10 Questions About the Bible Scholars Still Don’t Have Clear Answers To

For a book that has been studied for thousands of years, you’d think we’d have figured out just about everything there is to know about the Bible by now.

We haven’t.

Some biblical mysteries have generated arguments for centuries. Scholars still debate who wrote certain books, where famous events might have taken place, what mysterious passages originally meant, and even the identities of people who appear in some of the Bible’s best-known stories.

Sometimes the evidence points toward several possibilities without giving us a definitive answer. In other cases, the information simply isn’t there.

That doesn’t stop people from trying.

Here are 10 questions about the Bible that remain surprisingly difficult to answer.

1. Who Wrote the Book of Hebrews?

Most New Testament books traditionally associated with Paul begin by identifying him. Hebrews doesn’t.

The author never gives a name.

For centuries, many Christians attributed Hebrews to Paul, but doubts about Pauline authorship appeared remarkably early. The language, writing style, vocabulary, and theological presentation differ from Paul’s undisputed letters in significant ways.

Other names have been proposed, including Barnabas, Apollos, Luke, Clement of Rome, and even Priscilla. Each possibility has attracted supporters, but none has produced enough evidence to settle the question.

The mystery is hardly new. The early Christian scholar Origen famously acknowledged the uncertainty surrounding the book’s authorship in the third century.

Nearly 2,000 years later, we’re still uncertain.

Someone wrote one of the New Testament’s most influential theological works. We simply don’t know who.

2. Where Was the Garden of Eden?

Genesis makes Eden sound surprisingly specific.

A river flows out of the garden and divides into four branches. Two are named the Tigris and Euphrates, rivers that still exist today. The other two are called the Pishon and Gihon.

That sounds like enough information to put Eden on a map.

It isn’t.

The identities of the Pishon and Gihon are disputed, and the geographical description doesn’t neatly correspond to the river systems we know today. Proposed locations for Eden have ranged across Mesopotamia and surrounding regions, with other theories placing it farther away.

There’s also a more fundamental question: Was Genesis intending readers to understand Eden as a location that could be geographically recovered, or does the description serve primarily theological and symbolic purposes?

People have searched for the location of Eden for centuries.

No universally accepted spot has ever been found.

3. What Happened to the Ark of the Covenant?

Few missing objects have inspired as much speculation as the Ark of the Covenant.

According to the Hebrew Bible, the sacred chest contained the tablets associated with the Ten Commandments and occupied a central place in Israelite worship. Eventually, it was housed in Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.

Then it disappears from the biblical story.

The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple in 586 B.C., but surviving accounts don’t clearly tell us what happened to the Ark.

Was it destroyed? Captured? Hidden before the invasion?

Later traditions supplied answers. One famous tradition connects the Ark with Ethiopia, where the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has long maintained a tradition involving its presence at Axum. Other stories suggest it was hidden somewhere around Jerusalem.

Archaeology has never produced evidence strong enough to settle the question.

One of the most sacred objects described in the Bible simply vanishes from the historical record.

4. Who—or What—Were the Nephilim?

Genesis 6 contains one of the strangest passages in the entire Bible.

Shortly before the story of Noah’s flood, the “sons of God” take wives from the “daughters of humans.” Then the text mentions mysterious figures called the Nephilim.

And almost immediately, the story moves on.

Who were they?

That’s where things get complicated.

One ancient interpretation understood the “sons of God” as supernatural beings who had children with human women. Other interpretations have identified them as powerful rulers or members of a particular human lineage.

The Nephilim appear again in Numbers, where they are associated with people of extraordinary size in a report given by Israelite spies.

The mysterious passage eventually inspired elaborate traditions about fallen angels and giants, including stories found in ancient Jewish literature outside the biblical canon.

But Genesis itself gives remarkably little explanation.

A few cryptic verses created a mystery that has lasted for millennia.

5. Which Pharaoh Ruled During the Exodus?

Ask someone to picture the Exodus and they may imagine Moses confronting a specific Egyptian pharaoh.

The Bible never names him.

That omission has produced an enormous historical debate.

Different chronologies have led researchers to propose various Egyptian rulers, with Ramesses II among the best-known candidates in popular culture. Other proposals place the Exodus earlier and identify different pharaohs entirely.

The problem goes beyond finding the right king. Scholars also debate how the Exodus traditions relate to the archaeological and historical evidence from ancient Egypt and Canaan.

Some researchers look for a historical event or series of events behind the biblical account. Others understand the narrative differently and question whether an Exodus resembling the biblical description can be established historically.

Without a name in the biblical text or decisive external evidence, the pharaoh’s identity remains unresolved.

Hollywood may give Moses an obvious opponent.

History doesn’t.

6. Who Was Melchizedek?

He appears suddenly, blesses Abraham, receives a tenth of Abraham’s possessions—and disappears almost as quickly.

Melchizedek is introduced in Genesis as the king of Salem and a “priest of God Most High.”

That’s already unusual. He appears before the establishment of Israel’s later priesthood and seems to occupy an extraordinary religious position despite not belonging to the family line that eventually produces Israel.

Then Psalm 110 mentions a priest “in the order of Melchizedek.”

Centuries later, Hebrews turns this mysterious figure into an important part of its explanation of Jesus’s priesthood.

Naturally, readers wanted to know more.

Was Melchizedek simply an ancient king-priest? Why is his genealogy absent? Why does Hebrews make so much of him? And why does such an apparently important figure receive so little explanation in Genesis?

Later Jewish and Christian traditions developed additional ideas about his identity.

The biblical text leaves him mysterious.

Melchizedek walks into Abraham’s story, performs an enormously significant role, and walks right back out.

7. What Was Paul’s “Thorn in the Flesh”?

Paul tells us he had one.

He never tells us what it was.

In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul describes a “thorn in the flesh” that tormented him. He says he pleaded with God three times to remove it, but it remained.

Readers have been guessing ever since.

Was it a physical illness? Problems with his eyesight? Chronic pain? Epilepsy? Depression? Persecution? A troublesome opponent? Some other spiritual or emotional struggle?

Various theories have been proposed, but the passage doesn’t provide enough information to identify the problem confidently.

Perhaps that ambiguity is part of why the passage has remained so powerful. Readers facing completely different struggles can recognize themselves in Paul’s frustration.

Historically, however, we’re left with an unanswered question.

Paul described something that caused him significant suffering and shaped one of his most famous reflections on weakness.

He just never told us what it was.

8. What Does 666 Actually Mean?

Few numbers have accumulated more cultural baggage than 666.

Revelation calls it the “number of the beast” and says it is the number of a man. The passage then invites readers to calculate the number.

That sounds almost like a puzzle.

Many scholars believe it was.

One widely discussed interpretation connects 666 with the Roman emperor Nero through a system in which letters are assigned numerical values. An intriguing piece of evidence supports that general approach: some ancient manuscripts give the number as 616 instead of 666, which can correspond to an alternate spelling of Nero’s name.

That doesn’t mean every question has been settled.

Revelation is packed with symbolism, references to imperial power, imagery from earlier scripture, and language that would have resonated differently with its original audience than it does with modern readers.

Over the centuries, people have tried to identify 666 with countless rulers, religious figures, political leaders, technologies, and institutions.

Most of those theories reveal more about the era producing them than about Revelation.

The number is famous.

Its precise intended meaning remains debated.

9. Where Was Mount Sinai?

Mount Sinai is the setting for one of the most important events in the Bible: Moses receives the commandments and Israel enters into a covenant with God.

Finding the mountain should be straightforward.

It hasn’t been.

A long Christian tradition identifies Mount Sinai with Jebel Musa in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. The nearby Saint Catherine’s Monastery has reinforced that association for centuries.

But the biblical text doesn’t provide enough geographical information to make the identification certain.

Alternative locations have been proposed in other parts of the Sinai Peninsula, the Negev, and northwestern Arabia.

Each theory attempts to reconstruct ancient routes, place names, travel times, archaeological evidence, and descriptions scattered throughout biblical texts.

None has convinced everyone.

Millions of people know what happened at Mount Sinai according to the biblical story.

Where exactly that mountain was is another question entirely.

10. Who Was the “Disciple Whom Jesus Loved”?

The Gospel of John repeatedly mentions someone without telling us his name.

He is called the disciple “whom Jesus loved.”

He appears at the Last Supper. He is present at the crucifixion, where Jesus entrusts his mother to him. He runs with Peter to Jesus’s empty tomb. He appears again near the end of the Gospel.

Christian tradition has commonly identified this figure as John, son of Zebedee.

But the Gospel itself never explicitly says, “This is John.”

That has opened the door to other theories. Scholars have proposed different identities and debated whether the figure represents a particular historical disciple, the source behind portions of the Gospel, a literary figure, or some combination of those possibilities.

The ending of John connects the beloved disciple with the testimony behind the book, making his identity even more intriguing.

Someone appears to have been unusually close to Jesus and deeply connected with the story told in John’s Gospel.

And yet the text never simply gives us his name.

Some Biblical Mysteries May Stay Mysteries

It’s easy to assume that enough research eventually answers every historical question.

Ancient history doesn’t work that way.

Documents disappear. Cities are destroyed. Names go unrecorded. Traditions change as they’re transmitted. Archaeological evidence survives unevenly, and sometimes the one piece of information historians desperately need simply doesn’t exist anymore.

That doesn’t make investigating these questions pointless. Quite the opposite. New discoveries can change our understanding of the ancient world, and scholars continue to debate old evidence in new ways.

But sometimes the most accurate answer is also the least satisfying one.

We don’t know.

For a collection of writings examined as intensely as the Bible, perhaps that’s one of its most fascinating qualities.

Thousands of years later, it can still leave us with questions.

Reader question: If historians could definitively solve just one biblical mystery, which one would you want answered?

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