Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Secularists and the Not Godless World
- PART ONE THE COMPOSITION OF THE HEBREW BIBLE
- 1 “Who Wrote the Bible?”: Ancient Responses
- 2 “Who Wrote the Bible?”: Modern Responses
- 3 A Secular Answer to “Who Wrote the Bible?”
- PART TWO THE INTERPRETERS OF THE HEBREW BIBLE
- PART THREE POLITICS AND SCRIPTURE
- Conclusion: Beyond Church and State: New Directions for Secularism
- Notes
- Index of Biblical Citations
- Index of Qur'ānic Citations
- Index of Rabbinic, Early Jewish, and Patristic Citations
- Index
1 - “Who Wrote the Bible?”: Ancient Responses
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Secularists and the Not Godless World
- PART ONE THE COMPOSITION OF THE HEBREW BIBLE
- 1 “Who Wrote the Bible?”: Ancient Responses
- 2 “Who Wrote the Bible?”: Modern Responses
- 3 A Secular Answer to “Who Wrote the Bible?”
- PART TWO THE INTERPRETERS OF THE HEBREW BIBLE
- PART THREE POLITICS AND SCRIPTURE
- Conclusion: Beyond Church and State: New Directions for Secularism
- Notes
- Index of Biblical Citations
- Index of Qur'ānic Citations
- Index of Rabbinic, Early Jewish, and Patristic Citations
- Index
Summary
In the Israelite literary tradition … authors' names are rarely reported and when they are reported the reports are almost always false.
Morton Smith, “Pseudepigraphy in the Israelite Literary Tradition.”Who wrote the Bible? This is a query that preoccupied the ancients, flummoxed countless generations of exegetes, and, as we argue later, played something of a small, significant, albeit unheralded, role in bringing about Occidental modernity. It is also a problem that has probably crossed the mind of every reflective Jewish and Christian person that has ever lived. But before we make any more sober proclamations, we should note that it does not seem to be a question that the Hebrew Bible is well equipped to answer. We are going to return to “Who wrote the Bible?” throughout this study and even take a crack at “Who wrote the Qu'rān?” The question itself, admittedly, is hopelessly simplistic, misleading, and only answerable in terms of the vaguest sociological generalizations. Be that as it may, to avoid the issue and assert something on the order of “Who cares who wrote it! It's the message of Scripture that counts!” is, as we will soon see, a fairly preposterous thing for a secular hermeneut (or a rational religious individual) to profess.
Why should nonbelievers bother to think about the authorship of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament? For one, it can be used as something of a polemical trump card. Judaism and Christianity have never been able to answer this question convincingly, let alone consistently.
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- Information
- The Secular BibleWhy Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously, pp. 17 - 29Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005