Who were some of the varied writers of the Bible?

Answer 1

The quickest answer is: "We don't know for sure." You should know that people in the ancient world were leery of new things and ideas, so it was very common to write under the pseudonym of a famous person; usually people that did this were writing "in the school of X," like with Paul's letters. Claiming to be a famous person was a good way to get people to read what you wrote. Scholars date books by the historical references the books make; this makes it easy to tell who couldn't have written the book. It's generally less difficult to say who is not the author than who is.

In the Old Testament, scholarly opinion has settled on various "schools" of authorship, which groups and individuals wrote at various times and places. Tradition has ascribed various individuals as authors of certain OT books, but there is no way that Moses actually wrote the Torah or that David wrote all of the Psalms.

The schools of thought you will find in the Old Testament are the Yahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and Priestly writers. For example, compare the first two very different creation myths in Genesis 1 and 2. They are completely incompatible if taken as history and the writing style is too different for it to be from the same author or time period. The Yahwists composed the Adam and Eve story (which is much older and has a much more primitive theology) and the Priestly authors wrote the 7 Days story (which has a much less interesting narrative, but is much more theologically sophisticated).

Many of the books of the Old Testament were written over a period of time and developed by multiple parties. Almost none were actually written by whomever authorship is attributed to.

In the New Testament, we know that Paul wrote most of the letters attributed to him, but several were written by his disciples that signed Paul's name so their work would be recognized. The Gospels, as they were written much later, were not written by the actual Apostles of Jesus.

Noteworthy is that the author of the Gospel of John is not the same person who wrote Revelation (that is John of Patmos), is not John the Baptist, and may not be the person who wrote the letters of John (possibly John the Presbyter, but this is uncertain).

Here is a list of books that scholars are certain of authorship:

Sirach/Ecclesiasticus/Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach- Jesus son of Eleazar son of Sirach wrote this book about his own grandfather. But this book might not even be in your Bible, depending on which version you're using (mine is the New Revised Standard Edition).

We know that the author of Luke also wrote Acts of the Apostles, but we don't know exactly who Luke was, so he is referred to as the Lukan author.

Romans, 1 Thessalonians, Philipians, Philemon, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, are all most likely Paul's authentic compositions. The other letters of Paul were probably the work of one or more of his students.

The Letters of Peter were probably not written by Peter himself.