What does it mean to say that God inspired the scriptures and who were the primary authors?

Answer 1

A:The notion that God inspired the scriptures is a Christian belief necessitated by the claim that The Bible is wholly true and inerrant. Human authors could not have written accurate accounts of events that in many cases they could not have known about. Otherssay that that the Bible contains exactly what God intends to convey, but the absence of error does not necessarily apply to the incidental, scientific, geographical, or historical statements in Scripture.

A more realistic view of the inspiriation of the scriptures is provided by Professor Alley of the University of Richmond, who is quoted as saying, "

While some persons may continue to hold that the historic Christian belief in biblical infallibility and inerrancy is the only valid starting point and framework for a theology of revelation, such contentions should be heard with a smile and incorporated into the bylaws of the Flat Earth Society."

For nearly all the books of the Bible, we do not even know who the authors really were. The first five books of the Bible have long been attributed to Moses, but biblical scholars have long since dismissed this attribution. Some say that books like Daniel and Esther were probably written by characters mentioned in those books, since they would have had the knowledge of events in order to write the books. YetDaniel

and

Estherare

known to have been novels written in the second century BCE, although set in a period centuries earlier.

We do not even know who wrote the New Testament gospels, in spite of them having been attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John since later in the second century. Similarly, most of the New Testament epistles are really pseudepigraphical.

We have to read the Bible and take from it what benefits us spiritually, at the same time realising that in most cases we will never know who wrote the books that make up the Bible.