Who Wrote the Bible?

The Bible has many human authors. Traditional attribution credits Moses with the first five books of the Old Testament (the Pentateuch); David and others with the Psalms; Solomon with much of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon; and the prophets with the books that bear their names. In the New Testament, the Gospels are attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; Acts to Luke; thirteen epistles to Paul; and the General Epistles to James, Peter, John, and Jude. Hebrews is anonymous and Revelation is John's.

Conventional counts give about 40 distinct human authors writing across roughly 1,500 years on three continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe), in three languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek). The exact number depends on how you count anonymous and disputed authorship.

Christians hold that God inspired the human authors of Scripture. The classic biblical statement is in 2 Timothy 3:16: 'All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.' 2 Peter 1:21 adds that 'holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.' The traditional view is that the human authors wrote in their own styles and contexts, under divine guidance.

Many books are signed or attributed: Paul names himself in his letters; the prophets often begin with their own name. Other books are anonymous: Hebrews has no named author and the Gospels do not name their authors within the text (the names come from early church tradition). Scholarly debate continues over the authorship of some books (the Pentateuch, Isaiah, the Pastoral Epistles, et cetera), with traditional and critical views differing.

Traditional Jewish and Christian belief attributes Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy to Moses, with the obvious exception of the account of Moses's own death at the end of Deuteronomy. Critical scholarship since the 19th century has proposed multiple sources combined later (the documentary hypothesis). Both views agree that Moses is the central figure of the Pentateuch; they differ on whether he wrote it personally or whether the material was later compiled in his name.

Most psalms have a brief superscription identifying an author or context. David is named in 73 of the 150 psalms; other named authors include Asaph, the Sons of Korah, Solomon, Moses, Heman, and Ethan. About 50 psalms are anonymous (called 'orphan psalms'). The Psalter as a whole is a collection compiled over centuries.

Old Testament books were written over many centuries before Christ, from roughly the time of Moses (about 1400 BC in traditional dating) through the post-exilic period. New Testament books were written in the first century AD, between the early epistles (mid-40s AD) and the latest writings (likely the late 90s AD). See the related 'When was the Bible written' page for a fuller timeline.