If you’re like most people in the developed world (so it seems), you talk about yourself and your family using social media. If you’re the exception rather than the rule, social media is still understandable by analogy—it’s like a personal diary of what you, your friends, and your family encounter and do every day.
We know how something like that is supposed to read. It would be written in the first person: I did this, then we did that. How odd would it sound if you were reading a friend’s Facebook page and they talked about themselves using the third person? Instead of what you’d expect your friend to post (“I went to a movie last night”), your friend talked about herself as though she were someone else (“She went to a movie last night”). When someone writes about themselves you expect the first person, not the third. It’s because of that expectation that scholars can tell biblical books were edited.
One of the best examples of this is the first four verses of the book of Ezekiel:
In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the Chebar canal, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. On the fifth day of the month (it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin), the word of the LORD came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the Chebar canal, and the hand of the LORD was upon him there. As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north.
The first verse uses the first person. I italicized two examples. The beginning creates the expectation that Ezekiel is writing about himself. But in verse three there is a switch to the third person (boldface). Now the writer is clearly not Ezekiel, but is an anonymous author referring to Ezekiel in the third person. Verse four switches back to first person.
These switches are the telltale signs of an editor. The book of Ezekiel has many such instances, as do many other biblical books. That we don’t know the identity of these editors is of little consequence, since the authors of many books in the Bible (particularly the Old Testament) are unknown.
Knowing that biblical books were edited helps us address issues in the text where something appears misplaced. These are not errors but telegraph something to the reader. Scholars work at discerning the purpose of such things. Understanding editing can also help us put certain statements in the Bible in the right chronological context for interpretation.