God's Ghostwriters
Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible
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- R$ 79,90
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- R$ 79,90
Descrição da editora
From an award-winning biblical scholar, the story of how enslaved people created, gave meaning to, and spread the message of the New Testament, shaping the very foundations of Christianity in ways both subtle and profound.
For the past two thousand years, Christian tradition, scholarship, and pop culture have credited the authorship of the New Testament to a select group of men: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul. But hidden behind these named and sainted individuals are a cluster of unnamed, enslaved coauthors and collaborators. These essential workers were responsible for producing the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament: making the parchment on which the texts were written, taking dictation, and refining the words of the apostles. And as the Christian message grew in influence, it was enslaved missionaries who undertook the arduous journey across the Mediterranean and along dusty roads to move Christianity to Rome, Spain, and North Africa—and into the pages of history. The impact of these enslaved contributors on the spread of Christianity, the development of foundational Christian concepts, and the making of the Bible was enormous, yet their role has been almost entirely overlooked until now.
Filled with profound revelations both for what it means to be a Christian and for how we read individual texts themselves, God’s Ghostwriters is a groundbreaking and rigorously researched book about how enslaved people shaped the Bible, and with it all of Christianity. Winner of the 2026 Grawemeyer Award in Religion | A 2025 Nautilus Book Awards Silver Winner
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Moss (The Myth of Persecution), a theology professor at the University of Birmingham, argues in this erudite outing that enslaved people played a vital role in fashioning the gospels and Paul's epistles. She cites evidence that the apostle Paul may have had "enslaved attendants" who helped him master his "raw material into conventionally acceptable forms" by "elevating and clarifying" his writing, and that gospel writer Mark himself may have been enslaved and taken dictation from the disciple Peter. Elsewhere, Moss posits that enslaved messengers in the first and second centuries served as "interpretive guides," performing the scripture they delivered to audiences across the Roman Empire to Galilee, translating texts "into different cultural registers," and validating and "answer for the message itself." Links between scriptural content and sociohistorical background intrigue, including how the "relentless violence of hell" depicted in the Bible "makes sense in the context of an ancient social order and system of justice that fiercely punished the socially disenfranchised." Acknowledging that "all reconstructions of the ancient writing process are necessarily imaginative, Moss draws on primary sources and studies of enslavements in other periods, including the antebellum U.S. South, resulting in a work that leans heavily on speculation. Still, students of Christian history will find plenty to appreciate in this innovative reinterpretation.
