The very word Bible means ‘the Book’. It is the written record of God’s work in human history; the perfect and inerrant Word which He inspired to man. The apostle Paul declared:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

2 TIMOTHY 3:16-17

The Scriptures are not merely human words, but words “breathed out by God” to instruct His people on who He was, what He had done and how they were to live in light of His love and mercy.

But what we sometimes forget is that they are human words.

The Book is not one book, but a library of 66 documents or ‘books’, written over 1,500 years by 40 different authors. They were written by and to human beings, each addressing the needs of a specific audience, in a specific time and within a specific culture.

This was what the apostle Peter meant when he wrote:

“For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21).

Unbelievers like to point out that the Bible was written by human beings.

However, the Bible was inspired, not dictated — God is the divine Author of Scripture, even if He used human writers to bring it about. God inspired the human writers of the Bible so that, while using their own writing styles and personalities, they still recorded exactly what God had intended.

From the witness of the Bible, we see that God is more than just our Creator, our Lord and our King. He calls Himself our Father, and seeks to unite us in fellowship and love with Jesus, His Son. To that end, He actively intervenes in history to save a lost humanity (John 3:16-17).