Ghostwriters Then and Now: Biblical Scribes, Generative AI, and Collaborative Authorship

There I was—up at some ungodly hour to walk on my treadmill. I was listening to a podcast (I think it was this one) featuring Candida Moss and discussing her recent book, God’s Ghostwriters: Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible (more from me on this book at some point in the future). It’s a good episode, and the book is a good read, and they—podcast and book—were a pair of experiences that covered things I knew in an abstract sense but made it all a lot more specific and interesting.

But, I digress. The point is that I was walking on the treadmill and engaging with this interesting content, when the thought hit me: “Mon Dieu!…,” (yes, for the purpose of this blog post, my subconscious sometimes speaks French), “…Mediated authorship in the form of enslaved and lower-class persons in antiquity seems a lot like how authorship with generative artificial intelligence is working right now!”

Later—I don’t recall whether it was later that day, or later that week, or even later—I connected with my colleague, James Hutson, who is an expert on all things Generative AI, to talk about the idea. And he found it as interesting as I did. So, we did what any self-respective academics would do: we wrote it up and published it.

James Hutson and Travis McMaken, “Dictating the Divine: Revisiting Authorship, Intention, and Authority from Sacred Texts to Generative AI,” ISAR Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences 3.4 (2025): 21–29.

Our article builds upon established scholarship by historians like Moss to explore the parallels between historical practices of mediated authorship and today's AI-generated content. As scholars have long recognized, ancient religious texts rarely emerged from a single author but instead developed through collaborative processes between supposedly authoritative figures, scribes and messengers who interpreted and expanded upon their dictated messages, as well as the shaping and editing of texts through processes of historical transmission down to the present day. We articulate how this historical practice mirrors contemporary interactions with large language models, where human prompts guide AI systems to produce outputs that blend original directives with computational interpretation. Both scenarios challenge traditional notions of sole authorship, revealing what textual scholars have emphasized for decades: that creation has always been an inherently collaborative process.

This comparison matters because it challenges our deeply held assumptions about originality, intention, and authority in both religious and digital contexts. By recognizing that mediated authorship has been integral to the creation of culturally significant texts for millennia, we can better understand and navigate current anxieties surrounding AI-generated content. Rather than seeing AI as a radical break from traditional authorship, our article suggests we're witnessing the latest evolution in a long history of collaborative creation. These insights don't just inform academic discussions about biblical texts or technological ethics. They invite us to reconsider fundamental questions about creativity, ownership, and meaning-making in our increasingly algorithm-mediated world.

In any case, I hope you'll take the time to look at the article and see what you make of it all. And we'll see what random thoughts I have next while on the treadmill...

P.S. Yes, I made that picture using Generative AI.

==================================
Substack @wtmcmaken
@wtmcmaken.bsky.social
Follow @WTravisMcMaken

Enjoyed this post? Never miss out on future posts!