People did. Moses is
said to have written the Torah, and prophets, teachers and historians wrote most
of the rest. Interestingly, no claim is
ever made that Jesus wrote anything (except on sand…John 8:6).
It is recorded in the letter of 2 Peter (though the verses
where this phrase is included are difficult to translate) that ‘holy men of old’
were ‘carried along by the Holy Spirit (of God)’, but its not said even here
that God gave the words to write. Instead, it’s claimed that the prophets
were ‘moved’ or ‘carried’ (Greek phero G5342) by the spirit of God, to ‘use
words to describe their thoughts’ (Greek laleo G2980).
Did God write any of it? Well, it says this in Exodus
31:18:
He (God) gave Moses two tablets of testimony when he
had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai,
tablets of stone written by the finger of God.
This appears to be a
strong expression claiming that the Law came directly from God. This is
further reinforced by Exodus 24:12, 32:16 and Deuteronomy 4:13 and 5:22:
The LORD said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and wait
there, that I may give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the
commandment, which I have written for their instruction.”
The tablets were the work of God, and the writing
was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.
And he (God) declared to you his covenant, which he
commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them
on two tablets of stone.
(Note that the covenant is the ‘ten words’ or
commandments…this is what was written on the tablets)
These words the LORD spoke to all your assembly at the
mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with
a loud voice; and he added no more. And he wrote them on two tablets
of stone and gave them to me.
Did you notice the phrase 'and he added no more'?
That's often somehow overlooked...
These are the only claims to God writing anything, and they
all refer to what people today call the ‘ten commandments’, though in Hebrew it
is the ten dabar, meaning ‘words’ or ‘utterances’ (a commandment is a different
word - mitsvah)
So if God didn’t write the Bible, where did it come
from? Who put it together? The simple answer is people wrote down
teachings, interpretations, history, warnings, accounts…far more than just what
is included in ‘the Bible’.
According to Moses, God gave him legal rulings on these ten
utterances (ten commandments) that is, the ways to apply God’s Law to
situations that would come up. Much of what Moses is said to have written
includes such rulings; rulings on what constituted idolatry, adultery, murder,
lying etc.
Over time, whatever Moses originally wrote has been
lost. We have copies of copies…and these don’t exactly match other copies
of copies (though they are remarkably close). And of course, the
originals weren’t written in English, they’ve been translated, so we are even
further away from the ‘original’ words and their meanings.
(It’s not hopeless though! God’s teachings can be quite clearly understood from reading the ‘whole thing’, from the beginning. More on that in the next blog entry…)
The Torah was ‘canonized’ (officially declared Scripture, or
‘holy writing’) about 500 BC, the writings of the Prophets were canonized about
350 BC and the ‘Writings’ (including Psalms, Proverbs) not fully till about 100
AD. The Christian ‘New Testament’ was canonized about 350 AD, and
eventually added to a modified Hebrew Bible (some books were removed).
