Scientists reveal who actually wrote the Bible

Millions of Christians see the Bible as God's story of creation, redemption, and God's final judgment of the living and the dead. It includes the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, David and Goliath, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.

But who actually wrote this masterpiece of more than 700,000 words? In general, researchers agree that it was written by several people. According to Professor Elizabeth Polzer, a biblical scholar at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, the Bible was probably written by more than 40 people, MailOnline reports. However, it is quite difficult to identify these people.

"Each book of the Bible needs to be considered separately to determine who its author is," the professor explains.

Of course, the Bible was not written in one day. It is actually a collection of writings, the oldest of which dates back nearly 3,500 years.

The Bible consists of the Old and New Testaments.

The Old Testament was written at different times over a roughly 900-year period, beginning in about 1200 B.C. and ending in about the first century B.C.

The New Testament, meanwhile, was written over a much shorter period of time, during the last half of the first century AD.

According to Professor Polzer, in some cases scholars know who wrote a book of the Bible, but in others it is less clear.

"For example, scholars agree that Paul of Tarsus wrote the Epistle to the Romans and John of Patmos wrote the Revelation. But books such as Genesis and Exodus, which were traditionally attributed to Moses, because of discrepancies and duplications in them, are now believed to have been written by several different people over the centuries," she explains.

As for the four Gospels, which are allegedly written by four evangelists-Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John-they are technically considered anonymous. Only at very early stages were they attributed by the church fathers to these four evangelists.

"It is difficult to understand what part of this attribution is real history and what part is legend. For example, the attribution to Matthew and John is convenient and plausible because they were direct disciples of Jesus, but historical factors seem to undermine these attributions," says Polzer, so most scholars agree that these attributions are false or fake.

Finally, there are books in the Bible whose traditional attribution may be partially correct, such as the Psalms, an Old Testament book that consists of sacred songs and sacred poems.

"Traditionally, the psalms are believed to have been written by King David, and some psalms may well have been written by him. However, others most likely came from other hymn writers and were later put together as one collection," adds the professor.

This view is supported by Philip Almond, a historian of religious culture at the University of Queensland in Australia. He considers the authorship of the Bible complex and problematic, partly because it is now difficult to identify specific authors.

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