I'm curious about the implicit, base claims of the authors of the Bible. I'm not talking about the content... because anyone can write content... but rather the implicit or explicit claims to knowledge that authorship implies. For instance, most if not all books in the Bible are in the form of a third person narrative rather than a first person eye-witness account; and as such appear to implicitly claim 'such and such happened but I wasn't there to see it directly'... eg the story of the Garden of Eden. In the case of the Gospel authors it may be the case that they claim to be eye-witnesses to some of it, but it can't be all unless they were all with Jesus at every moment, which they clearly were not.
1. So from a reductionistic point of view, for each book of the Bible, I'd like to know:
a) who was the author (if it's possible to know)?
b) what was their implicit, or ideally explicit, claim about the source of the information they are relating? (ie eye-witness, second-hand testimony, or from God; and if so in what form? eg 'inspiration', vision, dream etc)
2. And these questions then extend further up the tree to those who compiled the Bible; considering the Bible a compilation, the 'author/s' is/are the compiler/s of that compilation. So again:
a) Who were the author(s) (if it's possible to know... I think it was the Catholics but I'm not sure)
b) what was their implicit, or ideally explicit, claim about the source of inspiration about which books should be included or not? (ie did they claim divine inspiration or not, and if so in what form did it take? intuition, vision, in the case of Catholics, Papal Infallibility etc)
1. So from a reductionistic point of view, for each book of the Bible, I'd like to know:
a) who was the author (if it's possible to know)?
b) what was their implicit, or ideally explicit, claim about the source of the information they are relating? (ie eye-witness, second-hand testimony, or from God; and if so in what form? eg 'inspiration', vision, dream etc)
2. And these questions then extend further up the tree to those who compiled the Bible; considering the Bible a compilation, the 'author/s' is/are the compiler/s of that compilation. So again:
a) Who were the author(s) (if it's possible to know... I think it was the Catholics but I'm not sure)
b) what was their implicit, or ideally explicit, claim about the source of inspiration about which books should be included or not? (ie did they claim divine inspiration or not, and if so in what form did it take? intuition, vision, in the case of Catholics, Papal Infallibility etc)
