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In recent times authorship of Biblical books has been called into question by modern scholars.

It is believed that Isaiah didn't write Isaiah, John didn't write John, Matthew didn't write Matthew, and so on. A little concession is given to us by conceding that Mark did write Mark, but he wasn't an eyewitness so his testimony doesn't matter anyway.

My question is -

  1. How much weight does this kind of textual criticism have? What logic/principles are used to arrive at such kind of results? (Can you give an example?)

  2. What should be the Christian response to such claims? What can a Christian do to educate herself on these matters?

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Read Chesterton! If you can get a hold of this month's issue of Gilbert magazine there's an amusing aside of a plethora of G.K. Chesterton's commentaries on the "higher criticism". The only one I remember is something to the effect that "the higher criticism says Jesus and Mithras are very much alike, especially Mithras". – Peter Turner Jun 20 '12 at 13:26
@PeterTurner do you have a link? – user1054 Jun 21 '12 at 12:15
@dan you get the magazine if you join the American Chesterton Society I re-read it last night and all the quotes seem to be in his articles taken from the 30+ books of his complete works published by Ignatius Press – Peter Turner Jun 21 '12 at 13:07

2 Answers

You need to deal with them on a case by case basis. For one, it is helpful to understand that all claims of authorship are always uncertain, even and especially those made by textual critics. As Christians we accept a tradition about who wrote the books along with whatever authorship may be claimed therein.

In the case of the Gospel writers, we can take note of two problems in 'identifying' the author using textual criticism:

  1. The authors shared material and did not have a notion of 'plagiarism' - so some stuff may have been shared directly. Additionally there is believed to have been a 'Document Q' which was an early record of many of Jesus' sayings written down by his disciples. It did not survive though most or all of it may actually just be in Matthew, Mark and Luke. This could make analyzing the text for style and origin difficult and subject to a lot noise that would make precise identification impossible.

  2. In the case of John, it is traditional that he did not write his Gospel (or Revelation) by hand but in the prior case, the witness - the Gospel - is John's account. The end of the Gospel communicates this, not necessarily that John is sitting there writing (he was old at the time, it is believed that Prochoros was the actual writer) but that he is the witness of these things. With Revelation we know for sure he was having the vision and telling Prochoros about it, who was writing it down. So the result would be a mixture of John and Prochoros, not John alone.

With Hebrews, Paul is traditionally accepted as the writer. Textual critics, in their attempt to identify authorship, may forget that an extremely learned man such as Paul was fully capable of concealing his identity in his writing, as well as utilizing different styles for various purposes. Perhaps they assume that ancient people were all non-self conscious and didn't have the ability to choose words and phrases that were different than their normal style or pattern for some purpose of their own.

For Isaiah, we must remember again the problem of scribes - so to say Isaiah didn't 'write' Isaiah doesn't say much! How could a prophet write his vision while having it? So with Isaiah we may easily have a collection of works from different eras in Isaiah's life written down by different scribes. Trying to be exact about it simply makes it less clear.

In general, Christians must remember that 'Sola Scriptura' is a recent invention and is not the basis for traditional faith. Even the original holders of Sola Scriptura held to various oral and written traditions about the scriptures - such as the ever-virginity of Mary - that are not directly witnessed by the scriptures themselves.

Consider the case of the books of Moses - given the potential age of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy - plus the history itself witnessed by the scripture - we cannot be fully certain (ever) that what we have is word-for-word of what Moses either dictated or wrote. Our trust is in the witness of the Spirit, not in the inerrant words of this or that human (guess what, no humans are inerrant.) If you learn a bit about how human beings interpret visionary works (such as prophecy) it becomes clear that perfect word-for-word accuracy does not necessarily mean accuracy on many points.

Thus it becomes nearly impossible to debunk the scripture - all attempts have failed really - because on the points on which our faith hangs, such as the divinity of the Son of God, the incarnation of Him, his death, resurrection, ascension and sending of the Holy Spirit, the witness doesn't vary. It is possible that Genesis 3 was added later during the Babylonian captivity (Genesis certainly reflects two different writings, but whether they come from the same person or not cannot be established) but whether it did or not doesn't matter. One reason for this idea is that it attempts to undermine the Christian belief in the fall. But consider how it fails to do so: If it was added in the Babylonian times, that indicates that the teaching of the Fall of Man has been in the people of God since before then, and it is also consistent with other teachings in the scripture.

Textual Criticism - inasmuch as it is a tool to undermine Christian faith - can really only undermine faith based on literal scriptural inerrancy. Those who hold to a tradition (kergyma) about scripture may or may not find such things interesting, depending on their background and talents, but they do not pose a challenge to the faith, since the faith is not just the Bible, but the people (the Church) who have been witnesses of God since the beginning of time. Even if the fall part of Genesis is a later addition, it is consistent with the teaching of the Church and is thus part of the faith anyway. Those 'additions' if they were, were just as inspired as the text they added to.

It also helps to remember that nobody is going to rediscover the 'real faith' of the Bible at any time. It still exists and continues and most attempts to radically reinterpret the scripture are, as they have been since the time of Christ, the work of Gnostics.

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Point of order; the "written down by his disciples" is entirely misleading - this is a hypothetical document, and has no particular authorship. Even if it existed, there is exactly nothing to suggest anything about disciples being involved. – Marc Gravell Jun 21 '12 at 6:38
According to my professor of Early Christian studies, it is assumed that it would have been written down by his disciples. So, if this document did exist (which they are fairly certain of) it would have been written down by his disciples, because many of the quotes were spoken in private and thus, only to those within his following at the time (as the Scripture itself indicates numerous times.) – RiverC Oct 3 '12 at 13:31

Differing Conclusions

It is believed both that John did not write John AND that John did write John. There are people on both sides of the issue (as well as Matthew and Isaiah). Both sides point to evidence for their claims and strongly defend their positions.

The distinction typically lies in a person's view of Scripture and not with the evidence. Those that believe the Bible is "God-breathed" and divine in origin typically accept the evidence for John's authorship of John and the early dating of its writing. Those who view the Bible as less authoritative, of human origin, or who disregard the Bible altogether will accept the evidence that suggests other authorship, later dates of writing, etc.

Higher Criticism is not Infallible

The "Higher Criticism", however, is is no way without its own criticism and those that deny traditional authorship are not without their own biases. It's important to keep in mind that this issue is not one that anyone can come to without some bias, and most approach it with very strong bias. The fact that someone who dies the divine authorship of the Bible embraces ideas that undermine the divine authorship of the Bible really goes without saying. Of course they do, but that doesn't make their beliefs legitimate.

It is interesting to note that those who are 2,000 years removed from the situation believe that they can know more about the authorship of the books of the Bible than people who lived during or very close to the times when the books were actually written. We should ask, "Why did people in the 2nd and 3rd centuries believe that John wrote John?" We don't have all the resources that they did at that time, specifically the body of knowledge that had just been passed along from the original sources. It would seem that the burden of proof would be on the one who is further separated from such knowledge to demonstrate that those much closer to the events themselves were, in fact, wrong. Eyewitness accounts are much more credible than accounts of people who read about events long after they occurred.

Conclusion

So, whenever there is any question regarding the Bible or Christianity, we should

  1. Identify our own biases.
  2. Examine the evidence on both sides of the issue.
  3. Draw a reasoned and rational conclusion.
  4. Identify the level of certainty that is legitimate regarding the evidence.
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