Who Wrote The Bible?

Over 90% of American homes have Bibles and the average family owns three of them- but how many people actually understand what The Bible is? What does it say? What doesn’t it say? How did it come into existence? Does it have zombies in it?

What is the Bible?

Many people think the Bible is simple. It’s the exact words that God wants us to know organized into 66 books with 40 authors. But the truth is a little more complex than that.

The Bible is a collection of texts but the texts aren’t always the same from Bible to Bible. The Catholic Bible, for example, has five extra books than the Protestant one. This is because the Protestants edited some things out of the Catholic Bible when they broke away from the Catholic Church.  The Orthodox Church has their own version of the Bible, so do the Jews (and the Ethiopians). There are hundreds of versions and editions and translations. It makes one wonder why a god would have so much trouble getting his message across.

Though many Christians say that the Bible has forty authors, this is kind of silly. Nobody wrote the Bible. It’s a collection of folk-tales, letters, family trees, rules, and even love poems. We know some of the contributors, but most are unknown- and whoever wrote these texts certainly did not know that their work was going to be published in a “Bible” or they probably would have tried a little harder to make things a bit more interesting- there are definitely some boring parts.

Who Decided What Went Into The Bible?    

In the early days of the Christian Churches, every church had different stories and different texts. There were arguments over which disciple was the best and whether Jesus was a god or a man or some kind of halfsie. 

In 325 AD Emperor Constantine decided that it would be in his best interest to convert to Christianity (that new fangled religion) because of its new popularity among the people. He then ordered all the Christian bishops to come together and decide if Jesus was a god or a man or some kind of halfsie and they voted halfsie.

Much of what went into The Bible and what ended up on the cutting room floor was decided in this way, over the centuries. There were votes made by bishops. Some stuff got in, some stuff didn’t. 


One of the more controversial books in the Bible is the book of Revelation. It seemed really violent and crazy and some Bishops didn’t want it or the Old Testament to be associated with their “peace-loving” god. Some Bishops even argued that the god in the Old Testament (the god of the Jews) was not the same god as the Christian god- but when they counted up the votes the Old Testament and the book of Revelation proved popular enough to be put into the “Good Book”.  

The Bible’s Cutting Room Floor

So what types of stories didn’t make it into the Bible? There’s “The Book on Enoch” explains how Satan and his cronies rebel against God. There’s the Alphabet of Sirach, which tells of Lilith, Adam’s first wife. The Book of Jubilees” explains that 

the sons of Adam & Eve had to marry their sisters, even though the Bible has strict rules about incest. The “Testament of Solomon” is a first-person account of how King Solomon commanded demons with a magical ring, like Sauron in LOTR. Though modern Christians might not know these stories, they were once very popular. Jesus and his disciples certainly would have heard of and probably believed these stories.

And what about the New Testament? The “Gospel of James” tells us that Mary was a virgin her whole life (while The Bible tells us that Jesus had brothers and sisters). There’s “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas” where Jesus is still a kid and some other kid bumps into him and Jesus uses his god-powers to kill the kid that bumped into him. The “Gospel of Judas” tells how Jesus asked Judas to help him to be crucified and get to heaven. The “Gospel of Nicodemus” tells of Jesus’ descent into hell. The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew where Jesus tames dragons. In the “Acts of Peter”, Peter flies around like Superman to prove God’s power. The “Apocalypse of Peter” which tells us that God will actually save the sinners from Hell during the end times. All together there are over 600 holy texts left out of The Bible.

In many cases it’s not even about what the bishops believed was true, in most cases it was about editing- making sure the New Testament was focused on Jesus, and not all the other stories. In other cases it’s about censorship. The bishops wanted to make some texts forbidden. They didn’t want people reading about all the crappy things that Jesus did as a kid. They didn’t want people to know that God was going to save all the sinners from Hell. They also wanted to silence smaller Christian groups as the Gnostics who wrote “The Gospel of Mary” which explains how Mary Magdalene was a very smart and outspoken woman (obviously not something that gels with the rest of the Bible). Instead they chose to paint her as a prostitute. The story of Thecla in “The Acts of Paul and Thecla” is another example of a Christian woman that was seen as “too feminist” for the Bible. 

These stories shouldn’t be laughed off. Many of these stories still exist in Jewish oral traditions called "Midrash" or Catholic Traditions, such as the Stations of the Cross. None of the gospels mention a donkey or an ox in the nativity scene, but they are sold in nativity sets because of their inclusion in “The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew”.  Many Christians know that Peter was Crucified upside down, but you won’t find it in The Bible. There are things that may have been edited out of the Biblical Gospels for being controversial such as Jesus’ possible homoerotic relationship that can be found in the Secret Gospel of Mark.

Does the Bible have Zombies?

Why, yes it does. Not only Jesus rose from the grave, but he had a whole zombie army with him. Consider Matthew 27: 51-53

"At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people."

 

Lessons To Be Learned

The large majority of Christians claim that the Bible is “God’s Word” but they don’t know what is in it and what isn’t in it. Many things people believe about hell and Satan isn’t actually in the Bible. Many things in the Bible, Christians aren’t even aware of. In such a literate world with so many Bibles out there, it’s amazing how few people actually know anything about its contents.