breathilizer

In my bed last night, after smoking a nicely rolled marijuana cigarette, I began to ponder the credibility of the Bible. It struck me as somewhat odd that such a volumous book could be written by someone on their first attempt at literature. How could these men, who have no other works except that which has been called the Bible, have the skill to write such a complex story? Like many other trades, literature takes practice. Did these authors have any other books? Poems? Plays? Anything? Was there one and only work of literature the Bible? That would seem odd to me if it is the case.

(PS: Same goes for the Koran and other religious texts)

Vinnie

Paul wrote extensively. Writing was also a little more difficult in antiquity.

Vinnie

Celsus

That would be odd, seeing as there is no way to show that it was one's first attempt at literature. Part of the "miracle" of the Quran is that Mohammed, illiterate and unschooled, could write all of it under the guidance of the angel Gabriel. But in actuality, none of your examples were "first" attempts at literature, nor are we ever likely to find any such first attempts. The Bible and other Canaanite myths grow firmly out of earlier myths--strong parallels and continuities, for example, can be found with the Ugaritic texts at least a millenium earlier. Elsewhere, Egyptian, Babylonian and other sources show affinities with Biblical books, showing that much borrowing and exchange of information took place in this not-so-primitive world. Likewise, the Dead Sea Scrolls show us that plenty of other contemporary literature of the time vanished. Tracing forward, Islamic myths from the Hadith show plenty of precursors--some of them legends about Jesus that had slowly filtered through outside the gospels, for example. It was in fact a very rare occurence for something truly "new" to show up in literature, and we still see this today.

Joel

CX

This seems to presuppose some things about the bible that aren't, in fact, true. It appears to assume that the bible, or perhaps individual books within the bible, were written in toto as we find them today by one person. It ignores the role of development, redaction and so on. It is not as if the books of the bible sprang out of a vacuum exactly as they are today. Secondly, as most of the books of the bible are anonymous or pseudonymous there is no way in principle to demonstrate that the authors and editors of biblical texts didn't write other things.

breathilizer

They could have been written under false names as well. Perhaps the name of each author is little more than an alias for an actual more famous author.

The reason I bring this up is because if we could prove that the authors actually had written numerous things, including fictions, then perhapsthe Bible woud hold less credibility among believers.

CX

Isn't that what "pseudonymous" means? But why should these religious texts have been written by famous authors? I'm not sure what the question is.

Firstly, given the state of the evidence, such is completely impossible. Secondly, nothing will undermine the bible's credibility to devout believers because their belief in it is grounded in faith rather than rational argumentation.

breathilizer

I suppose the questions is 'Was the Bible written by professional authors?'



Probably right.

The Evil One

The deeper question is, what do you mean by "professional author" ? - since the concept of one who writes for a living is vastly different in today's society than in ancient societies.

Celsus

Yes. They were called scribes.

Joel