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 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.
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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

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

"From the first paragraphs of God’s Ghostwriters, I was entranced. Everything that Candida Moss writes is worth reading, but she has outdone herself here by bringing enslaved people in the ancient world to life, in the process shining a new light on the roots of Christianity. The results are thought-provoking, intensely interesting, and immensely readable."—Eric Cline, The George Washington University, and bestselling author of 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed

“God's Ghostwriters is a work of historical, theological, and literary scholarship that will hold your attention like a well-crafted novel. I found myself saying, ‘Fascinating!’ and ‘I never knew that’ on page after page. Dr. Moss provides a fuller sense of the social and economic milieu out of which the New Testament arose, and in so doing, helps every reader, whatever their religious background, to get a clearer sense of what it might have felt like to be part of the Christian movement at its very early beginnings.”—Brian D. McLaren, author of Do I Stay Christian?

So much information

This book provides a lot of useful information and historical context on the Bible and how ancient books were written and the process of editing and copying them.

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

I just selected the wrong book

This book is not what I thought it would be…I chose incorrectly, I think.