The Bible’s Holy Authorship

Jordan Atkinson

Friendship Baptist’s statement of faith begins, “The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy.” We gladly affirm the Bible’s holy authorship, holy aim, and holy accuracy. This blog post shows the Scriptural support for the Bible’s holy authorship.

The Bible is a book comprised of 66 smaller books. Each book of the Bible has two authors simultaneously: a divinely-inspired man and God himself. The Baptist Faith and Message rightly affirms the dual authorship of all of Scripture, since the Bible repeatedly claims that it is both a human and a divine product.

No one questions human involvement in the Bible’s production. You may be surprised, though, that the Bible itself often acknowledges the human authors. The fifth book of the Bible begins, “These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan in the wilderness” (Deut 1:1). Many of the Psalms also identify their author in superscriptions, such as David (e.g., Ps 23), Asaph (e.g., Ps 50), the sons of Korah (e.g., Ps 42), Heman the Ezrahite (Ps 88), Ethan the Ezrahite (Ps 89), Moses (Ps 90), and Solomon (e.g., Ps 127).

Similar to Psalms, the Book of Proverbs leaves multiple traces of its human authors and compilers. Proverbs opens by identifying their primary author as “Solomon, son of David, king of Israel” (Prov 1:1). A similar heading appears at Proverbs 10:1. Solomon compiled thirty sayings of the wise (Prov 22:17-24:22) along with additional sayings (Prov 24:23-34). Hundreds of years later, King Hezekiah’s scribes appended additional proverbs of Solomon in Proverbs 25-29. Proverbs concludes with an oracle of Agur (Prov 30) and an oracle by the Queen Mother of Lemuel (an otherwise-unknown middle Eastern king: Prov 31).

All of the Latter Prophets identify their authors by name, as well (the Books of Isaiah through Malachi).

Non-Christians (and even some self-styled “progressive Christians”) deny the Bible’s divine authorship, but the Bible clearly affirms its own divine origins from first to last. Jeremiah claims that “the word of the Lord came” to him six times in his book, and Ezekiel uses that phrase eight times. The Latter Prophets claim “thus says the Lord” 927 times. Well does Peter affirm the divine authorship of the Old Testament: “no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet 1:20-21). Paul is even more direct: “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Tim 3:16).

The New Testament is just as much the word of God as the Old Testament. Jesus promised his disciples that the Holy Spirit would “teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26; cf. John 15:26-27; 21:24). The eyewitness Gospels of Matthew and John are therefore trustworthy. Mark’s Gospel is written by the spiritual “son” of Peter (1 Pet 5:13). Luke’s Gospel is similarly based on eyewitness testimony (Luke 1:1-4). Interestingly concerning Luke, Paul writes, “the Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,’ and, ‘The laborer deserves his wages'” (1 Tim 5:18). Paul refers not only to Deut 25:4 but also to Luke 10:7 as “Scripture.” And Peter affirms that Paul’s own epistles are Scripture: “There are some things in them [Paul’s letters] that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures” (2 Pet 3:16, emphasis added).

As Southern Baptists, we are unapologetically people of the Book. We seek to base all our beliefs and practices on Scriptural commands and precedents. We at Friendship Baptist Church gladly affirm The Baptist Faith and Message as our statement of faith because its statements are Scriptural. We believe the Bible was written by men divinely inspired by God not because our statement of faith says so, but because the Bible says so. The next blog post in this series will show how the Bible undergirds our statement of faith’s claim about the holy aim of the Bible.