Who wrote the New Testament? Was it the Apostles or someone else later on?

Here is part of Curiouscat's original comment: Wow - I just found this blog and it is great. I have lots of questions. I heard someone saying that the men who wrote the New Testament really weren't who the church says they were and that stuff changed and it was written way after the times described. Who are the writers of the New Testament? Are they apostles? Was the writer of Jude the other Apostle Judas? Was James the same as the Apostle James? Will you help shed light on this?

Yes, for the most part, it was the apostles writing between 40 and 90 A.D.. There are critics of the Bible who are always trying to prove that it is not what it says it is (i.e., the Word of God). One way that they try to do this is to hypothesize that the New Testament was written long after the original eyewitnesses were dead. This argument is just not true. If you are interested in learning more about this, there are excellent scholars who have written about this using historical criticism and textual criticism, the most prevalent of whom is Josh McDowell, who wrote Evidence That Demands a Verdict, which is available in our library (call number is 239).

The writer of Jude was one of the half-brothers of Jesus (Matthew 13:55) and the brother of the James (Jude 1) who wrote James and became the early leader of the church in Jerusalem (Acts 15). James the Apostle, the brother of John, was martyred early on in the life of the church (Acts 12:2). There is no pressing reason to not believe that the persons traditionally named are the authors. Here is an interesting twist . . . the Gospel of Mark, written by John Mark (Acts 12:12,25; 15:37-39; 2 Tim. 4:11; 1 Peter 5:13), probably records the teaching of the apostle Peter to the church in Rome and as such are an apostle's eyewitness testimony. The Letter to the Hebrews does not have an author's name attached. Many think Paul wrote it, others name Apollos, Barnabas, or even Priscilla as possible authors, but in the end we just don't know. If the church was so quick to assign authorship and rewrite the letters, as critics have claimed, then why not simply add a little prescript naming an apostle? They didn't because the church has nothing to hide. The critics have more inconsistency to deal with than the Evangelical scholars who simply acknowledge the truth of God's word. We do know that these books were all considered inspired by God from a very early time. Again, we have a number of great Bible reference works in the church library if you would like to study this further.