7 Facts That Shatter the Theories About Who Really Wrote the Bible

Moses Did Not Write the Torah/Pentateuch Jews and Christians widely believe that Moses wrote the first five books in the Bible. However, beginning with some medieval rabbis, doubts have been raised. Among the details that challenged the notion that Moses was the author are as follows: The Edomite kings listed in Genesis 36 did not live until after Moses was dead. Moses is referred to in the third person in several passages. There are places named that Moses could not have known (he never entered the Promised Land). The Hebrew of the text includes terms that were developed long after Moses' death. Moses' death is included in Deuteronomy. Camels are listed in Abraham's retinue, but camels were domesticated around 1000, long after Abraham (1550 B.C.) and even Moses (1250 B.C.).. In Deuteronomy 34, the writer says, "There never arose another prophet in Israel like Moses." It didn't seem to make sense that Moses -- or even God, in Moses' time -- would write such words. The Gospels Are Not Eyewitness Accounts? The four canonical Gospels in the New Testament were originally anonymous. The names of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were not attached to them until the second century. As is the case with all the Gospels, it is unknown exactly when the Gospel of Mark was written. Most scholars believe that it was written by a second-generation Christian, around or shortly after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple in year 70. Numerous early sources say that Mark's material was dictated to him by St. Peter, who later compiled it into his Gospel. The Gospel, however, appears to rely on several underlying sources, which vary in form and in theology, and which go against the story that the Gospel was based on Peter's preaching. Biblical scholars generally hold that Matthew was composed between the years c. 70 and 100 and the author was probably a Jewish Christian writing for other Jewish Christians. As is the case of the Gospel of Luke, scholars have proposed a range of dates from as early as 60 A.D. to as late as 90 A.D. and it was penned by the same author who wrote Acts of the Apostles. A majority of scholars find it unlikely that John the Apostle wrote the Gospel of John because the Gospel is a deeply meditated representation of Jesus' character and teachings rather than a plain account of Jesus' ministry. Matthew and Luke are a Plagiarized Version of Mark? Although it is unknown exactly how the four canonical Gospels were composed, a popular theory among scholars is the two-source hypothesis. The hypothesis puts the Gospel of Mark being written first and then the authors of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke using Mark and a hypothetical Q document, in addition to some other sources, to write their individual Gospels. The three Gospels are called the Synoptic Gospels since they are so very similar. The Q document, also called the Q source, Q Gospel or Q (from German: Quelle, meaning "source") is a hypothetical written collection of sayings from Jesus (the Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer) that is believed, by some scholars, to be the source of the material found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke but not in the Gospel of Mark. According to this hypothesis, verbal agreements between Matthew and Luke suggest the non-Markan material must have been taken from a written, not oral, source. Since Q does not contain any Passion story, this has led some researchers to conclude that whoever first wrote the document must have regarded Jesus as a teacher of wisdom and nothing more. Apostle Paul Only Wrote Half of Those Letters? According to renowned biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman, Paul only wrote seven of 13 books attributed to him in the New Testament The remaining books are forgeries, Ehrman says. His proof: inconsistencies in the language, choice of words and blatant contradiction in doctrine. For example, Ehrman says the book of Ephesians doesn’t conform to Paul’s distinctive Greek writing style. He says Paul wrote in short, pointed sentences while Ephesians is full of long Greek sentences (the opening sentence of thanksgiving in Ephesians unfurls a sentence that winds through 12 verses, he says). The scholar also points to a famous passage in 1 Corinthians in which Paul is recorded as saying that women should be “silent” in churches and that “if they wish to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home.” Only three chapters earlier, in the same book, Paul is urging women who pray and prophesy in church to cover their heads with veils, Ehrman says: “If they were allowed to speak in chapter 11, how could they be told not to speak in chapter 14?” Daniel Is ‘Prophecy-After-The-Fact’ ? The Book of Daniel is often paired with the Book of Revelation as providing the road map of future end-time events. Many alleged prophecies in Daniel were fulfilled, but most scholars of the Book of Daniel conclude that so-called "prophecies" were only produced "after the fact" or ex eventu. This is a position reached by first examining the historical, theological and literary nature of the Book of Daniel. Some scholars say Daniel might actually be a Jew from the Hellenistic period, not a person from the Babylonian court and the book itself betrays more than one author. Chapters 1–6 were written in Aramaic, while chapters 7–12 are in Hebrew. Daniel makes many historical errors when talking about the Babylonian period, the time in which he supposedly lived. For example, he claims that Belshazzar was the son of Nebuchadnezzar, but the Nabonidus Cylinder found in Ur names Nabonidus as Belshazzar’s actual father. Also, Belshazzar was a crown prince but never a king, contrary to Daniel’s claim. In Daniel 5:30, Daniel writes that a certain Darius the Mede conquered Babylon. It was actually Cyrus the Great, a Persian and not a Mede, who overthrew Babylon. On the other hand, Daniel writes about events of the Hellenistic era with extreme accuracy. John Did Not Write Revelation? The traditional view that Jesus’ disciple John wrote the Book of Revelation was questioned as early as the third century. Christian writer Dionysius of Alexandria, using the critical methods still employed by modern scholars, spotted the difference between the elegant Greek of John’s Gospel and the crudely ungrammatical prose of Revelation. The works could not have been written by the same person. Ehrman, who charges in his book Forged that half the New Testament is forged, says that Jesus’ original disciples, John and Peter, could not have written the books attributed to them in the New Testament because they were illiterate. “According to Acts 4:13, both Peter and his companion John, also a fisherman, were agrammatoi, a Greek word that literally means ‘unlettered,’ that is, ‘illiterate,’ ’’ he writes. It's likely that Revelation might have been originally written even before Christianity existed. References to Jesus Christ would then have been inserted only later to Christianize the document. Surprisingly, the verses containing references to Jesus can be removed without disturbing the structure and flow of the surrounding verses, keeping the meaning and sense of the text intact. This suggests that the original Book of Revelation had nothing at all to do with Jesus. Bible Stories Borrowed From Ancient Mythology? There are almost 3,000 years of high culture and folklore predating the book of Genesis. Two-thirds of recorded history had already taken place before the Old Testament writers had ever stepped on the scene. Judaic similarities with Egyptian other ancient religious mythology can be found as early as the book of Genesis, Where the Ten Commandments resemble the Laws of Ma'at written in the Egyptian Book of the Dead: Commandments: Egyptian Book of the Dead (circa 1800 B.C.) vs. Ten Commandments (1491 B.C.): Book of the Dead: "I have done away sin for thee and not acted fraudulently or deceitfully. I have not belittled God. I have not inflicted pain or caused another to weep. I have not murdered or given such an order. I have not used false balances or scales. I have not purloined (held back) the offerings to the gods. I have not stolen. I have not uttered lies or curses." Exodus 20:7-16: "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. ... Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery ... Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor..." There is also ample evidence of similarities between Jesus and the Egyptian gods Horus and Osiris, and the Flood narrative in the Bible and the Mesopotamia story of Gilgamesh which can be read here.

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