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Who wrote the Bible?

I'm interested to know, whether there is any evidence as to the writers of the Bible, both the Old and the New Testaments. I'm not interested to an extend that I was go ahead and research it myself, but if anyone knows, the answer is going to be greatly appreciated.

Were these just stories passed on verbally, changing with every generation that simply got recorded at some point, or did a group of people deliberately sit down and write the Bible with, perhaps, some clear goals, linked to their time and place in history?

After all, it is probably a best seller of all time.

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Permalink Reply by Torkoal (Gotta catch 'em all) on August 9, 2011 at 11:47pm

I think it was written by a bunch of people over time. Probably the longest game of telephone in the world.

As for evidence, I'm not sure. I'll look deeper into this later

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Permalink Reply by Steph S. on August 11, 2011 at 4:50pm

A bunch of men, probably involved in the early beginnings of the church. We can only speculate -- at least we all know that god didn't write it.

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Permalink Reply by Richard K. Emms on August 10, 2011 at 6:44am

I have to agree with Torkoal. The real question here is who put it together. For many years there seemed to have been writers generating stories about life and a supposed afterlife. Perhaps because their present life was so bad. I suspect that there was a group who compiled all of this to their own ends into what we now call the bible. From that it was easy to initiate the controling group we call christianity. Not the first time it had been done. Every hyroglyph, and pictoglyph in the world seemed to have similar beginnings. I think the bible was just one of the more recent and elaborate compilations.

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Permalink Reply by AgeOfAtheists14 on August 10, 2011 at 9:29pm

nahhhh; who wrote the book of luv!?

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Permalink Reply by Jeremy Raines on August 10, 2011 at 9:58pm

Short answer: Nobody really knows.

Most likely, some Jewish "scribes" compiled most of the OT during the Babylonian "Captivity" from oral versions of stories and genealogies passed down for centuries. While the NT is composed letters written between Christian communities throughout the Roman Empire. Many of the books attributed to Paul were probably written by some later followers, and most of the Gospels were documents written (from older source documents--see 'Q' and 'Signs Gospel') at the behest of non-Gnostic Christian communities looking for a cohesive Christ story from which to lead worship.

From my non-theist perspective, the Bible is a fascinating document containing many honest attempts to be "accurate," but is tainted by theological contradictions and politically motivated historical revision. I view it (as well as other documents) as a vibrant insight into the human story, but remain extremely skeptical about the majority of its claims.