Bible Catechism #4: Who Wrote the Bible?

Read or Listen

In our fourth instalment in our Bible Catechism series, we will discuss the authorship of the first five books of the Bible and the Gospels. Much doubt has been cast on the authorship and dating of the principle books of the Old and New Testament and we will put that to rest here.

Mosaic Authorship of the First Five Books

And God said again to Moses: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me to you. (Exodus 3:15)

When I began teaching Catholic Secondary School religion, I was oblivious to the modernist and heterodox underpinnings of the curriculum documents. This applies to the Catholic system in which I worked. If your children attend Catholic schools, this may not apply to all, and hopefully, you have found one of the few faithful schools. In my case, it was consistently an uphill battle against error on many levels. I confronted this inconvenient truth in my first week a few years ago. In our grade nine and ten curriculum expectations we were expected to cover various parts of the Bible, specifically the Books of Moses (first five books) and the Gospels. Naively, I displayed a resource from the school collection for my pupils to copy into their notebooks. As I was reading through the document, I was disheartened to find a skeptical and almost unbelieving theme throughout. Needless to say, we have stopped using that resource in my classroom.

Since then I have noticed a prevalent error surrounding the notion of Mosaic authorship of the first five books of the Bible. These books are commonly called the Books of Moses, the Pentateuch and some refer to them as the Torah.