Who Wrote the Bible?

Prophets were men or women who heard and shared a message directly from God. At times the prophets spoke or wrote about events in the future. Other times they had a specific message about what God was doing in the present. Deuteronomy 18:20-22 tells us the consequence of being a false prophet was death. A prophet of God was never mistaken in their message because the message was from God Himself.

God decided exactly what words and stories He wanted to be part of His written Word. When early Christians began gathering these texts into one book, the Bible, they used three principles to confirm these books came from God:

1. A recognized prophet or apostle wrote the book.
2. The book could not disagree with what was already considered Scripture.
3. There had to be agreement that God, the Holy Spirit, inspired the writing.

When Jesus lived on Earth, the Old Testament was already the 39 books it is today. The New Testament books were determined 350-400 years after Jesus’ birth. Ultimately, the gathering of the books of the New Testament simply confirmed the books the Holy Spirit had already preserved within the Church throughout the first few centuries.

The three different languages used in the original texts were Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. Hebrew was the language of the Hebrew people. Almost the entire Old Testament is written in Hebrew, while most of the New Testament is written in Greek. Aramaic was the everyday spoken language of the Jewish people, while Greek was the common language spoken throughout the Roman Empire.

Words are different in some Bibles. Sometimes the words are different because the Bible is translated into a different language. Sometimes the words are different because faithful translators want God’s Word to be accessible to people who aren’t familiar with older translations. When the Bible is translated from Hebrew or Greek, some translators work towards a word-for-word translation. Other translators try to translate thought for thought. There are good translations of both styles. Reading different versions of the Bible might give you a better understanding of the meaning of the text.