Have you ever stopped to think about who really wrote the Bible? It was not just one person, sitting at a desk. It was about 40 different authors, over roughly 1,500 years, in three languages.
These authors were very different from one another. There was a king and a shepherd. There was a fisherman and a doctor. There was even a tax collector. People who never met, separated by centuries and by continents.
And here is the detail that stands out: even so, the 66 books tell a single story. That is what this article will help you understand, calmly and without any fluff.
About 40 authors, not just one
The first surprise is this: the Bible did not have a single author. According to the Brazilian Bible Society and Christian tradition, it was about 40 different people who wrote the texts. We use the word "about": some books do not include the name of whoever wrote them, so no one can pin down an exact number.
Think about the scale of that. It is dozens of people, living in eras separated by many centuries. Some wrote in times of war. Others, in times of peace. Some were powerful. Others, quite ordinary. Each one wrote in their own way, with their own vocabulary and style.
It is like an entire library brought together in a single book. In fact, the word "Bible" comes from Greek and means exactly "the books", in the plural. When you open the Bible, you are not opening one book. You are opening a collection.
Roughly 1,500 years of writing
Now imagine writing a book that takes 1,500 years to be finished. That is roughly the estimated span between the oldest and the newest texts of the Bible. To give you an idea, it is far more time than the distance between us and the discovery of Brazil.
None of the authors lived through all of that, of course. Each one wrote their part during their own lifetime. One author would finish, the centuries would pass, and much later another author, who never knew the first one existed, would write one more piece of the same story.
Why does this matter? Because no one could have coordinated behind the scenes. It was not possible for 40 people separated by 1,500 years to get together to "line up the script". And, even so, the script fits together. It is that fit that leaves many people thinking.
Three languages: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek
The Bible was also not written in English. It was written, originally, in three languages. The Old Testament, for the most part, in Hebrew, with some passages in Aramaic, such as parts of the book of Ezra. The New Testament, in turn, was written in Greek.
Aramaic, by the way, was the everyday language in the region where Jesus lived. In other words, it is quite likely that much of the conversation recorded in the Bible happened in that language before being put on paper.
The Bible you have at home, in English, is a translation made from these originals. The Brazilian Bible Society explains that serious translations always start from the texts in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, so that they stay as faithful as possible to what was written back at the beginning.
Read alsoHow the Bible reached usA king, a shepherd, a fisherman, a doctor
This is the part that tends to move Pathfinders. The authors of the Bible came from completely different worlds. And you can see it in the way each one writes.
David was a king, but before that he was a shepherd, and much of the Psalms is attributed to him: poetry, music, prayer. Amos also cared for flocks and worked with trees, a simple man of the countryside. Peter was a fisherman, used to the boat and the net, and he wrote direct letters, without beating around the bush. Christian tradition attributes to Luke, called "the beloved physician", two careful and detailed books, in the manner of someone who observes everything. And Matthew, according to tradition, had been a tax collector, a profession that in those days was looked down upon.
Notice the message this sends. God did not choose only the "important" ones. He used ordinary people, with ordinary jobs, some with a complicated past. If you sometimes feel you are not "good enough" for God to use, this list of authors is a good reminder that He works with real people.
What it means to say the Bible is "inspired"
Then comes the natural question: if it was ordinary people who wrote it, why do Christians say the Bible comes from God? The answer lies in the word inspiration. The Bible states, in 2 Timothy 3:16 (NIV): "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness."
Another text explains how this is understood to have worked. In 2 Peter 1:21 (NIV), we read: "For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." In other words: the ideas and the message come from God; the hands, the handwriting and the way of writing belong to the people.
An image helps. It is like a song played by several instruments: each one has its own sound, but they all follow the same score. That is why Christians usually say that God is the Author of the Bible, and people were the writers. If you want to dig deeper into how to read all this attentively, it is worth checking the guide on how to study the Bible.
A single message, from beginning to end
With so many people, so much time and so many languages, it would be easy for the Bible to turn into a jumble of loose topics. But that is not what happens. From the first to the last book, it tells basically the same story: that of a God who loves people and wants to draw close to them.
The 66 books are divided into two large blocks. The Old Testament, with 39 books, and the New Testament, with 27. The first prepares the way; the second presents Jesus. And the themes speak to one another from one side to the other, even though written by authors who never spoke to each other.
You do not need to accept all of this at once to find it interesting. Doubt is part of the journey of any thinking person, and that is healthy. If hard questions come up, that is fine: there is even material on doubts of faith and how to deal with them. The important thing is to keep searching, with honesty.