Likewise, some people who haven’t really read the Bible have notions that God’s inspiration constituted divine dictation. For example, it is widely believed that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. But that cannot be completely true. Why not? Because the fifth book (Deuteronomy) contains the accounts of his death and post-mortem reflections on his life-so at the very least someone else put the ending on his five books. Let’s lay out one precept: we’re about discovering the truth, not defending traditional notions. In a companion series we will explore how we got the “Holy Bible,” but for now we’ll begin with the authors. So with this post we begin a series to help readers appreciate the Bible as an accurate, historical, and trustworthy document. It’s not essential that we know the names of the human authors (otherwise they would have laid out their identities in the text with certainty), but it is essential that we know that the Scripture is trustworthy.

Not so much in terms of their actual identities, but because many attacks against Christianity are targeted at disproving the reliability of human authorship. What kind of defense can those of us who believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God offer regarding the trustworthiness of the authors of the Bible? The Bible is God’s special revelation to mankind, delivered through the divine inspiration of human authors. So who were the human authors? Credit note: the passage was taken from the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia.God…right? While that may be a profound and direct answer, it’s also overly simplistic. The Amoraim's work finally became embodied in the Gemara (the Talmud). In these academies the main object of the lectures and discussions was to interpret the often very brief and concise expression of the Mishnah, to investigate its reasons and sources, to reconcile seeming contradictions, to compare its canons with those of the Baraitot, and to apply its decisions to, and establish principles for, new cases, both real and fictitious, not already provided for in the Mishnah. This activity was developed as well in the academies of Tiberias, Sepphoris, Cæsarea, and others in Palestine, as in those of Nehardea, Sura, and later of Pumbedita, and in some other seats of learning in Babylonia.

Judah - which became the authoritative code of the oral law. The activity of the teachers during this period was devoted principally to expounding the Mishnah - the compilation of the patriarch R. (about 210) to the completion of the Babylonian Talmud (about 500). The term Amora was applied to the teachers that flourished during a period of about three hundred years, from the time of the death of the patriarch R. Era - Amoraim From around the year 210 CE to → c.500 CE

Timeline of bible books infographic