When many Christians think about the authors of the Bible, some of the names that tend to stand out are Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James, Peter and Paul.
In her 2024 book, God’s Ghostwriters: Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible, biblical scholar Candida Moss recognizes the contribution of many enslaved Christians and ghostwriters, like Tertius, who wrote down Paul’s letters to the Romans.
“I Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord,” he wrote in Romans 16:22.
Moss, who is the Cadbury Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham, England, presents the significant role enslaved people played in spreading the Gospel, working as scribes and missionaries.
“While he’s one of the few enslaved Jesus followers whose name is preserved in the New Testament, Tertius’s is not the only set of enslaved hands to have played a formative role in the making of Christian Scripture,” Moss writes in the introduction of the book. “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, James, Peter, and Paul. But the truth is that the individuals behind these names, who were rewarded with sainthood for their work, did not write alone. In some meaningful ways, they did not write at all.”
The book, which has garnered many positive reviews, has won Moss the 2026 Grawemeyer Award in Religion, the University of Louisville and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary announced Wednesday.
The annual Grawemeyer Awards honor the power of creative ideas to improve culture via music composition, world order, education, religion and psychology. They were established by business executive and philanthropist H. Charles Grawemeyer in 1984 at the University of Louisville.
“God’s Ghostwriters argues that the arduous work of scribes, secretaries and copyists in ancient Roman society was the undervalued work of enslaved people. These enslaved collaborators helped produce some of the early manuscripts of the Bible, yet their work has been overlooked through the centuries,” Grawemeyer Religion Award Director and Associate Dean of the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Tyler Mayfield, said in a press statement shared with The Christian Post. “God’s Ghostwriters and its author are worthy additions to our revered list of Grawemeyer winners.”
Moss is expected to present a public lecture on her work at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and formally receive the award from the seminary and the University of Louisville on April 16, 2026. The award also comes with a $100,000 check.
“I am profoundly honored and deeply moved to receive the Grawemeyer Award in Religion for God’s Ghostwriters,” Moss said in a statement responding to the announcement. “To be counted among such an extraordinary and visionary group of previous recipients — scholars whose work has shaped the field and broadened public understanding — is both humbling and inspiring. This honor affirms the importance of telling fuller, more honest stories about the people whose labor created the texts that have shaped our world, and I am grateful beyond words.”
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