision on who wrote Mark to be used in a table is not a good idea anyway. I really do not think the "scholarly view" on who wrote Mark can be expressed in one sentence. The Jesus seminar reports are hailed throughout Wikipedia as the "Bible of Bible scholarship" - but they are not the final word, and I think their own style of authorship needs as much discussion as that of the Bible. However, adding a separate column called conservative is not a solution, but a source for debate. I would, in fact separate the New Testament portion out to its own article, and let it have room for expressing several views. But then there are articles on that anyway - so this table is just a bad idea. As is, this article is sardine information. Not a good idea. By the way, the colors used in the last part of the table are really hard to read anyway, so I do not think many people will read what you are arguing about, just because the color contrast makes it hard to read. Again, I would dismantle the table, for it has just too many problems. History2007 (talk) 06:57, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Maybe this article should just be deleted. It is misleading as there is no "scholarly consensus" on just about anything in biblical scholarship. It is very difficult to have an article like this without it being grossly misleading. Many "modern scholarly views" on books here don't even match the "modern scholarly views" mentioned in the article on that given book.RomanHistorian (talk) 07:21, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

A modern way of saying it is that this article is trying to "tweet" scholarly opinions. Not the way to go. History2007 (talk) 08:52, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not entirely opposed to deletion. How much more input do we need to follow up that option? PiCo (talk) 10:40, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I added a deletion tag.RomanHistorian (talk) 14:37, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Just send me a tweet when it is deleted - just kidding. I agree with the deletion. History2007 (talk) 19:23, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Someone deleted the tag without providing much of an explanation. I have added a deletion discussion tag. Please go over to Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Authorship_of_the_books_of_the_Christian_Bible and comment on this there. We need a "rough consensus" for this to be deleted.RomanHistorian (talk) 14:45, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Prose not table

The discussion seems to be tending towards KEEP. A pity, and rather ironic, given that those who've been working on it seem to be the ones inclined to delete. But if the decision does go to keep it, I recommend dropping the table and adopting a prose approach. Ideas? PiCo (talk) 12:26, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I completely agree. The article as it is is just in poor shape. Maybe take the discussions on the issue from the individual biblical pages and condense them a bit but add them here? The authorship discussions there are fairly well sourced and in pretty good shape for the most part. Redoing that here would be a lot of unnecessary work, and you probably wouldn't get as good of a description here since so much work has been put into the discussions there. This is especially so with the New Testament books, whose authorship sections are quite well done and well sourced. I will let you take the lead because I assume Dylan will revert everything I do. Maybe if you could get something started I could help and maybe Dylan wouldn't revert everything I did by that point, although this is probably wishful thinking on my part.RomanHistorian (talk) 19:01, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Pico, with all due respect, I think that the only way an article about all the books of the Bible could possibly work is as a summary, perhaps even in table form. After all, the books all have their own articles, and I'm sure that those are the right places for lengthy discussion about authorship and timing. The purpose of this article -- and it still has one, in my opinion -- is to give us an overview that covers the traditional view as well as mainstream (which is to say, non-fringe) modern interpretations. We can avoid some of the problems with citations by linking these summaries to their source articles. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 00:36, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I wanted to make one note on this. Some (much) of what is in here is nonsensical. In the case of Luke, for example, the view according to 'some modern scholarly thought' is that the author was anonymous. This is both nonsensical and misleading. The fact that the author was anonymous was also the view of the early church, because the book is literally anonymous (it does not mention who its author is). Why even bother stating the obvious? Same for claiming that Mark was written by an 'early Christian writer'. It is misleading because I think in the mind of many there isn't a clear distinction between 'anonymous' and 'pseudonymous'. By 'anonymous' are we saying the author was not Luke or are we saying something else? I think in the case here (as well as others) some mention should be given on the view as to whether this is the work of Luke or not, or at least on the range of opinion. I would make the change but everything I do is reverted by Dylan (who has acted like a child in each instance) so there is no reason for me to even waste my time.RomanHistorian (talk) 06:46, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I just made a change on the 'modern scholarly view' on Luke. I took this straight from the last paragraph of Gospel_of_Luke#Authorship. How does this change work?RomanHistorian (talk) 07:31, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

On your first point (anonymity of authors), the only answer is to use reliable sources - tertiary sources would be best, since they won't be pushing a personal theory (one hopes). On the second I can't really comment, but I think we should leave further changes till the review is over. PiCo (talk) 23:48, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Just noticed this under "Joshua": "Deuteronomist using material from the Yahwist and Elohist" This illustrates the difficulty (impossibility?) of doing a proper job on this topic - that mixes up two distinct theories about the composition of Joshua, one the Deuteronomistic history of Noth (probably the most common today), and the extended documentary hypothesis model, which see the sources from the Torah extending into Joshua - either might be right, both need to be listed, but the two are mutually exclusive: one theory says the sources are found in Joshua, the other says they're not. You see how much work would be involved in getting this accurate. PiCo (talk) 23:57, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I do, but I think there are strategies that could work. Take Joshua. We could mention the most popular mainstream theories (including the two you mentioned here), and then refer to the article for a more comprehensive list. The idea is not to endorse any specific answer, but to at least get the range of answers across. We can't make room for fringe theories, though, particularly not in an article that's going to be strained just mentioning the mainstream ones in passing. If there's any room for the fringe, it'll be in the articles for each book. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 00:07, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Outcome of AfD

Clearly the outcome is Keep. I'm not too happy about it, but that's democracy for you.

What next? One good suggestion in the discussion was to split the article in two - Authorship of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and Authorship of the New Testament. I'd like to divide the HB/OT article up into sections as follows:

Hebrew bible/Old Testament

• Torah/Pentateuch
• Prophets (Jews regard the history books of the bible as "prophets" because they were supposedly written by prophets)
• Writings
• Apocrypha (which will bring in the books used by Catholics/Orthodox)

New Testament

• Gospels/Acts
• Epistles/Revelation (might be unweildy - maybe a different division?)

I'd like thoughts on this. I also suggest we start gathering on-line sources - please find books you think are worthwhile (preferably on-line) and add them to the bottom of the article. If anyone objects to any particular source, talk about it here, but don't just delete it. PiCo (talk) 00:13, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Wait to split unless length gets toward 100K. Sectioning is fine except that "Apocrypha" are not generally considered "Hebrew Bible", and their inclusion in "Old Testament" is not agreed. So delete OT as heading and keep Apocrypha a separate subhead. In Biblical Sabbath I classifed Acts as an epistle, because it is (so is Luke), but it doesn't matter. There is little likelihood of unwieldiness on this topic unless it becomes a mess of argumentation, and the solution for that is fixit, not split.

I really don't know why the natural title "Authors of the Bible" was changed, because it wins WP:COMMONNAME hands down, and Bible isn't a dab page. In general, "Bible" topics reference all mainstream canons, and occasionally even NT apocrypha et al. As long as it lists OT apocrypha, it's not "Christian Bible" but "Catholic Bible" anyway. But instead of such a ridiculous title, we should just have "Bible" and then let everyone be slightly uncomfortable (i.e., Judaism because of NT, Protestantism because of Apocrypha, and Catholicism because "OT" is in Hebrew order of Law, Prophets, Writings). The "One Bible" approach. JJB 14:38, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

As I suspected, the move was performed without discussion, and there does not appear to be consensus for it, so I will boldly move back given the WP handling of the word "Bible" above. I saw a bit of support for "Authorship of the Bible", but that is really negligible and less common. This being something of a list does not mean that we must summarize all author bios just because the title is "Authors". JJB 14:50, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Last time I checked, Catholics were considered Christian. But I agree that maybe splitting it is premature. Let's grow it out organically and see if there's both enough material to justify and enough distinction to make it possible. I think we need to use the word "Bible" as inclusively as possible, as anything else would be biased. Then again, I'm not sure what to do with the variants found in the JST/IV version. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 17:00, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I'd like the books covered to be the ones in the table you'll find a little higher up this page - I found it on the article Books of the Bible, and it's pretty comprehensive. (Though it does leave a few out - the Ethiopian canon is 88 books - but that's a bit more than I think we can find references for). Anyway, let me put some empty placeholder section and subsection headings on the main articlem page and see what you think. PiCo (talk) 23:56, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Ok. In the meantime, what do you think of "Authorship of the Bible" as a title? Dylan Flaherty (talk) 00:16, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

"Authorship of the bible" sounds right. PiCo (talk) 00:29, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

That wasn't so hard. Hope I didn't make a mess, though. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 00:50, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

The name of the article now is fine. Are you sure we should divide the OT the way the Tanahk (Hebrew Bible) is divided (former prophets, later prophets, etc)? I am fine with it as it is, although I think it might be a bit more accurate to assume that "bible" means "Christian bible" and not Hebrew bible/Tanahk. As such, I think 'traditional authorship' should go beyond opinions in the Talmud, especially since these opinions (I think) are often more speculation than the official position of Judaism. I don't think the Talmud is as black-and-white about Moses being the author of the First 5 books. One verse in Numbers refers to Moses as "the most humble man who has ever lived" and a few verses cite prior written sources. Maybe we should add these points and expand the 'traditional' view to include the view of the Christian church in its first couple of centuries. Also, I disagree that many scholars agree with Noth on the documentary hypothesis. I think most agree with the principle that sections (possibly large ones) of the OT were added or redacted, although I believe that few agree with Noth on the division of J, P, E, and D along the lines he specified.

• Personally I support the Hebrew bible's order of books because it makes it easier to write the "modern critical opinions" sections - if you take the Christian order, Ruth comes in the middle of the Deuteronomistic History, and Jonah is treated as a true prophetic book (the HB treats it as a work of fiction, a "writing"). I'm not sure Judaism has an official position - there's no Jewish Pope, and three main branches. There are some good books that can help us - one is in the external links section.
• Re Moses and the Torah, yes, the position is much more complicated - the question of how Moses knew of the events in Genesis, for example, since he didn't witness them, and the question of what "to this day" or "kings of Edom" mean. But we can simply refer people to the main article for the details (Mosaic authorship).
• The Christian fathers simply followed the rabbis, they put very little new into it, possibly nothing. They weren't really interested in who wrote the bible, but in what it meant. (That's a quasi-quote from someone, possibly Friedman - I'll see if I can find it for the article).PiCo (talk) 23:11, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
• Re Noth and the documentary hypothesis: Noth wrote his big book on the Deuteronomistic history, not the documentary hypothesis. If it's the DH you're talking about, then you're right, there's no longer universal support for the four sources. But the situation is complicated, since most scholars still use the old language of JPD without meaning what was once meant - without meaning the same thing as each other, for that matter. The article says something like the doc hyp "still has" many supporters, implying that it has a lot of non-supporters as well, and then goes on to mention some very recent theories dating from the 1990. Have a look at the book by Ska which is referenced at the end of that section.PiCo (talk) 23:11, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

I think we need to agree to a couple of contextual principals. I think when we talk about the 'traditional' views, we should include views until about the time of the fall of the western Roman Empire (476 AD). Just as there is a lot of uncertainty today about authorship and possible editing (especially the OT), there was similar uncertainty in the ancient world. People today use 'evidence' that was known from the earliest days to come to conclusions that the ancients (who had much more evidence) rejected. The existence of doublets, for example, was known from before Jesus' life (all you have to do is read it to see the doublets) but they didn't think much of it because it was known then (as people are finally beginning to rediscover) that this was just a common near eastern literary technique to elaborate on a point. Also, Eusebius, writing in the 4th century AD, doubts the commonly held views on the authorship of Hebrews, Revelation, Jude, James, 2 Peter, and 2 and 3 John.

• For the Jewish bible, the tradition was settled by the Talmudic authors, 200-500AD. There was very little discussion after that in Jewish circles, and none at all in Christian ones - they simply followed the rabbis. I don't know anything about Christian traditions. PiCo (talk) 23:11, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually that brings me to a larger point. I think there is a lot of ethnocentrism in the way people today view this issue. We tend to assume that people before the enlightenment were unserious about history, mythologically minded and largely can't be trusted. Why else reject the view, for example, that Matthew wrote Matthew despite the fact that this authorship was ascribed to it no later than the early 2nd century when a vast amount of primary evidence of this would have still been available, that the early Christians took this view very seriously and were known to reject anything that was even possibly pseudononymous (they did this on a vast number of books) and that this view was never challenged? I think this type of thinking leads us to reject, not just the 'traditional' view when we have much less evidence on authorship than the early church had, but also to reject all views before the enlightenment. Therefore, when writing this article I think we need to not only give weight to views before the enlightenment but also not act as though we now 'know' who wrote these books and that prior views were simply wrong. We need to show how this issue evolved over time, that many of the issues we now notice (like the doublets) were known from the earliest days despite the views they had on authorship, and give some weight to the view (which hardly changed) from the early church to the beginning of the enlightenment.RomanHistorian (talk) 15:00, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

• This is why we need to rely on reliable sources, and preferably tertiary ones (tho I'm guilty myself of using secondary sources quite a lot). There are 3 good tertiary sources listed at the bottom of the article, and if you use those nobody can accuse you of personal pov-pushing. (Though it might be useful to take all three where they differ, if they do, and say "X says this, Y says that...")PiCo (talk) 23:11, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

I added material to the section on the New Testament. All I did was take the authorship discussions on the individual book articles and summarize them here.RomanHistorian (talk) 17:55, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

• Fine, excpet, in my view, too long. For each book we should have a header, "See main article". Also, try organising the Gospels this way: first a para on traditional views and their background, then a para or two on the synoptics, then John. If, as I suspect, most scholars and also the tradition agree (sort of) that Luke/author of Luke also wrote Acts, that book should go in this section. PiCo (talk) 23:11, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Authorship of the Bible

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Authorship of the Bible's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Harris John":

• From John the Evangelist: Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible. Palo Alto: Mayfield. 1985. "John" p. 302-310
• From Jesus: Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible. Palo Alto: Mayfield. 1985. "John" pp. 302–310

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 17:19, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament

The lead has this sentence: "Since the Christian Old Testament is the same as the Hebrew Bible..." This isn't actually true. They're very similar, but they're not identical. The Protestant Old Testament has the same books as the Hebrew Bible, but in a different order - this is important for the theology of each of them (the Protestant OT ends with a prophecy of the birth of the Messiah, the Jewish bible ends with the restoration of Israel and the Temple). More importantly, the Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments contain books not found in the HB and Protestant bible - so there's more than one Christian Old Testament. If you don't mind I'll tweak it a little. PiCo (talk) 22:16, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Sure go ahead. The issue is tricky and I don't think there is a good solution.RomanHistorian (talk) 00:00, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Reorganization

I created Authorship of the New Testament and Authorship of the Old Testament. I don't think we need to get too hung up over the title of the second topic. I think, for the sake of simplicity, we should just call it "Old Testament" and not "Hebrew Bible" or "Tanakh" or whatever else. Most of the readers of this article will be Christians and not Jews, and the terms are mostly interchangeable. I think it is better to include in the sections on the Old Testament a line mentioning its interchangeability with the Hebrew Bible. The "bible" is the Christian bible while the "Tanakh" is the Hebrew bible. This article is on the "bible" and thus should use, at the highest level at least, Christian terminology whenever there is a direct conflict between Christian and Jewish terminology. There is not a perfect solution for this question, so I think calling it "Old Testament" has fewer problems than any of the other options. Calling it "Old Testament/Hebrew Bible" or whatever is just inelegant and confusing.

Ideally the sections on this article on the NT/OT should just be condensed versions of what can be found on the articles I just created. It should also be more readable for amatures than those articles. I still need to condense the section on the OT. I saw PiCo's suggestion above on the reordering of the New Testament and he is probably right. This is just a starting point, given that nothing was there before.RomanHistorian (talk) 16:10, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

If you're splitting the article then this one has to go - otherwise you have a content fork. In the discussion up above there was a feeling that there should not be a split. I don't have strong feelings either way, but you need to take that into account. Also, although it's true that there are more Christians than Jews, Jews are going to be offended by the use of the title Old Testament and the ordering of the books the Christian way - do we really need to antagonise people over this? PiCo (talk) 22:13, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

I think you are right actually. That material was already available on the individual biblical book pages and here. I deleted the material and put a link redirecting to this page. I also have condensed the info here on the gospels/acts and the OT. What else needs to be done on the NT/OT sections?RomanHistorian (talk) 22:34, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

I think the broad organisation of the article is ok, but I've added OT Apocrypha as a separate (third) section, because it's OT but not HB. There's also some NT apocrypha, but I'd rather not be forced into adding it - the article could grow exponentially if we're not careful. As for the Apocrypha, I've put sub-section heads for each book, but will try to cut back by combining books (1 and 2 Esdras plus Baruch can make up a single section, all four Maccabees can be another).PiCo (talk) 23:14, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Lets leave off the NT apocrypha. IMHO the OT apocrypha should probably left off, but its OK if you want to (briefly) mention it because it is given varying levels of canonicity by Christians and Jews (unlike NT apocrypha). Don't talk too much about it though because I doubt many people who come here will care about it.RomanHistorian (talk) 00:04, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Just my personal opinion is that the section on OT apocrypha should be no more than a paragraph or two. If it is much more than that, maybe we can create a new article for it. I think most people who come here won't care much about apocrypha, and if it takes up too much space it could turn people off from reading the article.RomanHistorian (talk) 03:01, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree abt leaving the NT apocrypha off. As for the OT equivalent, I'll write a long version first and then see how it can be shortened. PiCo (talk) 07:06, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

IMHO I think the best way to go about it would be to create an entire article on it, and add the condensed version here. NT apocrypha could even be added to that apocrypha article if someone wanted to do it.RomanHistorian (talk) 16:12, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Old Testament Apocrypha

I've finished this section, and you might like to look it over. I think I can take up your earlier suggestion and get rid of the sub-headings - one for each book makes it a bit unwieldy (we have to think of readers and their ease of use). But each entry is quite short. I think we should aim for something of similar length in the other entries - not quite so very short, but shorter than they are at the moment. Views? PiCo (talk) 01:10, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

It looks good but you can probably condense it into one or two paragraphs without deleting anything (other than the sub-headings) like what we currently have in the section on the minor prophets. Definitely don't leave too much white space.RomanHistorian (talk) 05:22, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Gospels

I've revised the layout of the OT Apocrypha as you suggested. Now would you like to try something similar on Gospels/Acts? I'd suggest this structure:

Overview

(I'd like to hear what the sources of the traditional view are - how close to the time of Jesus we can get - and also a little note about the Synoptics, the Q-source, and the 2-source hypothesis - and are there other noteworthy hypotheses?)

Matthew

Mark

Luke

John

Acts

PiCo (talk) 06:04, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I think those topics are mentioned. I am also not sure how much closer we can get to the time of Jesus. There are some non-church sources on events in the church in the 1st century, although these were written in the 2nd century. There are some other church sources written in the late 1st century. However, I don't know how relevant these are to the issue of authorship of the gospels. I also think the current structure on the NT is ideal, especially since there is a lot of overlap on the issue of gospel authorship (Q/2-source/3 synoptic gospels, Matthew/Mark/Luke, Luke/Acts for example) and it would be unnecessarily long and repetitive if we split each gospel/acts into its own section.RomanHistorian (talk) 19:45, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

The issue here is we have two mainstream scholars who make two statements that don't agree. Raymond Brown says scholarship is "about evenly divided" although Donald Guthrie says the traditional view is "widely held." I guess we could get into nuances, but the quotes don't seem to agree. I made another change, where I tried to tweak the article to say something in between the two quotes. I am ok with further tweaking, although I think it is better to find something in between the two rather than to pick one and disregard the other.RomanHistorian (talk) 15:41, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I see several 'most scholars', can I see the quotes that say that? Also, I can find a number of sources that say the Gospels were written between 70 and 110 but I can't find the 110 figure in the article. Dougweller (talk) 19:58, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm a little concerned with the amount of attention and framing that is going on to promote the traditional views. Such as citing Kirby and Brown to support the odd claim of "no widespread consensus." Brown clearly says Luke is evenly divided, but then you can clearly see Brown stating scholarly consensus against Matthean authorship. Stuff like The list of scholars maintaining authorship of Luke-Acts by Luke is lengthy is nonsense and original research. We should not be synthesizing the sources ourselves. What does "lengthy" even mean. Stuff like Many scholars, from a wide range of theological viewpoints, do agree with the traditional accounts, says nothing, and is just there to make the minority view look better, without attribution. I made a change regarding Luke, but wanted to express my concerns further here. -Andrew c ^[talk] 20:10, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Also, would it be possible to edit the article to remove any reference to the honorific prefix "St"? I feel it isn't necessary and can be POV. -Andrew c ^[talk] 20:11, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

The 'lengthy' bit was added at Gospel of Mark here [1] by RomanHistorian, then copied to this article by him - and even if he wrote it, he should have attributed it, as it stands it is copyvio in this article. So perhaps we need to start -- oops, at Gospel of Mark for something here mentioned about Luke? It's still the same half-century old list, whether here, at Mark, or Luke. Dougweller (talk) 20:51, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

You might be right about not dividing it by books - I've just revised the section on Law/Torah, and it seems to work quite well without being divided up. But I still think it could be streamlined. PiCo (talk) 04:30, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Citation style

I've tagged it because of the inconsistency of citation style, which is really pretty dreadful. And can I remind everyone that books require page numbers. Dougweller (talk) 16:25, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Original research

Sentences like "In addition, he mentions Acts, the Pauline epistles with the exception of Hebrews and Philemon, as well as the first epistle of Peter, and the first and second epistles of John, and the book of Revelation.[10] " are original research - the reference is just to various books of the Bible, presumably compiled by the person who added the edit, whereas we require a reliable third party source to make the statement.

That whole section is getting inflated and increasingly difficult to read. IMO it needs to say just: (1) the Gospels are anonymous - they don't name their authors; (2) Christian tradition dating from (insert answer here) ascribes authors to them (then a very little about who Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were, according to tradition); (3) modern scholarship says (whatever it says). Above all, don't try to argue a case, just state it, with source. PiCo (talk) 21:10, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

As the section is on traditions and authorship, I agree with (1) and (2) although (3) is what the rest of the article is for.RomanHistorian (talk) 21:40, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I just condensed this section.RomanHistorian (talk) 22:16, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Good. You might like to consider something like this as a model (this relates to Mark, and is taken from [Cambridge History of Christianity: Origins to Constantine, pp.185 and following): According to the Cambridge History of Christianity, the anonymous author of Mark wrote some time around the conclusion of the Roman war on Judea (66-73 AD), drawing on miracle stories about Jesus, tales of controversy, a smaller body of Jesus' teachings, and perhaps an existing outline of the Passion story. That's about all that's needed - who he was, when he wrote, what his sources were - all sourced. One thing missing is where he wrote - I understand that it's believed he wrote in Rome, but the Cambridge History doesn't say. Anyway, if you do it like this, the task will be much easier. PiCo (talk) 21:56, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Maybe, but I think, since this article is on the authorship of the bible, we have to go beyond "anonymous" on this question.RomanHistorian (talk) 22:18, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Two-source hypothesis vs "shared body of work" for MML

There is general agreement among scholars that the Synoptic Gospels, (Matthew, Mark and Luke) show a high level of cross-reference which indicates that their authors relied on a shared body of sources. The usual explanation, the Two-source hypothesis, is that Mark was written first and that the authors of Matthew and Luke relied on Mark and the hypothetical Q document. But. A body of work shared by all of MML is inconsistent with the "two source hypothesis". Mark and Q are held to be distinct and separate sources in the two-source hypothesis - hence the name. So Mark did not rely on "a shared body of resources". Matthew and Luke did. 122.151.126.124 (talk) 23:39, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that sentence is saying that Mark relied on a shared body of sources. But if you have an alternative wording to suggest, go ahead. PiCo (talk) 00:45, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Compilation of the Bible

Is there any information, (anywhere in the world, for that matter) on who decided what to include in the Bible and in what order? I don't see that in our article. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:53, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

It should be in the article(s) on canon - I think there will be links in the portal at the side of the article.PiCo (talk) 02:06, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Christian belief in divine authorship

Shouldn't this article at least touch on Christian belief in devine authorship? --195.14.221.65 (talk) 13:33, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I think that's an excellent idea. I'll see what I can find. StAnselm (talk) 20:49, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Divine authorship

I don't mind this section being there, but there are a few facts (and they are objective facts) that it needs to cover.

• No biblical book claims to have God as its author.
• A few very short fragments do claim to be the word of god - e.g., the ten commandments. A few other short fragments claim to represent the more general words of God (e.g., prophetic passages prefaced by the phrase "word of God"). This gave rise to the concept of divine dictation - at first only for brief passages, later for entire books.
• Lack of clarity over authorship led at an early stage to the development of traditional attributions - the Pentateuch by Moses, etc etc.
• None of the books were "scripture" at the time of writing - it was only later that the canon was formed. At that point the question arose, why are these books, which are included, different from other books which are excluded (e.g., why is Enoch not scripture, despite being quoted by another book which is?) It was then that the concept of "inspiration" arose.

Finding sources for this would be tedious, but if the subject is to be dealt with properly these points need to be covered. PiCo (talk) 02:06, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I've removed this section. As I say above, I don't object to its presence if it's well written, but it isn't, and it seems nobody is going to go to the trouble of finding the sources to do it properly. Unfortunately I have to include myself in that number. I've replaced it with a link to Biblical inspiration in the see also section. PiCo (talk) 00:43, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I was planning on doing some work on it this afternoon. I think it's very important to have a section, but I'm still thinking about what should go in it. StAnselm (talk) 00:57, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, I have restored the section now. Point #1 above is possibly contradicted by a few of the minor prophets, while point #4 is possibly contradicted by 2 Peter 3:16, which views Paul's writings as "Scripture". I don't have any objection to these things being discussed in this section, but it will be important to preserve NPOV. StAnselm (talk) 01:43, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't have any objection to having the section either, I just want it be well-written. If you're happy to do the work, then I'm happy too. I'd avoid quoting the minor prophets or Timothy or any other bible texts as sources, though - they're tricky to interpret, what's needed is modern scholarly sources. (For example, what exactly does Timothy mean by "scripture"? - obviously not what the New Testament, which wasn't scripture at that time; and when an Old Testament prophet uses the phrase "Word of God", does he mean he's giving the exact words of God, or a paraphrase? These are questions that won't even occur to anyone who isn't a scholar. Chris Heard's Higgaion blog has an interesting discussion - I don't want to use that as a source, but it's interesting background - see http://drchris.me/higgaion/). PiCo (talk) 08:07, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I thought it would be helpful to pick one of the "Scripture" verses - but evangelicals would appeal to other verses besides 2 Tim 3:16. However, the fact that the verse is a bit of a battleground (as evidenced by the Bible translations) made me think that it was helpful to include. StAnselm (talk) 09:39, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

It's always dangerous to use bible verses ourselves, as if we were experts - we're not, and true biblical scholars have years and years of training that we lack. In this case, even the word "scripture" is problematic - what's the Greek original, and what did it actually mean back in the 1st century, given that the Hebrew bible canon hadn't yet been formed? That's why we should stick to modern scholars, and preferably respected tertiary sources like Mercer bible dictionary, Oxford ditto, etc etc. PiCo (talk) 11:19, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, the specific claim I was making (which is relatively uncontroversial) is that evangelicals appeal to this verse. But yes - a neutral source discussing this appeal would be better. StAnselm (talk) 11:31, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Dubious source

I have read [2]. The author did not seem to notice that a historical document can speak against its own historical reliability. He seems to grant no validity to lower criticism and higher criticism. The article seems to me like a dismissal of the whole study field, as if the problems of the text were merely invented, instead of real. Tgeorgescu (talk) 14:33, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Questioning who

My understanding of questioning "who?" for religious claims is not asking for verification of the claim, but asking for identification of who makes the claim. In this article, which variety of Christian (such as a particular creed) believes such-and-such about the origin of the text of the Bible.. TomS TDotO (talk) 04:18, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Is this in relation to the Divine Authorship section? That could do with a thorough re-write. There are all sorts of ideas on just how the bible be claimed as God's word. The rabbis of old held that God dictated the Torah to Moses word for word, but that the rest of the bible is words about God rather than the word of God. Modern Christian inerrantists hold, on the contrary, that the whole lot is God's very words, but transmitted by inspiration rather than by dictation. I think that was the general Christian view in pre-modern times - you have those lovely paintings of angels speaking to the Evangelists. But then, if you insist that the word of Scripture is God's very word, you have the problem of which word - the original Greek and Hebrew? But which manuscript? All this would be fascinating to follow up, but I lack the time and inclination myself. PiCo (talk) 11:06, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

This is in relation to the recent editing which changed the wording "some believe that" to "others believe that". The reader is left wondering who those others are. The editor who made this change seems to think that question "who" was asking for a Wikipedia-reliable source, while I interpret that question as asking for who are the some/others. TomS TDotO (talk) 12:49, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

I've written a paragraph on the development of the tradition of divine/Mosaic authorship of the Tora; I can also do someonething regarding the rest of the OT and perhaps the NT. PiCo (talk) 01:07, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Public opinion

This is interesting, but I doubt that it belongs at the beginning of the article (its size and placement may not be ideal because the article must predominently report about scholarly views). This also only appears to cover Europe. — PaleoNeonate — 23:42, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

 Done Removed by PiCo. Thanks, — PaleoNeonate — 17:38, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

---

• This material was added again (presumably by the same editor but under another IP address of the same region). I have moved it to a demographics section, but am still not sure this really belongs here. On the other hand I have not found yet the ideal demographics article where this belongs. It does not appear to be strictly Bible-related either, as it says: "A holy book (e.g. the Bible) ...". It also only focuses on Europe. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate - 20:44, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Maybe that Religion in Europe would be more appropriate. —PaleoNeonate - 20:47, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

 Done Removed again. —PaleoNeonate - 23:41, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

I removed it entirely. The article is about the best available scholarly opinion, and public opinion is not really relevant. If the IP wants to have it, he/she can argue for it here. PiCo (talk) 00:26, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

I agree and have invited the editor to discuss it here before restoring it again (assuming they'll read it before their IP address changes again). Thanks, —PaleoNeonate - 01:18, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

First attested by

@Lucullus19: Per WP:BRD, once reverted you should first discuss it here to attempt to form consensus instead of reinstating your edits. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 12:06, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

New Testament section in this article lacks brief general overview, some kind of a "prologue" on authorship of all NT books. My edit does not refer only to "first attested by" but also to this general overview. And of course, it is important to mention from which point of time the tradition of authorship has started. Lucullus19 (talk)

While I would not oppose some background expansion, do you have sources supporting the additions? Dimadick (talk) 19:15, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Of course, I do have sources. For example and many others. User "PiCo" repeatedly removed also my edits relating to articles "Gospel of Mark", "Gospel of Luke", "Gospel of Matthew" and "Gospel of John" because he subjectively thought my edits were too detailed but that was not the case. I have been editing articles for many years and so far I have had no troubles with anyone but him. I do not understand his strange attitude. Lucullus19 (talk)

@Lucullus19: Please read my first post above. Where is the evidence that consensus was achieved here before restoring your changes? —PaleoNeonate – 18:22, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

@PaleoNeonate: I tried to come to an agreement with "PiCo" that he would modify my contribution rather than just to remove it entirely but he ignored my effort for cooperation in favour of quality of these wiki articles. I think we all should cooperate rather than just removing edits because one of us has subjective feeling that contributions of another editor are too detailed. According to WP:BRD "Revert vandalism upon sight but revert an edit made in good faith only after careful consideration. It is usually preferable to make an edit that retains at least some elements of a prior edit than to revert the prior edit." "PiCo" ignored this rule and no parts of my edits were retained, although I repeatedly appealed to him to retain at least some parts of my edits and to MODIFY not just REMOVE my contributions. Lucullus19 (talk)

Thank you for bringing this to the Talk page. Your edit on Papias was reverted because the detail is trivial (i.e., adds nothing substantial to the article). I'd like you to explain why you think the name of Papias is essential here.

Your other edit is this: Nine out of 27 New Testament books are anonymous (four Gospels, Acts, three epistles attributed to John and the Epistle to the Hebrews), although the author of 2 John and 3 John identifies himself as "the Elder." The rest books contain the name of their author, but the identification of their authors is questionable, as it is treated below. This is based on a non-reliable source (a website) and is contradicted by the article, which makes it inadmissible, but more fundamentally the state of knowledge is such that no cut and dried summary like this is possible. PiCo (talk) 20:21, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

I am glad to see you here to discuss. First question: If you consider the mention about Papias in articles on Gospel of Mark and Gospel of Matthew to be trivial, then why did you remove mentions about Papias in articles "Gospel of Mark" and "Gospel of Matthew" and mention about Iraneus in article "Gospel of Luke", but did retain mention about Iraneus in article on Gospel of John ? In case of Gospel of John wasn´t this mention trivial in your opinion ? In article on "AUTHORSHIP" this account is relevant and can not be considered trivial. It is important to mention from which point of time the tradition of authorship has started. Secondly, the claim "Nine out of 27 New Testament books are anonymous ..." is based on evident fact. E.g. 13 Paul´s epistles contain the name "Paul", epistle of James contains the name "James" and so on.. It is important to realize how many NT books contain the name of their presumable authors (though I do not deny the probability of forgery and do not claim that e.g. author of 2 Peter is apostle Peter himself) and how many are truly anonymous. Lucullus19 (talk)

You still haven't explained why you think these names need to be mentioned. On the second matter, the problem is first of one of sources (a website is not a reliable source), but more importantly the subject is more nuanced than your summary allows for.PiCo (talk) 22:51, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

I provided a reliable source which was a book, not a website, e.g. for Gospel of Mark on 25 December 2017 for the first time, but you repeatedly removed it. The book was this For Gospel of Matthew, Luke and John I also provided reliable sources which were books as you can check in "View history" of respective articles, but you all removed. I can not understand why you do not find it to be important in articles on authorship. Today everyone says "Gospel of John, Gospel of Luke etc..", but who as the first linked each of the four canonical gospels with their respective names ? I think we all make an effort that articles in English Wikipedia were high-quality. Lucullus19 (talk)

Lucullus19, we're dealing with two matters.
First is this addition to the section on the NT, intended as a summary: Nine out of 27 New Testament books are anonymous (four Gospels, Acts, three epistles attributed to John and the Epistle to the Hebrews), although the author of 2 John and 3 John identifies himself as "the Elder." The rest books contain the name of their author, but the identification of their authors is questionable, as it is treated below.
This is unsourced and not supported by the remainder of the section - for example, it fails to tell the reader that the body of scholarly opinion holds everything except the core Pauline corpus to be either pseudonymous or dubious. The article is better off without it.
Second is your insistence on adding a mention of Papias by name. I cannot understand why you consider this important. The article already says that the tradition dates from the 2nd century, what does a name add? That's what I ask you to explain. PiCo (talk) 02:45, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree we are dealing with two matters. In first matter, the last sentence "The rest books contain the name of their author, but the identification of their authors is questionable, as it is treated below" is relating to what you say about scholarly opinion. My inserted section is only a "prologue" and the matter is elaborated below. I agree that probably only 7 Paul´s letters are genuine, but my contribution is only a general overview, a prologue, which was missing in this article. New Testament section of this article started suddenly with gospels and lacked such a prologue.

In second matter, this is a question of consistency. All four gospels tradition of authorship dates from the 2nd century. But if Papias is mentioned in article on Gospel of Matthew and Iraneus is mentioned in both article on Gospel of Luke and article on Gospel of John, then why should article on Gospel of Mark be an exception and lack the mention about Papias ? That would be inconsistent. You did retain the mention about Papias and Iraneus respectively in all three remaining articles on Gospels of Matthew, Luke and John, but in the case of Gospel of Mark the mention about Papias offends you. Lucullus19 (talk)

My two cents -- a blanket statement that the authorship of "the rest books" is "questionable" across the board is a bit much to have without a reliable source cited. Alephb (talk) 20:41, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

The statement is only a prologue and citation of reliable sources is at every particular section written below. (The statement says: "The rest books contain the name of their author, but the identification of their authors is questionable, as it is treated below ") For example, for Pauline letters here: The three Pastoral epistles – First and Second Timothy and Titus, are probably from the same author, but most historical-critical scholars regard them as the work of someone other than Paul. . For General epistles here: Though 2 Peter states its author as "Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ", most scholars today regard this as pseudonymous, and many hold the same opinion of James, 1 Peter and Jude. . And for Revelation here: Most biblical scholars now believe that these were separate individuals. The prologue provides only a general overview and the issue of authorship is elaborated below at respective sections, along with respective citations. Lucullus19 (talk)

There's no problem with a general prologue sentence (I don't think) as long as that sentence accurately reflects the sources used. Right now, "The rest [sic] books contain the name of their author, but the identification of their authors is questionable" suggests that all 18 books are of "questionable" authorship. However, the section below immediately goes on to claim that Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon are "almost universally accepted as the work of Paul." So your general prologue statement doesn't accurately reflect what's discussed below. That's the problem. (Or at least, that one problem.) Alephb (talk) 01:03, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Ehrman stated that we know the name of the author of seven Pauline epistles (which are orthonymous) and of the Revelation (which is homonymous). See e.g. Bart's Most Recent New York Times Bestseller PR Newswire Association LLC, 2009. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:39, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

References

POV

Why is the Protestant tradition seen as the norm in this article, with Catholic and Orthodox traditions described as apocrypha? Deipnosophista (talk) 15:48, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Tgeorgescu (talk) 17:56, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

The question still stands. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:F7C0:CC30:DD50:DC2E:2D8E:E7D8 (talk) 07:09, 26 June 2018 (UTC)