Who Wrote the Bible? : a Book for the People

by Washington Gladden

This is, as will be seen, a simple question of history. We can trace with tolerable certainty the steps by which this collection of sacred writings was made; we know pretty well who did it, and when and how it was done. And there is nothing profane or irreverent in this inquiry, for the work of collecting these writings and fixing this canon has been done mainly, if not wholly, by men who were not inspired and did not claim to be. There is nothing mysterious or miraculous about their doings any more than there is about the acts of the framers of the Westminster Confession, or the American Constitution. They were dealing with sacred matters, no doubt, when they were trying to determine what books should be received and used as Scriptures, but they were dealing with them in exactly the same way that we do, by using the best lights they had.

As we have learned in previous chapters, the beginning of our canon was made by Ezra the scribe, who, in the fifth century before Christ, newly published and consecrated the Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses, as the Holy Book of the Jewish people.

After Ezra came Nehemiah, to whom the beginning of the second collection of Jewish Scriptures, called the Prophets, is ascribed in one of the apocryphal books. But this collection was not apparently finished and closed by Nehemiah. The histories of Joshua and Judges, of Samuel and Kings, and the principal books of the Prophets were undoubtedly gathered by him; but it would seem that the collection was left open for future prophecies.

About the same time the third group of the Old Testament Scriptures, "The Hagiographa," or "Writings," began to be collected. No book of the Bible contains any information concerning the making of these two later collections, the Prophets and the Hagiographa; and we are obliged to rely wholly upon Jewish tradition, and upon references which we find in Jewish writers. Professor Westcott, who is one of the most conservative of Biblical scholars, says that "the combined evidence of tradition and of the general course of Jewish history leads to the conclusion that the canon in its present shape was formed gradually during a lengthened interval, beginning with Ezra and extending through a part, or even the whole of the Persian period," or from B.C. 458 to 332. Without adopting this conclusion, we may remark that this last date, 332, was nearly a century after Nehemiah and Malachi, the last of the prophets; so that if the canon was closed at a date so late as this, it must have been closed by men who were certainly not known to have been inspired. If it was forming, through all this period, then it must have been formed in part by men in behalf of whom no claim of inspiration has ever been set up.

According to Jewish tradition the work of collecting, editing, and authorizing the sacred writings was done by a certain "Great Synagogue," founded by Ezra, presided over by Nehemiah, after him, and continuing in existence down to about the year 200 B.C. This is wholly a tradition, and has been proved to be baseless. There never was such a synagogue; the Scriptures know nothing about it; the apocryphal writers, so numerous and widely dispersed, have never heard of it; Philo and Josephus are ignorant concerning it. None of the Jewish authors of the period who freely discuss the Scriptures and their authority makes mention of this Great Synagogue. The story of its existence is first heard from some Jewish rabbin hundreds of years after Christ.

We have proof enough in the New Testament that the Jews had certain Sacred Scriptures; the New Testament writers often quote them and refer to them; but there is no conclusive proof that they had been gathered at this time into a complete collection. Jesus tells the Jews that they search the Scriptures, but he does not say how many of these Scriptures there were in his day; Paul reminds Timothy that from a child he had known the Holy Scriptures, but he gives no list of their titles. If we found all the books of the Old Testament quoted or referred to by the New Testament writers, then we should know that they possessed the same books that we have. Most of these books are thus referred to; but there are seven Old Testament books whose names the New Testament never quotes, and at least five to which it makes no reference whatever: Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah. To Judges, Chronicles, and Ezekiel it refers only in the same way that it refers to a number of the apocryphal books. Some of these omissions appear to be significant. The New Testament gives us therefore no definite information by which we can determine whether the Old Testament canon was closed at the time of Christ, nor does it tell us of what books it was composed.

We have seen already that two different collections of Old Testament writings were in existence, one in Hebrew, and the other a translation into the Greek, made by Jews in Alexandria, and called the Septuagint. The latter collection was the one most used by our Lord and the apostles; much the greater number of quotations from the Old Testament found in the Gospels and the Epistles are taken from the Septuagint. This Greek Bible contained quite a number of books which are not in the Hebrew Bible: they were later in their origin than any of the Old Testament books; most of them were originally written in Greek; and while they were regarded by some of the more conservative of the Jews in Egypt as inferior to the Law and the Prophets, they were generally ranked with the books of the Hagiographa as sacred writings. This is evident from the fact that they were mingled indiscriminately with these books of the older Scriptures. You know that I am speaking now of the apocryphal books which you find in some of your old Bibles, between the Old and New Testaments. These were the later books contained in the Septuagint, and not in the Hebrew Bible. But they were not sorted out by themselves in the Septuagint; they were interspersed through the other books, as of equal value. Thus in the Vatican Bible, of which we shall learn more by and by, Esdras First and Second succeed the Chronicles; Tobit and Judith are between Nehemiah and Esther; the Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach follow Solomon's Song; Baruch is next to Jeremiah; Daniel is followed by Susanna and Bel and the Dragon, and the collection closes with the three books of Maccabees.

All the old manuscripts of the Bible which we possess--those which are regarded as above all others sacred and authoritative--contain these apocryphal writings thus intermingled with the books of our own canon. It is clear, therefore, that to the Alexandrian Jews these later books were Sacred Scriptures; and it is certain also that our Lord and his apostles used the collection which contained these books. It is said that they do not refer to them, and it is true that they do not mention them by name; but they do use them occasionally. Let me read you a few passages which will illustrate their familiarity with the apocryphal books.

James i.19: "Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak." Sirach v. 11; iv. 29: "Be swift to hear." "Be not hasty in thy tongue."

Hebrews i. 3: "Who being the effulgence of his glory, and the very image of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power." Wisdom vii. 26: "For she (Wisdom) is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness."