The Authorship of the Rest of the Old Testament

The principles used here are no different from those used in other fields of documentary research. The document is scrutinized to find evidences of time of composition, the identity of the author and their general reliability. It is unfortunate to lay Christians, that this field is known by the ugly name: Higher Criticism. The choice of name was most unfortunate, for it gives one the impression of snobbish, ivory tower intellectuals who look down on the Bible to criticize it. With a name like that, it is easy for fundamentalists to launch their attacks on it. It is also significant that the results of this field of research is not normally made known to Christians.

Old Testament Books	Traditional Authorship Attribution	Conclusion Based on Critical Research	Main Reasons Why Result of Critical Research Does no Agree with Tradition
1. Genesis 2. Exodus 3. Leviticus 4. Numbers 5. Deuteronomy	Moses	False	Among others the presence of the account of Moses' death and burial in Deuteronomy
6. Joshua	Joshua	False	Among others the presence of the account of Joshua's death and burial in Deuteronomy
7. Judges 8. Ruth 9. I Samuel 10. II Samuel	Samuel	False	Outlook, framework and language is post exilic (circa 550BC). The presence of the account of Samuels' death in I Samuel 25:1 and the narratives of events that occured after the death of Samuel.
11. I Kings 12. II Kings 13. I Chronicles 14. II Chronicles 15. Ezra 16. Nehemiah 17. Esther 18. Job	No firm tradition regarding authorship	-	-
19. Psalms	David	False	The presence of post-exilic themes in some of the Psalms proves that David could not have written some of them.
20. Provers 21. Ecclesiastes 22. Song of Solomon	Solomon	False	Presence of word peculiar to post-exilic Hebrew vocabulary and syntax. Presence of Persian and Greek loan words disproves Solomon's authorship.
23. Isaiah	Isaiah	Partially false	Chapters 1-39 by Isaiah (cica 700 BCE), but chapter 40-46 is post exilic
24. Jeremiah 25. Lamentations	Jeremiah	False of Lamentations	The presence of many views in Lamentations that are in contradiction to those in Jeremiah suggests two different authors.
26. Ezekiel	Ezekiel	True	-
27. Daniel	Daniel	False	The presence of gross historical errors regarding supposedly contemperanoeus events rules out the authorship of a sixth century BCE prophet.
28. Hosea	Hosea	True	-
29. Joel	Joel	True	-
30. Amos	Amos	True	-
31. Obadiah	Obadiah	**	Nothing is known about the author and Obadiah was a very common name.
32. Jonah	Jonah	False	Jonah was supposed to have lived in the eighth century BCE but the presence of gross historical errors and the language points to the fourth century BCE as the date of composition.
33. Micah	Micah	True	-
34. Nahum	Nahum	**	Nothing is known about the author.
35. Habakkuk	Habakkuk	True	-
36. Zephaniah	Zephaniah	True	-
37. Haggai	Haggai	True	-
38. Zechariah	Zechariah	Partially true	Chapters 1 to 8 generally accepted to have been written by Zechariah but differences in style from chapters 9 through 14 and presence of reference to Greece points to a later period.
39. Malachi	Malachi	True	-

What does Higher Criticism tells us? Firstly that the books from Genesis to Esther have anonymous authors. Thus, all the books that purports to narrate about the history of the Jewish nation and their relationship with God have unknown authors. It is precisely with this kind of books that the knowledge of the author's identity is needed to enable a forthright assessment of their reliability. The books attributed to kings David and Solomon were not written or compiled by them. It is only in the book of the prophets that there exists some truths in the traditional attribution of authorship. These books however, are generally just essays on the views and opinions of the individual prophets.

The question naturally arises: why would tradition assign the authorship to people who did not write them? The answer is simple. The books in the Bible, especially the historical books and the Pentateuch, as we have mentioned earlier, are books of testimony. To give it's incredible stories some sort of credibility, the early believers concocted the fiction of Mosaic authorship for Pentateuch, Davidic authorship of the Psalms and so on. In other words, the traditional attribution originated by fraudulent means.

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References

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