God's Ghostwriters

Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible

By: Candida Moss

Narrated by: Gabra Zackman

From an award-winning biblical scholar, the untold 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 enslaved coauthors and collaborators. Although they almost all go unnamed and uncredited, these essential workers were responsible for producing the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament: making the parchment and papyri on which Christian texts were written, taking dictation, and polishing and refining the words of the apostles. When the Christian message began to move independently from the first apostles, it was enslaved missionaries who undertook the dangerous and arduous journeys across the Mediterranean and along dusty Roman roads to move Christianity from Jerusalem and the Levant to Rome, Spain, North Africa, and Egypt—and into the pages of history. The influence 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.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2024 Candida Moss (P)2024 Little, Brown & Company

Critic reviews

"At once eminently readable and rigorously researched, God’s Ghostwriters cements Candida Moss as the most compelling voice in Biblical scholarship. The role of enslaved people in the writing and dissemination of the gospels has been ignored for far too long. We all owe Moss a debt of gratitude for this monumental and eye-opening work.”—Reza Aslan, New York Times bestselling author of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

"A fascinating and beautifully written book. The Bible is the word of God—but who, precisely, put that word on the page? Here, Candida Moss makes the invisible hands that wrote the Bible visible. She writes with a depth of scholarship and a lightness of touch that make this book both powerful and compelling."—Catherine Nixey, author of The Darkening Age

“A lucid, convincing, and deceptively transgressive book, God’s Ghostwriters gives the unfree a rightful place in history."—Rev. Jarel Robinson-Brown, author of Black, Gay, British, Christian, Queer

Original thinking about origins of Christian scripture

A scholarly, thoughtful treatise on Greco/Roman society and slavery and publishing. Written to be understood by everyone, not to impress other scholars.the

Great book and reader

The reader did a geeat job with her tone and pace. The book itself was great and the reader complemented the work