Authorship has defined credibility - who wrote the book? If you don't know, you don't know if it's trustworthy. Thus, defending Biblical authorship became a strong part of apologetics (see the intro to any book in the Student Bible or NIV Study Bible).

Some scholars state that the closest you get to 'authorship' in a biblical sense is that God is ultimately the author. It was not considered wrong or even strange to append a previous writing and still assign authorship to the presumed original author.

If the printing press caused this huge change in perspective brining in the modern era, is there a similar invention or changes that marks a move on to 'the era after modernism'?

I propose the answer is Wikipedia.

With Wikipedia, it doesn't matter who wrote the information. Instead there are two factors involved in assigning credibility to the text:

1. The Necessity of Community. The text is created, corrected, filtered, and interpreted in the context of community. The idea behind Wikipedia is that the community can continue to refine what's true about a given topic, even suggesting alternate theories, and linking to external references for support.
2. Individual Responsibility. Everyone who reads the article is required to use critical thinking, and make contributions when necessary, to provide footnotes, and alternate readings.

These are two of the most necessary things that are far too often missing in the Protestant and Evangelical church. What a great move in the right direction!

There's the weakness too:

• Lack of Authority. Because authorship is disconnected from authority, what does that mean for God's ultimate authorship of the scriptural text?

Your thoughts?

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