According to Philip R. Davies, a British biblical scholar, prophetic books are primarily the product of scribes who imitated the traditional style of intermediaries and wrote for their own interest. Does it mean our prophetic books are fake?

Philip R. Davies is an unbeliever.  He is not a Christian and it is not even clear that he believes in God.  Therefore, I would not trust his highly biased anti-biblical approach.  He is a legitimate scholar, and there is a grain of truth behind what he says, but do not trust his conclusions, as they are based on false presuppositions.  Here is the bottom line.  Davies is wrong.  His presupposition is that the Bible is not inspired by God, but the fact is that the Bible is inspired by God.  Anyone who approaches a question by making a false assumption before beginning the investigation is bound to reach false conclusions.    Feel free to read the works of Davies.  You will find it loaded with speculations and guesses.  Here is what the Bible says:  “All Scripture is inspired by God, and is useful for teaching, rebuking and training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”  Of course, this is just a statement, and we ought to ask for evidence that Scripture is indeed inspired by God.  When we look, we find a massive trove of evidence for the inspiration of the Bible. Can I suggest a book I have written which will give you an introduction to the overwhelming evidence for the inspiration of the Bible?   It is Reasons for Belief, available here:  Reasons for Belief

Please do not be intimidated by these smart-sounding unbelievers who air their opinions with very little evidence in support.  By the way, Davies is right that Jewish scribes had a part in putting some (but not all) of the Old Testament books together.  The historical books were written entirely by scribes, and even the Pentateuch has evidence of scribes putting them into their final form.  The falsity in what Davies says is that the scribes wrote “for their own interest.”  Like Peter said, and as the evidence shows, ‘no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s [or the scribe’s] own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets [and scribes], though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:20-21).  I trust the apostle Peter more than I do the unbeliever Philip Davies on this question.  Did the writers and editors of the Old Testament have their own ideas and even their own agendas, as Davies suggests?  Yes, they did.  Of course they did.  But where Davies gets it wrong is that he does not believe that the Bible is inspired by God.  They had their interests, and we can sometimes even detect those interests, but, despite this, the Bible is miraculously inspired by God, and it has a single unifying message throughout, because the writers were “carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

John Oakes