Sunday, April 27, 2014

The biblical authors


Mormons "believe the Bible to be the word of God" (Article of Faith 1:8). Does this go for all of the words in all of the books? I ask because Bible scholars have found that, for example, Moses didn't write the first books of the Old Testament, Solomon didn't write the Psalms, Isaiah was written by at least two people, and Paul is not the author of all of his epistles. Those are significant problems, but there are still more.


Are they still the words of God if we know that the author is different than what was traditionally believed? Do we need to treat the questionable books, chapters, and verses with any particular care? How can the Bible's pseudopigrapha not be subjected to doubt? Do we need to revise the eighth Article of Faith? Couldn't one of our prophets, seers, and revelators go through and separate the actual words of the prophets and apostles from those of the impostors? What would remain of the Bible were we to remove everything of false or highly questionable authorship? Would we finally have a bulletproof Bible full entirely and only with the Word of God?

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