To understand it better, I would like to refer to how the Catholic Church deals
with the idea of the sacred writer, the writer who captures what he understands
to be the word of God.
When we say that the texts are words of God, one could imagine that God has
dictated the phrases that he wanted to reach readers in the author´s ear; that´s
how represented the authors of the sacred books are usually represented in many
of the paintings seen in the churches. However, the phenomenon is much more
complex. This phenomenon is called inspiration. But this inspiration should not
be understood in the same way that a musician is inspired to create a work, but
as the discrete action of God deep inside the sacred writer. This inspiration
respects, as it were, the humanity of the author, his culture, his inclinations,
his tastes, his writing, as Luis Heriberto Rivas explains in his book "The books
and the history of the Bible. Introduction to Holy Scripture." [10].
That is why it can be noted that the various books of the Bible have distinctly
different styles.
This is precisely because the hagiographer (such is the name given to the sacred
author) is fully involved in what God commanded him to write.
"Thus, when one asks about the author of the Bible, one must take into account
this double dimension: in the one hand, the author is God who inspires, on the
other, it is the hagiographer who does as best as he can godly task"(Sic. Luis
Heriberto Rivas. Editorial San Benito. 2008) [11].
I think this paragraph can elucidate the mechanism -some might say-, by which
God´s information reaches first the writer and then the reader of the sacred
text. But anyway, it is still hard to imagine.
So I've written this fictional account with the mere intention of allowing the
reader stand, if only for a moment, in the place of our famous observer.
It is important to clarify that the following story is pure fiction and that
nowhere in the Bible is it specified that it happened this way.
10 - Rivas, Luis Heriberto, Los libros y la historia de la
Biblia. Introducción a las Sagradas Escrituras. Editorial San Benito. 2008.
11 - Idem.